One More Weekend

Mellow late night pancake dinner, the Alhambra a'glow perched up in front of Mauna's terrace, tank top weather, sweating and searching for Fall classes, living room full of bare feet, Borja and his Italiana in aprons, beer and nisperos, tart orange fruit with thin skin and glossy chestnut seeds, shade in the huerto, a dog named Pulga (Flea!), hacky sack wars, dashing around at dusk, rabbit squeal at dinner, poor thing half-limp, Gato as fat and sleepy-eyed as ever, hot sauce, salad, police and personal space, borrachera and malabares, Pedro Antonio, girls with bangs and cigarettes, los 15 gatxs, dance, dance, surrender to the ridiculous, shadowy faces, free beer, stumble home, five minute bench break (vagabunda!) morning resaca, transnational delirium with Kim (5 days now!), bunny sized heart attack, water-soaked terraza, march down Gran Vía, dogs and big happy posters of protest, dancing foot steps and shaved heads, hot cement, the 99%, education, health, the sun slips away to the sounds of crackling megaphone cries, back at Adri's the lights are red, the music loud, my eyes are heavy, Saturday sun as hot as Hell, four pm rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, litro for breakfast, sweating on the bus, Vico tells me he doesn't want to be American, listen to American music, quick sandwiches, Google maps, exploding beer, up the hill (sweat!), pine needles under my feet, roving in the dark, muddy legs and sleepy eyes, headless bird surprise...

Festival del Dragón

 

At home we cook the worlds speediest pasta, running around the kitchen, drinking more. We eat out of the pot to avoid dishes, pile our shit into the car, and I’m buried beneath a huge blanket in the back seat with a baggie of MDMA in my underwear, the music up, it feels like we’re flying through the streets, through the dark, towards Santa Fé. In the distance there are little clumps of light and the faint resonance of bass. We take a sharp right to avoid a police check point and pull off to the side of the road.

The Dragon festival is a sparkling circus, a grotesque city of lost souls and free souls and everything in between. Faces loom in and out of the darkness, costumes and paint, eyeballs wide as plates, I feel safe bundled up in my polar bear hat. People touch my head, growl at me, laughing. We go floating form tent to tent, where I hold my hand against my chest and feel a beat that is my own heart all mixed up with the rhythm of the music, and it’s the same exuberant boom in everyone’s chest, in everyone’s loose limbs. We eat up exhilaration, from plastic bottles, bitter fingertips, through rolled up bills, we become infinite, we share, we sweat, we dance, we hold on, we let go. Faces loom in and out of the darkness, big gaping smiles, a strangeness that feels soft as skin. I feel my body in every place, I feel me, and you in every pore, I feel my soul hum.

We are under a big canopy dancing with our arms up when the sky becomes the faintest purple and the sun begins to roll up, beneath a layer of thick fog. Trash begins to emerge from the mist. We sit in the first weak rays of sunlight and watch as the landscape appears, a strange dystopian shire. The music persists, but we wander away from it, boots kicking up whitish dust. We sit amongst the olive trees and look at our hands and look at the clouds, and watch each others’ eyes expand. All around me is a serious murmur; they talk about growing up, about ideal childhood, about rebellion and drugs, about moderation and excess, about the revolution that must begin with education, but all my words are sealed up inside of me. The sun is up now, Borja falls asleep on his back, I pick little bits of grass and watch the ants scuttle busily across the cracked earth. Matteo says the olive trees look purple, and I curl up against him, curl up inside my hood.

Back at the festival, the dogs have returned to their instinctual selves, roaming in dusty, playful packs. I stop every few feet to say hello to them. There is a droopy faced old bulldog, there is a beautiful white-gray husky mix chained to a van, there is a tiny fluffy German Shepard pup being carried under someone’s arm. We see familiar faces scattered all around, exchange hugs and smiles. At the car we eat orange segments and pass around a big plastic bottle of water. There is a short shirtless man standing alone against a truck across the street from us. He looks a little lost, he keeps looking over in our direction with a vague smile, shuffling his feet. I walk over to him and offer water, and he laughs nervously and gulps it down, grateful. A red car drives past and shouts at me, “¡Oso polar! ¡Súbete al coche fantástico!” They rev their engine. A moped stops in from of me. They like my hat. They flash big golden-toothed smiles at me.

We wander, wander, wander. I talk to a boy with a painted face, to see if he has any paint, but he’s lost it. He’s Lithuanian and has yellow eyes like a lizard. He sits with us and we stare and he says, “Natural, natural,” and follows us until he comes across a shirtless man throwing himself around in the street and the Lithuanian lances himself with a gleeful whoop and they begin flipping and leaping and tossing each other to the music. We find Adri, still dancing, shirtless, furious, ecstatic. I’m covered in red paint, all down my right arm and my t-shirt and my sweatshirt. We wander and wander.

Eventually, we are hot and Borja is wilting, so we pile into the car, up to our necks in sweatshirts and blankets and we cruise home, a little anxiously. It’s strange to watch people, walking along the streets, their clothes bare of dust and paint, their faces void of wonder, their destinations somehow certain. Outside the house, I’m unloading beer from the trunk, stained and dusty, still wrapped in my polar bear hat, and a neighbor passes by, a middle aged man in a button down shirt, and he seems like some strange surreal portrait of normality, of the bland nature of reality. In the house, we curl up on the couches, and giggle vacantly at Charlie, delirious and exhausted, but humming with left over adrenaline. We take lazy showers and eat slowly with chopsticks, just because. Over thirty six hours pass without sleep, and when I finally go to bed, it’s because I no longer want to keep my eyes open.

Fiesta de Primavera

 

The weekend begins with little boats of vegan curry, sweet grape juice and a couple of cold forties, hoards of young Spaniards armed with plastic bags, plastic cups, plastic bottles, the pervasive stench of piss and piles of trash. We down our first forties and then meander through the masses, looking for familiar faces, or new faces. I climb up on Leon’s shoulders and call out for his friend, who we never find. Down below, people applaud or raise their drinks up at me. Someone hurls a chunk of ice against my back. I keep drinking up there.

Eventually we have to pee. There’s a high cement wall, and on the other side are bushes, full of women, mostly, as the guys are resigned to just lean against any old wall and let loose. We climb up a skate ramp and a group of girls protest, yelling that we can’t pee up there, go fuck ourselves. They are delighted when I attempt to lower myself over the edge and eat shit. Sydney makes the leap much more gracefully. We wait outside a particularly promising bush that a cute girl in a floral skirt tells us is “occupied.” She quickly gathers that we are not from here, and gives us her contact info, hoping to meet up for tapas some day and practice her English.

 Once we’ve peed, we eye the wall suspiciously. Climbing back over does not seem to be an option, but further down, it’s much lower, so we run over and hop on. But we’re a long way, a tin rooftop, and a group of people away from our friends. Fuck it. We take off, hopping precariously along the wall, and people start to take notice. Three boys are blocking our way and protest, not wanting to hop down, but I just ask them to scoot over from each other, and then step behind each one. A few people cheer. When we reach the rooftop, Syd climbs up first. Now people are really watching. We must look crazy, maybe we are. We dash along the rooftop, not wanting to break it, and people really begin to cheer. Someone throws a chunk of ice, again—sonofabitch. But finally we reach Leon and he lowers us down.

He’s acquired people, and I run into Carlos, serious as ever, but drunk as fuck, complaining that he can’t pee. Andrew, a British kid, has a backpack full of warmish tinto de verano, and I chug some of it, and then Matteo calls, saying to come home, so I take off dashing through the crowd and up, up, up the hill. Later, of course, he texts me saying he’ll actually be a while, so I stop and buy vodka and potato chips.

Remember These Things

Feel good, feel big, wide, spread out, stretch out, soak up. These are the memories that build up your skin, these are the moments that fill up your heart, that pour out your mouth, fill up your eyes, jumble up your mind. Do you want to be a person? Do you want to be a whole person, a person of substance, a person to hold onto, to drift away with? Do you want to be a person that can be seen, a person that fills up a page, a portrait or a poem, a person that can see, with clear eyes, eyes full of reference points yet clean as a blue summer sky? Then open wide, tilt back, soak up, take in these little seconds, their stillness, their incessant hum, just fling back, let go, take it in, let it all fade by in a blur, just so long as you remember the way it felt, at least, let it all come at you, come in you, like the most beautiful film you’ve ever seen, with it’s booming, whispering, with it’s sobbing, laughing, screaming orchestra. These are the sounds that will hold you at dawn, when the sun ignores you, and rises up and reaches out, these are the memories that will come back to you, in fragments, pieces, all cut up and scrambled and coded into secrets, when you sleep, behind your eyelids when you are hiding from persistent sunlight. Touch it all, let the days run through your fingers, like sand, just as long as you remember how it felt, that smoothness, slipping by, and the little scoop it came from, and the little mound it made.

Remember these things: Thursday night plastic bottles in a loft, the deep red walls, the sting of the air on the street, wobble steps, to the door, the brown neck of a beer bottle, the cold clammy glass, a song, or another, and your feet shuffle, and the doorman, who remembers you, he’s a short man, smiling, little slips of paper, foam, those stumble steps, again, some empty place and that laughter when you leave, the rush and thrum of music, music, music, letting yourself fall away back into it, darkness, bumping, someone with dreadlocks, a Santa Cruz t-shirt, the laughing with your hand over your mouth, time that slips and disappears, and those fucking bathrooms, of course, waking up in a stifling darkness, and falling in and out of it, and then the deep bells jangling, it’s four pm, citrus, panting, uphill, hot water, in cups, unexpected neighbor call, the humming belly surprise, tobacco scent soft and usual, easy words, watching them, and, then, a, long, moment, of, sitting, late morning sunshine, stop and go, outside, in like a sponge, open pores, eyes all sparkling, the city down below, the Alhambra, stoic and brown as ever, just perched, the wind, smoking, the soft smell of one spliff or another, picking down the hill, quick hellos, yellow beer in long glasses, counting my silences, but content, and out onto a bench, a stubborn dog, a three man band, strumming, blissfaced eyes closed, beer, bathroom, beer, and out and over and up into a plaza, on a bench, hugging the last rays of sunlight, borrowed music, the eyes that close, the feet that tap, and the growing moving impermanent sway of human vibrations all around, the animals tussling in the dry dirt, the sun blushing out and down, drums across the plaza, guitar and flute, all mixed up, solid redwrapped litros and shared shivers, swaying, watching, all those beautiful people, and as the evening turns purpley the beat rises us and everyone scrunches around, those distant smiles, stamping feet, absolute in the sound, dirty fingers lifting up cigarettes and fingering wind instruments, and it swells up, and down we go, plunging into the cobblestone maze, a sweet teashop pastry hello, living room drinks, bitter and pink, speed cooking, all amped up and hungry, and laughter, and maps, and we’re dancing at the bus stop, waiting, the burning plastic bottle, the last stop, a lucky guess, and hello, hello, we’re here, glow in the dark masked debauchery, fling ourselves around, sweating to the sounds, jostling, climbing, and we’re spotlighted, cheering, arm in arm, conga line, kick, kick, exultation, and singing too loud in the bathroom, slamming on the walls, some angry face, and the whole thing has only just begun, here we are laughing, masked and only us dancing, fuck it, new faces, new places, a feeling like tugging, what are the things I know about you, the hours drank down into empty bottles, cans, cups, dimming lights, and down on Elvira, spilled beer on the ground, salsa picante, and some conversation that I can’t taste, and dark night shivering, drive up easy, collapse, and then, brief oblivion, it starts again, meandering down, dancing steps all on the road, those faces turning, looking, us looking, laughing, finding, some unexpected faces, hello, and we are here, swaying again, sun like honey all across us, smoke curled all around our eyes until sunset is soft gray beautiful, puppy prancing, we move to keep the shadow out, and separate and then find ourselves all mixed up together, again, in the sound, in the beer, rocking on the steps of the Cathedral, curled up on some large terrace, spit down onto the sidewalk, and, then, the silent, walk, home, just quiet, just happy, just cold, just okay.

These are the things that you must grab, that you must not crush, these are the things you must hold soft as a butterfly, that you must retain within you, that you must let out of you, all at once. Do you want to remember? Do you want to be, feel, to know what you are looking for, what you have had? This is how.

Nocturnality, Not Studying and New Adventures

I've been pretty horrible at keeping up on this, but that's partially due to the fact that my internet was down for a little over a week. Still, I wanted to write a vaguely coherent post before tomorrow because I'm leaving for Morocco! Pretty much shitting rainbows of glee; tomorrow my mom is flying into Madrid and I'm going to meet up with her for a day and then on Thursday we're flying into Marrakesh, where we'll be spending six days! Hopefully we'll be doing a desert tour for a night or two, and other than that, who knows! Maybe a day trip or two, maybe try and squeeze Fez into the plan, we'll see. I'm so excited to see my mom, I don't even really care what we do, because I'll be with my bad ass mother in MOROCCO so it's guaranteed for greatness. Obviously.

Things have been good, of course. I've finished three of four final exams, and feel at least not entirely horrible about them, so we'll see how they turn out. Unfortunately I have my last final on the 15th, which is the dayyyyy after I'm getting back from Morocco....doesn't bode well for studying, but I'm trying to...kind of... study...now. You can tell it's working, right? Ha. Anyway, Granada has been kind of a weird cocoon with all the studying, and it's been a bit of a bummer, too, 'cause almost all of my California pals are leaving within a month or so. In theory, this should be good for my Spanish and force me to make new friends. We'll see how it goes. By the way, as a semi-related side note, asking somebody if "they are making friends" is never a good idea. Even if they are, it's just awkward, and if they're not then it's uber awkward. So. Just stop that. In general. Seriously, this doesn't just apply to me, I'm pretty sure it applies to anyone who has ever started at a new middle school, high school, University, anyone who has ever moved or started a new job... It's just awk and annoying. Refrain.

Anyway. This weekend has been pretty ridiculous due to finishing my second to last final. Friday I finally went to this place called La Tren with Carlos (from this horrifying blog) and some of his friends. It's kind of like the alternative discoteca, and way more awesome than any bar or club I've been to. On the poop side, it's like ten euros and super on the outskirts of town, so I will not be hitting that up very often, tempting as it is. We didn't actually end up going until like 5am (typical Spanish kids) and by the time I got to bed it was like 9am, so I slept until around 5pm and then instead of showering and having breakfast, met up with Leon and Sydney and some other people and drank a bunch of wine and then went to tapas (veggie tapas bar- Munda Manila- absolutely amaaaazing) and then we all tromped over to Leah's because it was officially her birthday at midnight (21!!) so we made more drinks and then went to Camborio. Camborio was suuuper dead, probably because of the exams, but having gone to the Tren the night before just made it seem that much more sad and lame. I think that may have been my last visit to Camborio. But hey, it was free. It was a fun group of people, though, so we had a lot of fun, and Leah got sufficiently birthday drunk and sassy and we left at 5 or so and I made Leon and Adrien pasta and then slept until like 4pm again.

And Sunday was, of course, Leah's real birthday, so I went and hung out with her hung over ass, bough her some greasy ass Chinese food and watched Fantastic Mr. Fox, which is amazing, by the way. In the morning (around 3pm, of course) Courtney came over and we all made funfetti cake with strawberries and strawberry frosting and had mimosas and wore Mardi Gras beads and birthday hats that Leah's parents sent her.

Not much new except that Nana, my Chinese housemate, is moving out next month, so we're on the hunt for someone new. Hopefully just as clean as her, and hopefully someone who wants to hang out with me, since I'm gonna be kind of a loner for the next few months. So far one person was supposed to come look (this morning) but ended up sleeping in. Oops.

Well that's about it, going to go drink some green tea and study (aka cuddle with the kitties) more! I'll be back with tales of Moroccan adventures soon!

Thursday Night Drums

Thursday night the black air felt like ice against my face. I didn’t bundle up enough, and we crossed through the wall and wound against the face of the hill to a cave where we could see the orange glow of a little fire; we could hear drums. We peeked inside and were ushered in, told to sit on dug out stairs, and someone moved a TV to make room. A man that Clara knew came up to kiss us on the cheek, it was his birthday and he was vibrant with energy, with humor. He made jokes about how he had to keep smiling or we couldn’t see him in the dark, he told us age was just a number; that the music filled up his soul. He talked with his whole body, spreading out his arms and then clenching them to his chest. He told us his brother was a faggot but he loved him, he giggled.

They offered us little cups of spicy coffee that we passed amongst ourselves, it was strange but warm. He told us when you give you always receive, and one of the men began to sing, to call out, facing away from us, toward the fence, above the fence, up to the sky. The drummers began to drum in earnest, singers gathered together in a little clump, walking in circles around a bucket and crying out in sync, they were dark silhouettes with frenzied dreadlocks, one of them raised his arm up as he sang. The man who knew Clara touched her hair and made fun of us for being cold, urged us to drink more coffee, shook his hair and limbs and told us again that the music filled his soul. A smaller woman, also with dreadlocks, got up and joined the chanting circle; she looked as if it filled her soul. We were told we could not drink alcohol inside the enclosure and eventually went outside and sipped on wine from the bottles. The men came up to us and asked unabashedly for wine, one of them took the bottle, drank off it for a long while, but eventually returned it. A younger man said something to the man who knew Clara and they laughed, and he shined the light from his cell phone on Leah’s face and said he liked her. We laughed and she was uncomfortable; we drank more wine.

Borja decided to leave as the music came to a close, but suddenly everyone was telling us that there was food, we must eat to close the ritual. We came back inside and there were three big pots on the ground, everyone was gathered around them, kneeling and leaning into the pots. They urged us to eat, and Leah and I were awkward and uncertain, being vegetarians, but I not wishing to be rude, I reached my hand in and found something that felt like cabbage, and ate it. They urged us to eat more, so I put my hand back in and drew it up to my mouth, this time empty. The pot was emptied quickly, and we washed our hands under a cold running faucet. You ate well, someone told me, she did not. The younger boys flocked towards the entrance, suddenly ready for a night of partying. The one who’d shined his light on Leah asked if we were going out, he shined his light on her again. Borja was heading home and we couldn’t stop shivering, we lost sight of Clara and the other girls, picked our way back down the path and through the wall.

Mellow Music, Caves, and Cake

Fridays are like a sigh of relief, I woke up and cleaned, tromped down the hill for fried rice supplies, sweated back up the hill and took a long shower. Sometime around ten Borja came home with a few friends, we’d met at our last party, we all crammed into the kitchen and they taught me silly phrases and peeled potatoes while I boiled rice and chopped garlic. I was chopping carrots when more friends came, we exchanged polite kisses and I started defrosted the peas. When Sydney and Michelle arrived with lentils I was just finishing up the fried rice, and Borja and Marc were frying potatoes. We made vodka and pineapple juice drinks and sat in the living room and they passed around the guitar and the girls sang, at first quiet, but sweet and soulful, and the boys sang jubilant songs in Spanish, and we all clapped along and complained about being hungry and smoked spliffs.  When Borja finished the tortilla española we all cheered and dug in, piling our plates with tender tortilla, with flavorful lentils dabbed with plain yogurt, with rice slathered in Sriracha. We refilled our drinks, the boys passed around a bottle of wine, and Michelle rubbed my belly. We smoked more. The music started back up, stronger voices, boozy brave, I couldn’t stop smiling, even the little fragments of uncertain song were perfect. By three in the morning we’d switched to recorded music, played Al Green and watched videos of an a cappella choir singing a Prodigy song, and Syd, Michelle and I went to the kitchen to make cookies. They must have thought we were crazy, in fact they told us so, found us closed in the kitchen dancing to California Dreaming while nibbling on cookie dough. When the cookies were done Borja’s friends took over the kitchen, boiling marijuana and butter, to use for a cake the next day. Then we curled up on the couches, finished off the vodka and melted into the cushions.

The next day we all woke up far too early, got the cake in the oven and sipped on tea. Everyone went home to collect things and I puttered around the house and realized I’d somehow lost my phone. Mierda. A good half an hour or so late, Borja and I eventually made our way down to Plaza Nueva to meet up with more people and some pretty adorable puppies. We weren’t the latest, though, so we sat in the plaza and sipped on litros until everyone else gathered, and then we wandered our way in fluctuating clumps up past the Alhambra, past the cemetery and over into a part of town I’d never seen before, with it’s own cave community. We climbed a narrow little path up to a cave with the bare bones of mattress spring frame for a door, and sat around a little table on couch cushions and opened up the weed cake and dug in.

One of the cave’s residents gave me a tour; the cave was dark and musky and he kept telling me that it was normally cleaner, but it had a hard cement floor, lumpy rounded while walls, and shadowy little chambers where beds were set up. It had a communal space with a couch, which is also where one of the more roving members of the household slept, and a little kitchen area, where they place goals under a grate to cook stovetop and have a little brick oven. No lights, no running water, just pure scavenging self sufficiency, a good deal of neighborly good will, and a lot of dumpster diving (although I have to say, I like that in Spanish they refer to it as reciclando, or recycling.)

Back outside, everyone was figuring out money stuff, and someone went on a drug run and came back with mushrooms and acid, which was promptly divided up and eaten. The sun was getting low, and a chill set in, so someone suggested we all go get some firewood, and we tromped back down the hill, to a wooded area where the boys sawed big pieces of fallen trees and the girls gathered piles of sticks for kindling. When we got back it was just about sunset, so we dropped the wood in piles and went around the other side of the hill to watch the sun slink away beneath the city silhouette. The drugs were started to kick in and everyone was smiling until they thought their faces would fall off. I can’t laugh anymore, I just can’t, they kept saying, laughing. When we got back to the cave, they’d already started a fire.

I spent the night with a soft, mellow buzz, taking little drags off spliffs that came my way, sipping on the bottles of wine and beer. I didn’t expect to be there so long, but night fell and we huddled around the fire, ducked from the smoke and chatted. A little puppy would climb over us, let me pull her into my lap and sit like a person and doze off for a little, and then would go and bark at the bigger dogs. At some point someone pulled out a bunch of chicken and spiced and grilled it and passed it around with bread, later someone handed around pears and tangerines and we all nibbled on them. One of the girls, Eva, tried my Burts Bees chapstick and took to calling it el chicle que no es chicle, the gum that isn’t gum, made everyone try it and kept asking for more every half an hour or so. Everyone was nice in an easy natural way, no one stopped conversations abruptly to ask me if I understood, and it’s better that way. I didn’t talk much, but I never do in situations where I know so few people, but it was fine, I let the language wash over me like smoke, took in what I could and chatted to the people nearest to me. It’s funny how uncomfortable you can make someone by trying too hard to make them comfortable, but no one did that to me. Midnight came and went and it wasn’t until sometime after one thirty that we began stirring, some people headed for the bars, others for home. Borja and I walked home with one of the girls, whose name escapes me (too many new names in one night…) since we realized we were nearly neighbors. On the walk home it suddenly occurred to me how little I’d slept and how little I’d eaten—about three hours of sleep the night before and I was running on weed cake and pieces of shared fruit and bread—but the hungry exhaustion that settled in my bones was satisfying. I love Granada.

Shit in the Streets

Casey is gone. I was really sad to have him leave, and even contemplated what sorts of serious injuries would render him incapable of leaving, but on Thursday we went and had churros and chocolate with Leah and then I took him to the bus station and he headed off to Madrid. I cried a little but made myself go to class so I couldn't sulk and be bummed out all day. Now that he's back home with the MooMoo dog, things feel pretty normal. I miss him, but a normal amount, so, it's okay. We crammed a lot of last minute fun into those last days; we had a night picnic up by San Miguel alto, and had pasta and salad while watching the Alhambra glow and all the little lights flicker all throughout the city, and the stars were clear and it was pretty. We went out to tapas with Courtney and Mauna, had mediocre Chinese food (which strangely included a watery flan for dessert), went discount shopping (I finally got some much needed sweatshirts!), got coffee and pastries, and Casey got to skate a bit more, plus we watched movies (all of the Narnia movies!) and made good food and did other cozy things that make us feel normal.

Like I wrote last time, the semester is coming to a close and things are getting pretty stressful, but I was talking to my friend Sydney the other day and it was a really simple, casual conversation, but we were talking about how little grades and academic success really matter in the long run and it made me feel a lot better. Obviously school is important to me, but that's always been because I enjoy learning, primarily, and even though my grades may matter if I try and do grad school, it's not worth panicking over. So basically, I'm doing my best but remembering to breathe. I've never failed a class before, but if I do, fuck it, I'm not here to get good grades in classes where I'm learning nothing, anyway.

I have been pretty studious this weekend, finished up a big unit planning project in my methodology class, for one, but have also been having a lot of fun. Friday I met up with Christina and we went and picked out a birthday present for Karim. He's into comics and graphic novels, so we thought about getting him a gift card since we had no idea what to get, but they didn't have any, so we made the shop keepers help us pick something out based on the few books that we recognized from his collection, and our personal preferences (some of their suggestions were kinda ugly.) We also made him a card, and then later made dinner and met up with some friends at Laurel's house. We didn't do much that night, but we eventually got pretty extremely drunk and mostly just goofed around at Christina's until she got sleepy. Then Syd, Michelle and I went to the Mirador San Nicolas until we froze a little, and they walked me home and tucked me into bed. Literally. How cute is that?

Saturday, Christina and I bused to Jun with a bunch of Karim's other friends and we had a barbeque at his dad's house. His dad was really sweet and had a bad ass cane. It was great seeing him and Danielle, who just got engaged in Dubai, and of course my big slobbery dog pal, Leto! We had grilled veggies and salad, humus and pita bread, and they made sausages and burgers, too. I was miraculously energetic despite only sleeping about four hours the night before, and that night met up with Hannah and this Spanish guy, Carlos, whose in my North American Lit class, to have a few beers on Pedro Antonio. On our way, we ran into one of his friends, who was on his way to meet up with more friends, so we went to a little bar called Pub Venom and had a pretty awesome, mellow night drinking beers and hanging out with some really chill Spaniards. It was fun 'cause a few of them are studying or at least practicing their English, so everyone benefited linguistically. They were a really cool group of kids and I felt we had a lot in common and we were able to have some pretty worthwhile conversations. We talked about American consumerism, car culture, vegetarianism, veganism, the value of life, abortion, overpopulation, social anxiety, language...

However, last night I also witnessed literally the worst thing I've ever seen when we walked by a homeless guy sitting in a corner with his pants down, pissing and shitting on the sidewalk. Yeah, I saw dick, balls, piss and shit all at the same time. So. There's that. I tried to write a more well rounded title for this but, I just couldn't. Too traumatized. I want everyone to suffer with me. PICTURE IT.

Anyway, despite the night's disgusting end, I had a lot of fun, and ended up sleeping for about a million years by the time I got home (around 5:30 or 6:00am). Today it is raining, which is kind of a bummer because I still have clothes on the line, but was also good because I stayed home and worked on my methodology project and on transcribing a conversation for my pragmatics project, which I'm honestly not sure when is due... Shit. I also got to Skype with Michael Baba, and we had an online tea party and I got to hear about the silly shenanigans I've been missing out on, and it was grand.

By the way, the lack of photos is mostly due to the fact that I dropped my iPhone in Gypsy's water bowl the other day, so it's sitting in a bag of rice in an attempt to not ruin it. Or what's left of it...it's kind of already a total cracked, scratched, fucked up disgrace.

Oh, and I don't think I've yet mentioned that my mom is coming in slightly less than three weeks and I'm SUPER FUCKING PUMPED. We are going to have all the fun. All of it.

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."

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...

Spainsgiving 2.0 and Subpar Saturday

It appears that lately I've spent my Sundays raving about how cool my life is, and let's face it, my life is awesome. Sometimes, though, it's not. I was thinking to myself that it was probably pretty unnecessary to write a post about how incredibly subpar yesterday was, but at the same time, it's all part of the experience, right?

Friday was Spainsgiving 2.0, our program had a "free" dinner for us. I say "free" because obviously we all paid like thousands of dollars to be a part of this program, so...free is not quite correct. Pre-paid, perhaps? For this reason I was determined to get my money's worth, especially of the open bar, so by the end of the night I was double-fisting wine glasses. There was just too  much classiness to be handled by one hand alone, okay?! Dinner was dope though, they even gave us veg kids an option, so even though our salad sucked ass and had fish in it, our main course was yummy roasted veggies with garlic, and desert was pretty yummy even though it was supposed to be pumpkin pie and it was really like...citrus-raisin pie. I guess they thought that after the wine we wouldn't notice. INCORRECT. It was tasty though. After dinner we powered up with a little more wine and went to Vogue, a club I'd never been to before. The first like three to five songs we're GREAT. Old school wonderfulness. Then the club got obnoxiously packed and the music got really bad really fast. Also, I spent a portion of the night fairly upset, thinking that someone had stolen the 20 euro bill I brought with me as emergency money, not remembering that I had stuffed it into my bra before entering the club to avoid that very danger. So I'm an idiot, but an idiot who plans ahead, at least. Or something.

So that night was actually pretty fun, especially because I went out with a group I haven't really hung out with as much, and they are all a lot of fun. But for some reason, I woke up Saturday morning feeling gloomy as fuck. Inexplicably gloomy; I was supposed to go sign the lease for my new place, which should be exciting, but I just felt like a big puddle of ick. It didn't help that some guy was supposed to come look at my current room and got super mixed up and never came. Actually, I'm fairly certain that he was looking for an apartment in Madrid and just got extremely fucking confused. So I spent a really obscene portion of my day sitting on my ass and waiting, and on occasion hiding Gypsy in Lucas' room and then realizing it was just his friend at the door, not the guy. For some reason, I just kept getting more and more anxious and uncomfortable and antsy and grumpy and sad. I don't know why, just sometimes bad feelings feed off each other and grow in your guts, and for whatever reason, I'm highly susceptible to weird anxiety.

I'm proud of myself, though, because I was able to recognize that cycle, so I laid face down on my bed for a bit and concentrated on breathing, and Gypsy came and laid on my head so I felt much better. I still had two hours before I had to be at the new house but I figured I should get up and moving or I'd fall asleep, so I went and got some cash and then stopped at a thrift store on my way and got a couple cheap sweaters, which was nice. I also heard these girls speaking English and discovered that they are also CA kids studying here. Funny enough, one of them was actually from Watsonville (which is right by Santa Cruz.) Unfortunately, as I was shopping, my new housemates texted me to cancel because they apparently need more info or something before writing the contract up. Frustration!

I was really sleepy all day and didn't really want to go out, but Leticia, this really awesome Spanish girl, invited me to go see a show with her, and I agreed because I've been wanting to hang out; she's female and Spanish and badass, which is pretty much the trifecta of characteristics that are exactly what I need in my life right now. However the details weren't really clear so she told me to keep my Facebook open and she'd keep me updated. At like ten something she told me her friends were coming to get her at like midnight or one, so I tried to take a nap, but Lucas had friends over and one of them for some reason was Skyping with his friend and the combination of our bad Internet connection, the TV being on, and noise four other dudes playing poker was causing him to literally SCREAM at these girls, so I gave up after forty-five minutes and decided to come hang out in the living room and make the boys pregame with me. These kids are not used to taking shots, let me just say. We drank the same amount (although they actually put this like blackberry flavoring crap in theirs) and they ended up having a pushup contest. Who does that? Leticia kept updating me on the show but things kept getting pushed back later and later so when she finally called me at 3:30am I was over it and decided to go to bed. Not her fault at all, but after being sleepy all day, 3:30am seemed like quite the late starting point for my night. So basically I spent my entire Saturday waiting for shit that never happened. COOL.

Anyway, I'm doing the whole "being a giant lazy blob" thing today, and Gypsy already knocked a glass off my desk and broke it, which did not start things off wonderfully, but I'm supposed to go out to a sushi dinner with Karim and some of his friends and Christina. I'm a little nervous about it monetarily speaking, especially since he told us he reserved a table and that there was a menu thing that would be 25 euros a person! That's like slightly over $33 dollars! But luckily Christina and I talked to him and told him we are way too poor for that to be an option, so I'm planning on not being that hungry and just getting something really minimal... It's also a beautiful day and I kinda wanna go be in the sun, but at the same time I should also get some homework done before our Portugal trip.

Oh, and I haven't gotten to speak to Casey so I'm not sure what his Friday gift thing was yet.

Helping Hands

Things are good. Friday was surprisingly sunny and beautiful and warm, so Laurel and I met up and took a walk up to the Alhambra and wandering around this beautiful secret garden type place. We got a pretty late start, though, so we caught a lovely sunset but it got dark pretty quickly. Leah had promised to make dinner do to the moneylessness thing, so Courtney and I went over to her place and we had an excellent feast of stir fry veggies with tofu, rice and bok choy. I got a migraine that night and went home to sleep, but Casey was online so we Skyped but with my lights turned off, since I was super light sensitive. The funny and tragic thing is that he was also really sick, like feverish and whatnot, so we were both just really unhappy and unwell, laying in bed and complaining to each other. Sometimes that's just what you need, I guess.

The snowy mountains look so beautiful at sunset!

So much yum!

Saturday I met up with Valentina to watch a movie, but it was beautiful day so we went on a walk instead and she went with me to the phone store to kind of decide what I'd want ahead of time and then we hung out at her place for a good while. I feel so lucky to have people that are so useful and kind in my life! That night I went to Camborio and Ben talked to his boss about getting me a free bottle of vodka since I was robbed there, and they actually made me drinks all night with it, so I just fed all my friends a bunch of vodka and ended up staying until the place closed. Needless to say, I was having a good time. Sunday I was that kinda goofy post-late night partying sort of sleepy and I went and hung out at Leah's and convinced her to go see a show at Vladimir Tzekov, which due to sleepiness we had a hard time understanding but it was really interesting, anyway. Next Sunday is an Alice in Wonderland show, so I'm really excited to check that out. Gotta get there early, though, this week it was PACKED.

This lady is all kinds of wonderful.

Despite the fact that Case and I were both basically incapacitated Friday night, he did open his weekly gift...

Pac Man candies! These reminded me of Casey because before I left, when we were working on a screen printing project with my mom and brother, he made a Pac Man T-Shirt.

In other news, I was finally able to buy groceries, thanks to my mom transferring money to Courtney's account, and Courtney getting money out for me! I was in pure edible bliss until I got home and realized that my kitchen is a shithole again. Thus far I have not had the will to deal with it, and so I am blogging instead of making my normal eggs and potatoes for breakfast.

Also, I want to say a huge thank you to my lovely aunt, Sis, who actually donated to the feed my travelin' belly fund, specifically to help me out with taking care of Gypsy. Thank you, Sis! Gypsy and I really appreciate it and it will really, really come in handy, especially since I'm hoping to take him home and I know that vet fees and stuff might be a little bit of a nightmare.

Do you see what I mean about being lucky? The Universe has surrounded me with amazing, generous people.

Theft and Theater

Well after all that build up of fantasticness, a little bummer was definitely in order and, of course, it came. I done got robbed. Saturday night I went to Camborio and when I left I noticed I didn't have my phone. I was bummed about it but thought maybe it'd turn up. However, on Sunday, Ben mentioned that several people had reported missing phones that night, and suddenly it hit me that I'd had my wallet in my purse on Saturday, too. And lo and behold, it was gone. Giant sigh. Apparently the thieving bastards attempted to withdraw like $200 from my account, but it didn't work, so basically they got the ten euro that was in my wallet and just made my life a little less fun for the month. In all honesty, the biggest pain from the theft was the phone, because even though it was literally the cheapest phone I could possibly have bought, I had just put twenty euros worth of minutes on it. Hopefully there's a way of transferring that money to a new phone or something but let's be real, chances are slim.

It's funny how unfazed I am about this whole thing, but I've lost my shit or been robbed a decent amount of times and it seems clear to me that getting worked up about it just isn't worth the time or effort. Plus I found five euros in my jacket pocket yesterday. Also, maybe being extra broke will be useful and make me sit down and finish knitting the hat I started instead of going out. Silver lining? Eh?

The rest of my weekend was actually quite nice, regardless. I had a fun time at Camborio and was really stoked to go out with Christina and Laurel since it feels like it's been decades. I also had this funny interaction with this German guy; I've literally seen this guy EVERYWHERE, at school in the library, in the cafeteria, halls, and then random places like by the resedencia, in the centro, in the Albaycín and last night at Camborio. I think he must stand out because everyone is super short here and he's really tall. Anyway, I decided the Universe wanted me to at least say hello to this person, so I did, and he was pretty nice but we didn't really talk much, but the really funny thing was that once we all left, and I had to walk home alone because no one lives on my end of town (except Leah, and she was in Barcelona), I went and got some felafel and as I was nomming the shit out of it, I heard someone say hello and I turned around and the same freaking guy was also walking home alone in the same direction. Turns out we leave in the some area, which could kind of explain me seeing him so much, but doesn't really explain me seeing him in random spots. My mom suggested that perhaps the Universe was intervening, and had I not run into him something horrible would have happened to me as I walked home alone, but I had already been robbed at this point so the worse that could have happened is someone taking my iPhone with it's horribly shattered screen and taking like two or three euros worth of change. And my Burts Bees chapstick.

Sunday, Michelle and I went to another theater performance at Vladimir Tzekov which was insane and interesting and sad and hilarious. I won't even try to describe it, but I will say it involved nudity and song-and-dance about menstrual cycles. I will also say that a drunk guy kept yelling at everyone to get naked and half the audience thought it was part of the experimental type of performance, since some of the scenes had a lot to do with distraction and multiple focuses and things like that. Afterwards, we went to Valentina's for tea and/or beer with Antonio and this girl Maria Jose, who was really sweet. I really love Valentina's, her place is yellow and cheerful and she always puts on this nice low light and plays us good music (yesterday it was Bon Iver.)

In other news, I almost died of being freezing fucking cold last night. It's not raining today but DAMN I'm an icicle person and we have no idea how to turn on the heat... I'm definitely pining for my mama's cozy fireplace and some of Karen's tasty vegetable soup right about now!

Weekend Wonders: Amor y Animales

What an amaaaazing weekend! First off, my housemate finally cleaned the kitchen! So happy. Friday I met up with Christina and we went book shopping. Didn't find much in the way of secondhand bookstores, but I got a book of Juan Ramón Jimenez poems and then we went over to Karim's and had lunch with him and Danielle, which was unexpected and delicious.

After lunch Christina had a coffee date, so she went on her way and Karim and I went and had coffee at Bohemia, which was nice. Such a cute shop, and I had a really yummy cappuccino with whipped cream. Mmm.

After coffee I ran some errands with him and then we got Leto and took him for a walk to a thrift store where I purchased the most awesome and ridiculous furry white jacket EVER. Polar bear on Halloween? Yes, indeed!

I hung out with Karim, Danielle and Leto at their place for a while, and then headed home when they started getting ready for dinner. On the way home, when I passed the "cat sanctuary" the most adorable black kitten came out and said howdy to me, so I stopped to see if I could pet it and I ended up sitting there with a kitten purring in my lap for a good ten minutes. She was SUCH a sweetheart. I wanted to take her home, but I didn't know how my housemates would feel about it...

Anyway, Friday night Karim told us there was a goth DJ thing goin on for free at the Who Rock Bar, which is actually pretty close to my apartment, so Michelle and I went to check it out. It was pretty mellow, not a ton of people, and Karim, Danielle and his friend Javi had to leave after not too long, but Michelle and I had an awesome time watching goth kids dance with their super serious faces and whatnot.

Saturday was actually rainy and chilly, which was actually kind of nice. I stayed in bed late and wrote and was cozy, but I also kept thinking about the lil kitten in the rain, so I talked to Lucas and he said I could bring her home if I took care of her! I went and got some kitty supplies and made a ghetto litter box until I can make it to the pet store, and then went to the cat sanctuary but she wasn't there! So much sad. So, I went to a thrift store and realized there was an everything for 5 euros deal (stoked!) so a bought an awesome black dress, a stripey sweater and then a white lacy top and a white skirt for my polar bearness! I don't usually shop alone but there was something really nice and calm about poking around the thrift shop alone on a chilly autumn evening.

I also bought some veggies on the way home, so I had a yummy yum dinner of pasta with zucchini, onion and garlic marinara sauce. I made way too much, as usual, but luckily Michelle and Sydney came over at the perfect moment, so I fed their faces a bit and then we had drinks and went to see a Muse tribute band at the Who Rock Bar. It. Was. Awesome. Definitely a billion times more fun than I expected; we even ended up in a mini-mosh pit with this group of super enthused guys from Madrid. I danced/jumped/moshed/headbanged my ass off, and it felt AMAZING. I'm so stoked that those girls are as awesome as they are and down with going to shows and whatnot. Afterwards we decided to go check out some of the gay bars, since Michelle hadn't been yet. We ended up in La Sal, the lesbian bar, for quite some time and had a ton of fun dancing there. Afterwards we went to Kebab King and got delicious felafel. What a freaking awesome night!

Today, Felipe came over to put his copy of Photoshop on my computer, but I noticed that the sweet black kitty was back in the cat sanctuary, so we went and snagged some of Lucas' sausages and tried to lure her out. She is literally the sleepiest cat ever. She did not give a fuck about the meat at ALL. We sat there for like AGES trying to get her interested in the meat, and I even got smacked by another cat who was trying to get in on the food action. Finally I stuck my hand under the fence and kinda lifted her butt up, so she reluctantly got up and crawled under the fence and I nabbed her! I was ridiculously excited. She was a little uncertain about the coming home, but didn't complain or anything. I noticed she had some fleas on her face, so Felipe helped me bathe her in the bathroom sink and she wasn't happy about it, but relatively speaking was actually pretty mellow about the ordeal. We scrubbed her down with shampoo and picked off and killed her icky fleas and then dried her off in a fluffy towel and brought her to the window to dry in the sun. She is literally the sweetest most mellow kitty ever. She didn't even hold a grudge about the bathing, and has just been all kinds of sweet and cuddly, sitting in my lap and purring like a motorboat.

I'M IN LOVE.

Speaking of love, I realized I forgot to write about Casey's last two Friday gifts which were...

Lychee gummy candy and chipotle chilli chocolate! I wish I brought lychee candy with me, that shit is DOPE. I miss World Market.