Spanish Nights and Veggie Delights

The apartment hunt has been progressing but I'm becoming pretty conflicted. There's one place I saw and LOVED, a great price with all the utilities included, as well as things like towels and sheets, but all I know about the potential housemates is that there's a French guy coming and a double that still has to be rented. I also saw another place, less cute but with nice people and an adorable dog, but I'd have to replace myself when I left, which sounds like a chore. Plus, utilities aren't included... I'm torn between continuing my search and just taking one of these places in order to stop stressing. We'll see.

My potential housemate pup. I couldn't get a good photo because he kept snarfing on me and rolling around gleefully when I scratched his butt.

This is my first weekend since school and it's been really lovely. Friday night there was soccer game, so some of us went out to a bar to watch it. It was an Irish bar, which was kind of funny. When the game was over we went to a cheaper bar to have drinks and tapas and I fell madly in love with mojitos. Yum. Afterwards, we bought a few litros of cerveza (40's, basically) and went and played card games in the dorms, long after we'd run of beer.

Last night was definitely my first "Spanish" night though. We had a late, late lunch (snacks from the market) and then went and took siestas for a bit. At around ten we went out to eat dinner, but we weren't that hungry so we went to this bar D'Cuadros, which serves some really tasty tapas free with drinks. So for a two euro glass of tinto de verano I got to nom on some delicious fried eggplant with honey. I know that sounds weird but it was AMAZING. Some of the other girls also got these little grilled cheese type sandwiches, but they had meat in them.

Tinto de verano. Yum.

Eggplant tapas. 

 Gabby and Alicia getting pumped off tapas.

Pimpin, as usual.

After the bar, we went back to the dorms and made our own mixed drinks. Eventually we all ended up crammed into Dan's room, which was semi-classy in that he was playing nice music and everyone was dressed snazzy, but there were way too many of us to fit. We spent a good long time debating which club to go to (Mae West is supposed to be the best but it's really far and you have to wear heels and look impeccable; Granada 10 is close by, but we've been there before and no one wanted to pay, some other club was supposed to be amazing, but it's in the Albaycín, which is also a long walk, Vogue is close but apparently plays "weird music"...) We eventually decided to go to a gay bar called Six Colours.

Six Colours was awesome, very small but full of adorable gay boys that all of us wanted to become our new best friends. The response amongst our group was mixed, though. Eventually we all wandered outside, not really sure what to do. Our wanderings lead us to a nearby club called La Sal. Everyone filed in as I was asking someone is if cost to get in (it didn't). The person I asked was named Joaquin; he was this adorable German kid who'd been living in Granada for two years and insisted on speaking English to me in order to practice. He warned me that the bar was more of a lesbian bar, but I told him no one really cared.

Once in the bar we danced a bit and I met a Chilean guy who was apparently the wandering sort and had just wandered into Granada with the intention of staying for a year or so. He was pretty sweet, although apparently straight and tried to use some line about "testing to see if I was gay or not" but I quickly informed him that I was taken and he agreed be friendly instead of sleazy.

At this point (around maybe 3:00 or 3:30am) a lot of people from the program decided to leave, but I stayed with Courtney and Gabby, who had met an awesome lesbian couple that wanted to take us to a club called Status. A friend of theirs handed out passes for us to get in for five euro (instead of the usual ten), so when La Sal closed at 4:00am or so, we trekked over to Status with the girls and my new Chilean friend, Felipe.

Status was also a lot of fun and a lot bigger. There were some hilarious guys dressed up all old fashioned like with wigs and little pointy shoes and everything. I also ran into Joaquin again but sadly didn't get any contact info, so there goes my chance at a sassy gay bff. Another straight guy managed to hunt me down, though, and much to the embarrassment of his gay pal he kept yelling things like, "HAVE YOU EVER FUCKED WITH A GIRL?" in broken English, and told me I was "the best" and kept trying to feed me his vodka and Redbull. We ended up closing down the club, as well, at 7am. Success.

Needless to say, today was a very sleepy one. I didn't wake up until two and spent most of the day doing a whole lot of nothing even though I have some homework and boring things to do... I did go see a (horrible) piso with some compañeras, but it smelled horrible and the landlady lived there and seemed like a total grump. I also got to chat with Casey and Mishka a bit, which was nice but also really frustrating, because Skype kept throwing a tantrum and quitting unexpectedly, not to mention being super weird and blurry looking.

At around 6:30 my group met up with Chelo and she took us to an AMAZING cafe. Actually, two. The first one was this lovely dark little cafe full of books and old photos and the sounds of jazz. It was too full, so we went to another, just down the street and around the corner, which had the same name and a similar vibe, a lot of pianos and deep red walls. Apparently they have live shows there, as well. I wish I brought my camera (iPhone) but I'd left in a hurry. I had a glass of icy mango juice, but there were some really delicious sounding coffees and milkshakes. Everyone was sleepy but we also had a lot of school related questions and anxieties building up as the date approaches for us to choose and enroll in our real classes.

After coffee (or juice, in my case) we were scheduled to go get crepes, but Chelo mentioned having heard of a nearby vegetarian restaurant, which excited a lot of us (especially me). We headed out, but Amber's knee was hurting her (she'd fallen on it last night) so we changed our minds and decided to look for it another day UNTIL, low and behold, we stumbled upon it on our way home! It's called El Piano, and it's amazing, full of vegan and gluten free deliciousness that you can take on the go in little wooden boats with wooden forks for a pretty good price! They also sell soy milk and a few other awesome things like cook books. It was a dream come true. I had these tasty little corn patty type things and this awesome red curry kind of dish with potatoes and peas. I doubley wished I had my camera, it was fantastic! But it's really close, so I'll be back shortly with photographic evidence of the deliciousness. Mmm.