Cumpleaños and Christmas

I'm 21 now.
I've always kind of hated my birthday; it makes me feel as if I've been wasting time, because I haven't done anything great yet, but in Spain it hardly felt like my birthday so we celebrated like this:

A fresh clean house, a long nap, Skype with the parents, dinner courtesy of Michelle's mom, delicious, the cheapest beer, champagne, dessert cakes, cookies and whipped cream, a funny little dog, good tunes, Sydney's beautiful voice, Lauren's house for wine, Green Porno, laughs and Adderall, Planta Baja for awesome oldies and dancing like a crazy person to Grease songs and the Beach Boys, meeting up with Javi & Co, beers, vodka, Vogue, which actually had good music, too, back-handing some asshole that tried grab my ass, dancing, dancing, dancing, a surprising sunrise and endless energy, two attempts at after-parties that were creepy and small, Lauren's house for weed and more laughs, walking down the street with Michelle and laughing uncontrollably for what seemed like hours, back to Sydney's to follow her around and giggle like idiots while she got ready to leave for Christmas, a feeling like how the fuck is it Christmas, a long walk home, total collapse.

So, you know, now it's Christmas and I'm in a cuddle puddle with the kitties and the blanket my dad and Karen sent me, and it doesn't feel real, or important, so I'm gonna kill time and watch movies until tomorrow, which is much more important, because Casey will be here. HOLYFUCK, is this real life?

"JFK airport is such a shithole. I can see how you didn't make your flight."

Holiday Hibernation

It's been a while since I've written an "update" post and I guess that's for pretty predictable reasons, mainly that I'm just sort of getting into the swing of things and living a normalish life. Also, a reason would be the fact that Casey is coming in four days, and that fact has made it pretty impossible to think of much more. But, life is good, I'm loving my new house, especially my cozy bed now that it's equipped with flannel sheets, a feather comforter and a regular comforter that is my favorite color, and generally with a cat or two, or even a dog. We had our housewarming party a while ago, which was a total success minus one dog bite and some puke in the bidet. Yesterday I even finally took down Borja's posters and put up my own stuff, which makes it feel a lot more like home.

Also yesterday, I unexpectedly received TWO packages at the same time! One from my mom and Todd and one from Karen and my dad. So far I've opened several treasures, like a nice cozy blanket, some sweet little glass hearts, tasty Twin Palms dried tomatoes and peach jam from my dad and Karen, and the stocking I use every year, full of goodies, and a big yummy candle and some chocolate from my mom. I'm trying to open them slowly so I at least have one or two things to open on my actual birthday and on Christmas. It made me so happy, and also sad, because I miss them, and I've never missed Christmas before.

After getting my package Karim came and picked me up on his motorcycle and we went to get sushi/Chinese food with Leti and her friends. I've never actually been to one of those moving belt sushi places! Unfortunately, I didn't actually get to eat sushi since they didn't send any veggie rolls by, but I had some rice, noodles and SESAME BALLS. Very exciting. Afterwards we went to Booga for karaoke, which was pretty funny, although, I'd never heard ANY of the songs, of course. I had a good night, but I was really annoyed with myself for being super awkward. I just can't help being really lame around new people, especially when they all know each other and I'm still figuring out the language. Everyone was really nice, though, so I'm glad I went at least.

Anyway, my winter break has officially begun, so Gypsy and I are spending lot's of quality napping time together (although this morning I woke up with Gato and the dog and not him, oops.) A lot of quality time with the bed, in general, 'cause it's cooold! Writing in bed, reading in bed, watching Shameless in bed... It's hibernation season!

December

December is cold, cold bones, hope and waiting, that impatient movement in my knees, closing my eyes and standing up on big old bricks, arms spread, fantasies like you on your back, balanced up there under a blanket. December is a deep sigh, mottled gray skies, holiday promises, layers of cloth. December is one more inch up, one more year turned gray and expired, warm things and spices, a month long desire, a smoking candle wick, the moment before the lights come back on. December is a worn out favorite sweater, a white and silver time, thin as paper, hands pressed together, a far-off fireplace in the redwoods. December is the tense ache from holding yourself together, rushing or not moving at all, forest green and mahogany red, extra layers, steam, in cups and out of mouths, in the damp bathroom. December is sleeping long hours, kitten kisses on my chin, blank walls, stagnation, cuddle up indoor days, words spilling out everywhere, wishes. December is one frozen snowflake on the windshield, your long legs stepping into white, your steely eyes fluttering.

Moving and Merriment

I'm finally very, very pleased to announce that I have moved! Friday Karim saved my life by driving over to my old apartment and helping me load all my stuff up and then unload it into the new house. When we carried all my things in, he paused and read one of the many walls that are covered with multicolored cut out letters and told me, "This is a hippy house," with a playful teasing voice. I just laughed, because only a week or so ago he also told me he is slowly realizing I am quite the hippy myself. (This was in conjunction with a conversation about why we Americans insist on using our nerdy reusable water bottles.)

Anyway, the first day I got all unpacked and rearranged the furniture and Gypsy hid in the closet and sniffed around the corners of the room. That night I discovered that despite wearing a thick pair of leggings, a pair of sweat pants, a T-shirt, a sweater and a sweatshirt, I still kept waking up shivering under my flannel sheets and comforter. So Saturday Sravani and I went to Carrefour Planet, this huge Walmart type place that made me feel weird and claustrophobic-- it's been ages since I've been in such a huge supermarket!-- and I bought another comforter (with feathers!) and a little heater. I'm still wearing a billion layers to bed, but it's much better now. Check out my new room! It's much bigger.

My house consists of two Spanish guys and a woman from Hong Kong, an orange cat named Gato and a little corgi-type dog whose name I can't quite figure out, but whom I've decided to call Cristo. His real name sounds a lot like that. There's also a stripey cat that comes over to hang out with Gato a lot. I think s/he needs a name, so let me know if you have any ideas.

Gato and neighbor cat having a wild rumpus.

So far Gypsy has gotten pretty used to our room, but is not so sure about his new animal companions. Him and Gato have been hissing at each other and making weird cat growls, but mostly have just stared each other down a lot. Gypsy also hissed at Cristo at first but as we speak, the pup is sleeping in our room and Gypsy has fallen asleep trying to look vigilant.

On Saturday, my housemate David had his girlfriend's sister and her family over to have dinner and watch the futbol game (Barca vs. Madrid). They had these two absolutely adorable little girls, and I ended up hanging out with them for a while. Everyone was so nice and the seven year old girl was really eager to show off her English to me (knees! eyes! may I please go to the bathroom!). They were also absolutely obsessed with the animals. I kept Gypsy up in my room to avoid child-trauma but I let them come say hi to him briefly. They even fed my face which was super nice and super delicious. Later I crept into the kitchen and tried to quietly wash dishes but David still came and yelled at me. Things have changed, things have definitely changed.

Miriam and Gato. BFFL.

Yesterday, Sydney and Michelle came over and we had our first dinner in the new house! This proved a little tricky because although my kitchen is awesome and spacious, it is lacking in the actual dish arena. Like... we literally don't have bowls. Or mugs. But dinner turned out great and we shared with Borja, my housemate, and all hung out and bonded and it was jolly.

 A reenactment of the knife-wielding hug that Syd and I shared when I discovered that she's going to be around for the holidays (and therefore for my birthday!)

 

We had rice with eggplant, red and green pepper, green beans, zucchini, onions and garlic slathered with sriracha and chilli sauce, with a side of roasted garlic potatoes. We kinda also almost killed Borja with spiciness (Spaniards don't really do spicy) but he powered through thanks to wine, water and crackers.

This morning I ate rice and veggie leftovers with fried eggs and it turned out to be absolutely gorgeous so I went up to the terrace to eat.

Check out this gorgeous view!

And I made tea....

Yeah. We have a serious mug/glass/cup of any sort shortage. Hopefully today I will find the time to buy some real cups but other than that I'm stooooked! I'll try and put up a photo of my basement sometime soon, it's literally the ultimate chill spot: little wooden bar area, bar stools and a tall table, cushy chair and couch. Can't wait to get my fiesta on here!!

Portugal: Porto

Our first night in Porto we were rather sleepy and it was a Sunday, so there wasn't much incentive to be active. We were mostly just hungry, and this Malaysian girl had given us some ramen packets that didn't fit in her bag so we decided to be desperate and cheap and ghetto and make what was left of our spaghetti noodles and kinda mix them into the ramen, but this proved to be easier said then done because EVERYONE was having kitchen disasters/cooking at the same time and causing a ruckus and making it impossible to get burner space or pots. Someone attempted to cook meat by putting it in the oven straight on the rack, someone tried deep frying chicken, almost caused an oil fire, burnt the crap out of the chicken and then ran out of oil and someone else broke a plate. It was a fiasco. But we did it. And it was, well, pretty alright. Then we spent a good long time having shadow puppet shows on the walls and creating a ridiculous story about an overweight seeing-eye dog.

 "We laughed, we cried, we cringed."

Cape Dude vs. Claw Man

The next day we met two sisters that were triplets and also turned out to be basically the nicest humans alive. But I'll get to that. They'd been robbed in Lisbon and one of them, Jill, had her entire bag stolen but was still cheery and energetic. We decided to do our sight seeing with them and wandered around beautiful Porto together. We looked at some...old buildings (you should know by now I fail at remembering the "important" historic stuff) and walked through a market that was supposed to be fairly well known but was coming to a close. I bought something that I thought was a chocolate pastry and it turned out to be more egg-cream, dusted with cinnamon. But it was tasty and the guy was funny and popped into my photo very eagerly.

We walked through a historic old part of town by the river where the buildings were (extra) crumbling and picturesque and rustic and everything good and European and photogenic. But my favorite part about the city was the actual river with it's cute little boats and the view of all the sweet little buildings stacked up from across the river, in Gaia.

Gaia is where all the Port houses are, so we went across and found a free wine tasting tour, which turned out to be way more interesting than I anticipated. Plus we got a free taste afterwards and it was really nice. Courtney really wanted to buy a little wine bottle gift set to bring back but we'd flown into Porto with RyanAir and they're really intense about the size of your carry on (even your purse has to fit in your bag!) But (and this is where the girls' extreme niceness comes in!) since Jill had been robbed she offered to take some of Leah and Courtney's stuff so they wouldn't get stuck paying extra for a check on! (Leah had bought two pairs of boots and Court bought a bunch of stuff at the flea market.) They were flying out the next morning suuuper early (the same flight as us but a day earlier) and they were staying in Madrid, but she offered to meet up with us after our flight on Wednesday and bring their stuff. We were flabbergasted by the offer! Needless to say, Courtney got her souvenirs.

After wine we all went back to the first restaurant where we had tried our first francesinhas on day one and all indulged in the saucy treat. Mmm. I miss those already... Mmm.

Fun fact: the original title for the Portugal blog was going to be Putting on the Pounds in Portugal, but since I broke it up so much, I decided to be more practical and boring about it.

That night, after our free shots (yeah, the hostel gives out a free shot at 11 every night!) we asked the guy at our hostel for going-out advice and he directed us to this area where the bars were having a 2-for-1 night of almost all of their ENORMOUS drinks. We ended up finding this huge flock of like 18-year-old Portuguese medicine students that were REALLY wasted and REALLY enthused about us and about their weird misconceptions about the United States. At one point one of them told me, "I'm going to be a doctor! I will cut open your heart and change it for the heart of a black woman! I'm not racist." And another kept making sexual propositions and commented, "I'm a virgin, you could do me a favor!"

We ended staying out pretty fucking late and missing breakfast the next day, but we had to check out by noon, which was a little rough. Luckily Yes! Porto (the hostel) is awesome and let us leave all our crap in their closet and make sandwiches and stuff. We decided to wander about some more, and we'd seen these air tram gondola type things the day before and thought maybe it'd be cool to go on one. We found what we thought was the entrance for it and were shocked that tickets were only a little over one euro, so we waited in excited anticipation and then boarded. The glass compartment began to lift, up, up and we could see the river, and the bridge, and then, suddenly... we entered a tunnel...and came to a stop. We laughed so hard I cried; apparently we'd gotten onto some strange form of public transportation. It was basically a glorified elevator; a way of getting from one part of the city on the bottom of the hill to a higher up part... We are geniuses.

What we thought we were riding...

After that hilarious fiasco we just gave up and decided to go to wine tasting again at a different place: Taylor's. This time they gave us tastes before the tour, and gave us two types to try, a tawny and a ruby, and also had some really nice olive oil for us to to taste! This time we also took the tour in English and the woman seemed really stoked off everything. I definitely learned a lot! For example, I didn't know that in order to make ruby into tawny port you had to store it in smaller barrels, to maximize contact with the wood, but that new wood reacts with the strong alcohol content to create really strong vanilla flavors (which is often how vanilla extract is actually made!) and so they have to use barrels that have already been used to make regular wine before. Hella yeah, free knowledge AND free booze. Taylor's: 2 UC System: 0. Ouch.

Their ceiling also happened to be one of the coolest things ever.

After having another taste of wine and perusing the giftshop items, we did some souvenir and postcard shopping and some more meadnering and then Courtney met up with one of our new Portuguese pals and Leah and I got some food and went to relax at the hostel. After sleeping around five hours, we were pretty beat. The hostel, as I mentioned, was super fucking chill, so they said we could hang out until the wee hours when we had to catch our flight. I ended up falling asleep on the couch for a pretty hearty nap, and eventually Courtney came back with some of the Portuguese kids and one of them played a little guitar and we ended up talking to a ton of different batches of people. As it got later, people dropped off one by one and Court fell asleep and Leah attempted to, so I ended up chatting for a good while with the night shift front desk guy, who was actually super interesting and nice. He was a film student and told me about how one of his teachers wanted all the students to get naked together as a part of the creative process, the idea being that directing a film requires baring your whole self and being okay with your whole self, as you are, so physical nudity is a kind of metaphor/jump-start for the process.

At three thirty in the morning, we gobbled down some noodles and packed the last our stuff to a soundtrack of Russian dubstep. Russians, apparently, are insane... There was a group of them, largely wearing SHORTS in the freezing December weather, pounding down shots at three am and goading the hostel worker dude to drink with them while blasting weird tunes, talking about how they'd swam in the ocean earlier in the days and cheering because their futbol team had beat a Portuguese one.

At four am we caught a night bus to the airport and headed back for Spain. We took the metro to the bus station and Jill showed up bright and early with Courtney and Leah's stuff and she had even stopped at the store and bought us fresh bread, some crunchy cheese puff type things and some apple juice. How did that even happen? We couldn't believe our luck. She said after getting robbed she guessed she needed some karma points but, damn, we're impressed.

In closing:

Look how cute this patient pup is, waiting for her human to finish buying groceries.

Portugal: Lisbon

It's pretty intimidating to come back to the blog after an entire week, especially such a crazy week. Let me just say: I love Portugal. It's beautiful. I think I'll break this up into two blogs (or I guess three if you count the last one), one for Lisbon and one for Porto, as much for my own good as for your attention spans.

To begin with, the first stretch of travel was a nightmare. Five hour bus ride to Madrid, metro ride to the airport, flight to Porto, three and a half hour bus to Lisbon. We were zombie creatures by the end, so we mostly wrote and napped and chatted by the time we made it to our hostel.

Day two in Lisbon, we woke up to freshly baked croissants and tea, part of the free hostel breakfast and we decided to explore Belem, a well known area. We visited the Jeronimos Monastery, stopped in at a little nautical museum and took ridiculous photos, stopped by the Discoveries Monument, which naturally, we had to climb, and then took a look at the Belem Tower.

 Monastery!

 Monument climbing!

 Monument. You can see Lisbon's version of the Golden Gate in the background...That was extremely weird to see.

Tower of Belem.



Ordinary buildings.

The whole day was kind of leisurely and exploratory. We kept stumbling upon all the monuments we were hoping to see, taking our time, being goofy and having a blast. Everything was so beautiful, from the monuments to the ordinary buildings and there was street art everywhere. After looking around at these we were starving so we stopped and got felafel, and then headed back towards the hostel. On the way we stopped at a free museum we'd heard about in the hostel; the museum of fashion and design which we loved. It was arranged chronologically, and related historical events, inventions, people, etc, to the evolution of design. There were no photos allowed, but we saw all sorts of fascinating clothing and furniture and whatnot. My favorite part was all the quotes they had from designers, talking about their philosophy of design and fashion, form and function, pushing boundaries, etc. Afterwards, of course, we did a little shopping. I got myself a jacket, which turned out to be extremely necessary and very useful due to it's extra large hood, which could roll down and become my public-transport-sleeping-cave.

Street art.

After noticing the Golden Gate 2.0, I kept feeling like Lisbon was an old, decaying San Francisco. It just had that feeling, especially with all the little trolleys.

That night we made gin and tonics in the hostel and then went out with some Americans and our new Canadian friend, Rebecca, this awesome spunky 18-year-old who was traveling around for like seven months alone, meeting up with friends in different places. We went to Bairro Alto, the area known for it's bars and nightlife and had a few drinks. The night seemed to be coming to an end but we ran into an extremely inebriated Australian that was obsessed with his own beard, and we ended up causing a ruckus with him and his friends. He was ridiculous and had "Your Name" tattooed on his ass (yes, he showed us) but came in handy when some random guy came up to Leah and I, put his arms around us and proclaimed, "You're coming home with me tonight." All in all a hilarious evening.

Inebriated Australian, self, Rebecca.

The next day we got a late start (well, Leah and I did; Courtney managed to get up early and go to a sweet flea market that I'm sad I didn't make it to.) We decided to take a day trip to Sintra, a nearby town known for it's fairytale-like castles and palaces. We'd been told that you only really have time to visit one of the amazing sights, and we chose Palacio da Pena which was incredible. The palace was up a big forested hill, which we bussed and then walked up. It was one of the few tourist spots that we actually decided to pay and enter, so we got to marvel at all the insane themed rooms and spent a lot of time talking about how short their beds were. Luxurious, but short. It was also evening time and up on the hill, especially outside, it was REALLY fucking cold. I kind of thought my ears were going to fall off. But it was definitely worth the money, and really did feel like a crazy surreal fairytale palace. The view from up there was breathtaking.

That night, Leah, Rebecca and I were rather sleepy, so we opted out of going out and went for hot chocolate and pastries, or in my case, a baked apple with cinnamon. Honestly, a lot of this trip was defined by the food. Aside from the saucewiches (francesinhas) we had in Porto, we made some awesome meals in the hostel to save money: pasta with fresh veggies, vegetable and tofu stirfry with garlic, ginger and soy sauce, and grilled cheese with tomatoes and a fried egg and onion soup. Also, Portugal turned out to be FULL of tasty pastries that we just couldn't resist. The Portuguese are extreme fond of egg-cream, and are famous for their pasteis de nata, these little custard tarts that are served with cinnamon. Delicious.

Sunday we had a bus back to Porto at 5, so we had time to do a little more sightseeing. Rebecca came along with us to find a mirador (basically a plaza with a dope view). We opted to follow the tram tracks and take our time meandering through the beautiful old buildings instead of riding the tram. It was a wonderful tranquil day, wandering through the Alfama neighborhood, which is known for it's crumbling melancholy beauty, and the whole thing was enhanced by the moody clouds. The view did not disappoint, we sat for a long while and just took in the city.

To be continued...

Portugal: The Beginning

1am travels—I quickly become a bag of heavy bones, carry myself around along with my pudgy backpack. Humming bus windowpanes echo through my inner ear, through my jaw. In the airport we unwrap little sandwiches, panic about the size of our bags. I’m on my knees shoving my purse upside down into my backpack, putting on extra sweaters, scarves.

In the airplane, I fall asleep, wake up being told to move my feet from the seats, our ears fill up and we fly through the thin border of time. Outside we breathe cold air, try and ascertain if it tastes, well, Portuguese. We eat strips of sour candy, walk down into the metro, count the stops as they flash by.

Above ground, Porto is sleepy and old, chilly and gray with big tiled churches, crumbling old mansions, serious against the purplish sky. A sweet brown trolley rolls by on tracks, someone hands me a paper, asks me for money, I suppress the urge to respond in Spanish, my tongue is confused. We pass groggy Portuguese pigeons, buy bus tickets in a dingy office with wooden walls. We find a café with English in the menu—is that good or bad? Leah asks. We buy Portuguese sandwiches, a Porto specialty, francesinhas, sandwiches with sauce they say is extra spicy, like the Mexican food, they say. The sauce is red and mild, we split French fries and Leah closes her eyes at the table. The waitress has a sweet disposition and bad teeth, makes Leah pick out free desserts. We share flan and mousse and tip her.

The bus to Lisbon is more spacious and we sit along the left side—window seats. I pull off my scarf and top layer sweater to wad up as a pillow. The sun flickers across my face and a cold sets in; I curl into a ball. In the station bathroom, I rinse my mouth and then we head underground again, slow as specters, drooping.

Lisbon is purple-gray, the air is still. We find number 65, a souvenir shop. Inside is a big, mirrored double door, Kitsch Hostel, it says. The doors open to a dingy staircase. Up, up, inside another door, beside a dentist office, is a strange collaged lobby, red walls, green diamond walls, celebrities, religious figures and naked women pasted all together. Our receptionist is Polish, I think you will like this, he says again and again. His smile is shy and when we walk in on a girl changing in our room he turns pink. Beds. We collapse. It’s 5:30pm.