An Eventful Week Indeed

Another long week full of interesting experiences. My memory is getting so bad I swear, it's hard to remember what I did on which days, they all seem to blur together in my memory ohman. Where to begin...

Hmm, well Tuesday after my Italian class I headed over to Tonio's house to work on a presentation for our Flamenco History class, it was a presentation about the traditional music and dance in the region of Murcia, Spain. It was definitely an interesting presentation to say the least... It was Tonio, Bernardo, and I in the group and those two guys are a couple of gooners -there really is no other word to describe them.- Most of the other groups had the generic presentations with slides with all the info on them along with some pictures and then a video of the dance or music. Snore. We decided to make ours more entertaining by just putting hilarious images and jokes on our slides and then having all of our info written down in our own notes to read out to the class, originally we wanted to do an example of the dances ourselves until we discovered how complex the dances were and that we needed castanets for them, so we put videos into our presentation instead. Needless to say the presentation was hilarious, but we had a lot of good information too along with the ridiculous presentation slides, so it was a good mix of both. Our prof loved it but half our class seriously needs to get a sense of humor. Ridiculous people.

Randomly while doing research for our project we stumbled upon a festival in Northern Spain (it showed up because it takes place at the Castle of Murcia somewhere in a city in North Spain) that is called El Colacho aka The Baby-Jumping Festival ahaha I'm not even kidding you, it's a festival where a guy dresses up as a devil and then jumps over a bunch of babies that are lying on mattresses in the middle of the street and this is apparently to protect the children from evil spirits because when the devil jumps over the babies all the evil spirits or whatever latch on to the devil or something.. I don't know, I really wish it had been a tradition in our region because it's definitely one of the weirdest festivals I've ever heard of ahaha crazy spaniards.

 After we finished the presentation I headed down to CL for dinner with a couple friends because we were all feeling lazy and didn't want to cook. It was a really cold day and even being inside our apartments was cold. Cold weather had finally arrived in Granada and it's been pretty cold ever since. During the days it's still been okay, usually about 12-13 degrees and sunny but as soon as the sun goes down it's Freezing! I mean it's still usually between 2-5 degrees so it's not 'That cold' but the problem here is that there is no central heating, the insulation in the apartments is Terrible and the heaters here are all pretty mediocre so it's only like 5-10 degrees INSIDE your apartment. So. Cold.

Anyways, later that night after dinner I went with Taco to go check out an apartment, she had been looking at apartments for the past couple of weeks because she didn't like the location of her apartment and she was having some major issues with her current roommate. The apartment we went to check out was right near my place, like literally two minutes down the road, which was kind of kool, although to be honest Taco had been getting on my nerves pretty bad the week or two before but whatever. We go to check out the apartment and we discover a few interesting things, first of all that there's a dog there, it's a cute black and white dog that looks like it's a collie and something else. Then we meet the two roommates, one is a kool spanish chica named Kote (ko-tey) and then we meet the other roommate Micha, which was hilarious because I already knew Micha, she's really good friends with my roommate Patri. Small world eh. We go to check out Taco's potential room and to be honest it looks like a prison cell, it's tiny, 4 white walls, a desk and bed with white sheets and a blanket. Not what I would prefer but the room was cheap (150 euros a month) and Taco liked the roommates, plus the living room was a good size and there was a roof top terrace and the location was good. So, she was definitely considering it as a serious option.

Wednesday after my two morning classes I have an hour and a half break, Hiccup's friends who are studying in France were here visiting her for the week so we all went out for tapas together which was fun. We ended up at a little restaurant by the Cathedral which had some good food and also ordered a pitcher of sangria, which was delicious but also gave me a Bit of a wine buzz since I hadn't had anything to eat early in the day. oops aha. So I went to POE -conversational spanish class- kinda buzzed and that was interesting ahaha, plus I think it helped me speak better spanish :P.

Later that night there was a free concert at my campus, it was 'musica antigua' which is basically spanish medieval music, it was really interesting, me and a couple friends went to check it out for a bit but had to leave around 9 to go to an intercambio -language exchange- at a bar down by the river called Totes y Amigos. It's a nice little place that's run by a british woman, very sweet old lady, and tuesday-friday she hosts intercambios, mostly for english-spanish. When we got there it wasn't too busy, it's a pretty casual type of intercambio, the woman asked what language we spoke/wanted to practice and then directed us to tables with spanish speakers. I ended up talking with two guys, they were really nice, both from spain, working in the area, late twenties/early thirties, their english wasn't great but I got to practice lots of spanish which was great. At one point though I had to try and explain the differences between 'break-up' 'break down' break out' and 'to break'..that was pretty interesting and complex to explain to non-native english speakers. I went to the intercambio with Mads and she got to talk to this really good looking guy named Alberto because he wanted to have a french-spanish intercambio and Mads speaks pretty fluent french..dammit. Anyways, over all it was definitely a good intercambio experience.

Thursday I had Italian as always, the class seemed to drag on forever that day, not really sure why. The only thing that kind of saved me was that at the end of class we watched a movie called Happy Family..vey strange movie about a complex Italian family, we only watched like the first 20 minutes of it but it seemed pretty interesting and just..odd. I suggest watching it with subtitles if you can find it and have the time. Italian movies are generally great. Watched a lot of them in my Italian Cinema class last year at UBC. After class I met up with Ash, we went for a walk around the area but eventually just ended up at a café near school and hung out there for awhile. Around 5pm once things had started opening up again we separated ways because I had to go get photos done and get my passport and whatnot photocopied for my stupid residency card application (still haven't gotten that btw, freaking pain in my ass.)

That night there was another intercambio at Dakota, the amazing burger bar near my school, so Mads, Taco, and I went over a bit early to get burgers before the chaos of the intercambio and whatnot started happening. As always the burgers were amazing, and then around 9:30/10 a bunch of people started showing up including our friend from Finland. It was definitely the best intercambio I've been to so far. We started out talking to a group of girls, 2 from Spain, 1 from France and then a couple of polish/american girls joined us and then a polish guy and a spanish guy joined us, our table was getting pretty crowded so I decided to go to the bar and get a couple more drinks, at the bar I started talking to another guy who was from Florence which was awesome because I got to practice my italian and spanish with him and when worse came to worse we defaulted to english because he spoke that too which was pretty kool. Later we ended up talking to another group of guys, a couple from Spain and one from France, so we definitely got a good mix of people that night to talk to and most of them were around 20-26 in age which was nice.

After the intercambio started to wind down a group of us went over to CL to get some late night cheesecake, delicious as always. And while we were hanging out there, our Finnish friend Saara mentioned that it's Finland's independence day the following Thursday so Blondie decided that they would have a Finnish themed dinner on that Thursday because Thursday's were always country themed dinner nights anyways. Then ensued the hilarious conversation about what people eat in Finland, Saara's favourite dish being Smoked Reindeer, which is apparently served with special Reindeer sauce...apparently some people also eat Beaver... yeah. But besides that they also eat a lot of fish and potatoes which is a little more 'normal' and easy to make aha. We were killing ourselves laughing though while we were discussing how this dinner would turn out. Blondie said he'd try and get some venison and whatnot for the dinner, guess we'll see how it goes.

And now the fun begins, Friday morning I finally went to the extranjero officina to apply for my residency card -about time eh- it's pretty much on the other side of Granada aka on the other side of the world. Needless to say I got lost trying to find my way there and ended up calling 2 friends who had both been there before to get directions. After like an hour or something I finally found my way there, thank god. Although I was kind of freaked out because I had no idea what I was doing and Kiki, who I had called for directions, had been freaking out because she had gone earlier in the morning and the woman she had was a major bitch and told her she wouldn't be able to get her residency card because she was missing some docs. and that she would be stuck in Spain for christmas. Ohman, what a mess. So I was kinda nervous going into the office to say the least. And like in all offices, I had to take a number and sit in a room with a bunch of people and wait for what seemed like forever. When the woman at the desk gave me my number it said Z 32, so then I go into the waiting room and see that the board had all A's and E's. OhDearGod. I thought I was going to be there all freaking day. Luckily though, the letters represented different areas of the office so the first Z # that popped up was Z 26 so my wait wasn't actually that long.

Eventually my number came up and I ended up at a desk with this older guy, he seemed fairly nice. He went through all my documents and then eventually said I needed photocopies of a few things..uh-oh. He handed me the documents and told me go make a photocopy and then come back...rightttt. At first I was like shit, does he mean come back another day?? The officina was only open for like another hour and a half and I had no idea where the closest photocopying place was. Luckily the guy saw the mildly panicked look on my face and told me there was a photocopying place like 2 blocks away, phewww. So I went out and found the place, got everything photocopied, which was super cheap, huzzah, and then headed back to the extranjero officina. Luckily they let me go back in to see the same guy as soon as I got there and got everything done, yay! He just said I needed to pay a 15euro residency tax at any bank and gave me a slip of paper that said to come back at 11:45am the following Friday to pick up my residency card! YAY! Finally! Mads also had to do some stuff at the extranjero officina that day so I waited for her to get all her stuff done and then we went to go find some lunch.

We found this really nice little italian place called Pinocchio's. It looked sketchy at first because it was down a little side street but they had signs pointing to it from the main street so we figured we'd go check it out, it turned out to be a cute little restaurant and had Pinocchio themed décor all over. We both ended up getting delicious pizzas but definitely want to try the pasta next time I go back. After that we came back to our side of the world and went to CL, as usual, to meet up with Kiki for coffee. Poor girl was a bit of a mess, not that I blame her, the woman at the officina sounded like a major bitch, just saying. She's going back on Monday though to hopefully get it all dealt with. We somehow ended up all having cosmos at the suggestion of Oscar, and let me tell you, Oscar knows how to make Strong drinks, I left that place way more tipsy than I had planned. Ohman, went to super sol, the super cheap grocery store, afterwards to pick up some stuff and then went home and showered, which definitely didn't help the tipsiness.

Later that night a bunch of us all met up and went to check out the Granada Wine Festival that was in town for the weekend, all the wines were local Granada-made wines which was pretty kool and it wasn't too expensive either, 6 euros for 4 glass or 9 euros for 6 glasses. It was a massive big white tent with booths set up around 4 sides, the room was extremely packed by the time we got there so we ended up standing and drinking for the first half of our wine adventure. We tried a bunch of different wines, mostly at random, starting with 2 reds and then 2 whites..not too sure why we did it that way. Some of them were really good. We all seemed pretty okay while we were there but once we all started heading home that wine hit us so hard. I have no idea why, all of a sudden I was just drunk. Mads and I were walking/running back to her place because it was freezing out and we hadn't used to gross public washrooms at the wine fest.

We got back to Mads and a bunch of her roomies were hanging around in the kitchen/living room area. A couple of guys were playing beer pong on the kitchen table and of course I wanted to play as soon as I saw that. I was playing against TinTin and he beat me 2/3 games we played but I only lost the 2 games by 1 or 2 cups so it wasn't too bad I guess... Our group had all agreed to meet up at CL after the wine fest since we had all gone separate ways when we left the fest but a bunch of Mads roomies wanted to go to Camborio, I wasn't really feeling it so Mads and I decided we'd still go to CL and then TinTin ended up coming with us because he couldn't make up his mind and so the other guys left without him. On our way to CL we ran into my scottish cousin Kat, she was with 2 male co-workers, apparenly they were bar hopping and invited us to go with them so we were like 'sure why not' and ended up going with them instead of going to CL.

We ended up at some random bar, the entrance was pretty sketchy but the bar itself was kinda kool, very red on the inside, kinda skinny hallway bar area where we were but it was cozy and warm so I wasn't really complaining. TinTin and Mads weren't really digging the bar and the weirdness of the situation so they took off and went to Camborio but I stayed with Kat and her friends. At the bar one of the two guys just disappeared, he went into the back of the bar for awhile where there was sitting area or something and then just left sometime after that. So then it was just Kat, E, and I. To be honest, I don't exactly remember what E's full name is, but he seemed like an interesting guy; he was Brazilian ethnically but grew up in Toronto/North York until his family moved to Spain when he was a teenager. He seemed like a pretty chill guy, making lots of jokes and whatnot. As it turned out, it was also his birthday.

Kat seemed kind of upset and angry which made me curious, although I didn't have to wait too long to find out why, once we were in the red bar she started ranting to me.. apparently there was some drama at Paddy's bar between her and an ex-bf and her 2 guy friends had stood up for her and that somehow in turn got them all kicked out of the bar. She was very drunk and angry while telling me the story so I got the just of it but not too sure on the details, anyways, that's why they had left Paddy's and ended up running into me on the street. Sounds like quite a mess, right. Well, to make things even more..odd.. E was drunk and Kat was drunk, and I was still kinda drunk, and E was flirting pretty hard with Kat which was a bit odd because they're co-workers and Kat just figured he was joking. A couple beers later, the flirting became more serious and some drunken kissing ensued, and I got to witness it all, oh lucky me. It was fine though, I was mostly just looking out for Kat and enjoying the bar scene, Kat was Quite drunk by this point in the night.

Eventually we left the red bar (I seriously have no idea what the name of it was) and then wandered our way up to another bar called El Son, it was a pretty kool bar, the music was a random mix of mostly 80's/90's with some spanish music thrown in, the crowd was mostly mid-late twenties just like the red bar, which makes sense since Kat and E are both around late twenties or so. We stayed and drank there for awhile, more flirting and whatnot ensued, by then I was starting to sober up even though we were still drinking beer and whatnot. Around 3am we all decided it was about time to go home, Kat and E walked me about half way home, Kat wanted to walk me all the way home but she was still pretty drunk and I was pretty sober by then, plus my house is far as heck, so I told her to just go home and that I'd be fine one my own, she reluctantly agreed and E said he'd make sure she got home alright, and that was that. What an odd night. Kat was hungover for like 2 days after that, aha poor chica.

Saturday morning we all came to CL for hangover breakfast, on the first saturday of every month CL has a English Breakfast special and it just happened to be the first saturday of december which was perfect. We all got an english breakfast which consisted of eggs, bacon, sausages, beans, toast, hash-browns  and mushrooms, plus black pudding but well ordered ours without that. So much food but it was the perfect hangover breakfast ever. After that we ran some errands and then I told Taco I'd help her pack up and move into her new apartment, she ened up choosing that apartment near my place that we checked out a couple days before. On the way there we walked through a few of the kool shopping areas, her apartment was pretty central in the centre of town, good and bad I guess eh. And of course, couldn't resist but do some shopping, it happens :P had to buy some warmer stuff for the winter you know?...Anyways, eventually we got her place and got all her stuff together and ended up getting a taxi to transfer all her stuff to the new place.. originally we were just gunna walk it all over but that would have been SO much work. Eventually we get all her stuff into the apartment and talk with her roomies a bit, then we headed out to go shopping with Kiki, yea yea, more shopping, I know. They were shopping for boots and winter coats and things. After spending more money we all headed back to Kiki's and had some Turkey soup which was left over from Thanksgiving, Delicious. Then we decided to just have a girls night and curled up in her room with tea and watched The Holiday ehe. So great.

Sunday I spent most of the day being lazy in bed, Patri texted me saying she needed to talk to me about something to with the apartment when she got home from work which kinda freaked me out, so I just chilled around at home most of the day wondering what the heck it could be. So, here's where things get kind of odd, her friend Micha who was now roommates with Taco and been texting Patri and wondered if I wanted to switch rooms with her... at first I was kind of like what? But I mean, it does kind of make sense, Micha and Patri are friends and Taco and I are friends so that way we'd all be living with our friends. I said I'd think about and Patri said Micha was coming over later so we could talk about it if I wanted to. So we talked about and decided it was a good idea, to be honest I think I'm getting a better end of the deal for the most part. Micha's room is bigger than mine, it's cheaper than mine, it has a radiator in it which is Amazing, there's a dog at the house which I'm not sure if I'm happy about yet or not, and it has a decent sized living room. Only minor downsides, the bathroom isn't that great, the kitchen is kinda small, there is a roof top terrace which is pretty nice but not quite as good as mine, and there's now 3 roommates instead of just 2 of us, plus a couple others in the basement but they have a separate entrance. Ahwell, the deal was done, we agreed we'd move on the following Thursday and that was that.

After that I had dinner plans with a bunch of the girls to go try out the new Mexican restaurant that had just re-opened really close to our school, it had been under construction since we had arrived but it had apparently been quite good before it had closed down for renovations so we decided to try it out. The food was quite good, not that spicy though, plus they had placemats that you could colour! Ahaha gotta love crayons, we were such children, it was great. After that we of course went to CL to get some dessert, as always. Perfect way to end the week I'd say.

Definitely a week of strange events, the following week has more strangeness to come. C'est la vie!

Nov. 26-Dec. 2