February Nonsense

Here's some more stories about the ridiculousness of my year, in December-February my living situation became..something else, to say the least.

So, basically, in December I moved in with Taco, the Ecuadorian girl from Toronto, and this spanish woman named Cote, she was probably in her..early 30's? And she was working full time at a restaurant not too far from our place so her schedule was pretty different from ours. She also had this really needy, noisy dog, it was the size of a border collie but was also mixed with some other kind of dog(s), it was cute but annoying at the best of times, not to mention hard on my allergies since the house was rarely ever properly cleaned.

Where to start with this one, well December started okay, the kitchen was quite small but a lot of the time we weren't there at the same time because of schedules, or sometimes me and Taco just made meals together since it was more convenient, definitely one useful thing about living with a friend, sharing groceries/cooking together/etc. Cote was only home half the time because of her job but that meant while she was gone her dog was around and she normally just let it roam around the place, which isn't terrible since the poor thing does need to have some space to roam around besides a bedroom but it's a really needy dog, which meant that whenever we were in the house outside of our rooms it was following us around and a lot of the time, since we usually were in our rooms, it would start whining and barking for attention. This was a pretty regular habit since Cote was gone most days for a fairly long period of time. Don't get me wrong, I like dogs, but whiny, need dogs (and people) drive me nuts. I would sit and pet it for a few mins when I came in the house and then go to my room and minutes later it would be wandering the halls whining for more attention. It also barked every time someone came in the door (especially new people) or a group of people walked by on the street or there were other dogs/squirrels in the area. So much barking. There were many saturday and sunday mornings where I was awoken by loud, continuous barking because Cote would be gone and the dog would be barking at whatever until one of us shushed it. One morning the dog was barking for almost an hour straight, I'm not even kidding. Not to mention it shed Everywhere, it came into my room every once in awhile, usually when it was super excited, running full tilt through the apartment and would slam into my door, ending up on my large floor rug (the latch on my door obviously wasn't too sturdy), so there was constantly white and black dog hair everywhere, on everything. Plus it created a lot more dirt and dust within the apartment which was already kinda dusty and all tile floors, not too great for my allergies, especially when it was really cold and we couldn't open up the windows.

So the dog was just one, of many, problems with this new apartment. Of course there was a lot of pluses too but looking back I'm not too sure they out weighed the faults. First problem, as I've probably already mentioned in another blog, Spanish architecture sucks, I don't know who designs this shit but it's terrible. The kitchen was a Small rectangular room, really only big enough for 1 or 2 people to be in at a time, the worst part of it was the sink tho, it was 1 bin sink instead of a 2 part one, so it wasn't very big for 3 peoples dishes, the worst part of it though was the location, it was in the back corner, who puts a sink in the corner ?! That made it an awkward place to wash the dishes because you're stuck leaning over a corner in between the counters and the stove, which hurt your back and was just awkward to even reach. And usually the sink was piled high with dishes since my spanish roommate felt like washing her dishes only once or twice a week was a perfectly acceptable way to live. Secondly, there was the stove, it was one of those sketchy gas top stoves that you have to light yourself by turning on the gas and then sticking your hand close to the burner with a lighter or match and hoping you don't blow up the kitchen. Fun times.. we also didn't have an oven of any sort which kind of sucked since that meant I had to use the likely-to-blow-me-up stove or the microwave when making food, so I began making a lot more salads which didn't require much kitchen appliances aha.

It was also just a slightly grungy kitchen, and well, apartment. There was no real grime or mold or anything but it was always on the dusty/dirty side, and it was an older apartment structure in general, the windows were kinda old and creaky, and the paint was peeling in a lot of places, that kind of thing. I wish the had vacuums in Spain, it would have made cleaning that apartment a lot easier, sweeping only does so much. And I'm pretty sure I was the only one who ever mopped the place because quite often there would be a spill of something on the kitchen floor which would remain there until I mopped, although eventually I became as bad as the other two and just started ignoring messes, especially ones that I didn't make. The bathroom was pretty ghetto too, to flush the toilet you had to pull on a metal chain attached to the water tank on the wall above the toilet, the time laundry machine was in there right beside the toilet and beside that was the tiny shower which was slightly larger than a standing shower up not quite a bath tub or anything. The other problem was the water heater, that thing sucked up so much energy which is why our utilities were usually kind of expensive and at best you usually only got about 15 minutes of hot water while showering, assuming other people hadn't been using it for washing the dishes or the laundry machine. The shower was mainly a hand-held one too because the shower head holder wasn't very effective either, I know that's not the worst thing in the world, but eventually it got rather annoying.

Another with Spanish buildings, there is NO insulating, which I suppose is good when it's really hot in the summer time because then it stays fairly cool inside but in the winter it is Freezing, especially in Granada since we were in a mountainous-deserty climate, in the winter (december till march really) at night time it got damn cold. Which also made it really hard to dry clothes because they don't have clothes dryers in Granada (maybe not even Spain) so you have to dry your clothes outside which is rather hard to do when it rains so much (because it did rain quite a lot this year, more than usual according to the Spaniards but I'm not too sure I actually believe them) or dry them in freezing cold air, gotta love cold, crunchy socks right? You can also hang them around your room to dry but that's a lot of damp clothes sitting in an enclosed space, yay mustiness.. The other problem with having no insulation is that means there is also no sound barriers, it really makes no difference whether you're in the room next door or the same room, the sound level is pretty much the same. So whenever Cote was blasting music (sometimes with her door also open at the early hours of the morning) or watching movies or talking with her friends or her "amigo" especially late at night, you could pretty much hear everything without wanting or trying to.

The other major problem with this apartment was that who ever designed it decided that the house only needed two circuits for the entire apartment so we blew the fuse, a lot, especially in the winter time when we would put on our heaters, the kicker was though, the fuse box wasn't even in our apartment, oh no, it was in the apartment at the end of the block, which means we had now way to reset it besides relying on the people who did have control of the fuse box to do so, although we discovered a couple weeks later Cote did have a key to get into that building, thanks for telling us.. anyways, but late at night if we blew the fuse past like 2am and Cote and the neighbours were asleep we wouldn't have any power till like 9 or 10am the next morning when someone would reset it for us. It was pretty ridiculous, not to mention the sketchy wifi connection, but that's only because we were stealing the wifi from the apartment below us aha.

Okay, enough ranting about the bad parts, on the upside, it was a pretty big apartment, we lived on the entire first floor of the building, it was long and skinny rectangular shape so in our actual building it was only our apartment and the apartment below us, it was on a hill so technically we were the first floor but about half the basement floor was also above ground so the people who lived there had a different entrance. Another thing, my room was Massive, my room in the first apartment was nice and decently sized but this one was ginormous (is that how you spell that?), anyways this one had a double bed in it and still looked huge, there was a large wooden desk, probably 7ft or 8ft long, and 2 armoires, although I lived partially out of my suitcases for most of December. Another awesome thing about the apartment was the roof top terrace, we shared it with our neighbours downstairs but I never actually saw them up there, the view was pretty great, not as good as the last apartment but can't complain. There was also a hammock up there which was amazing, I've decided that I need to have more hammocks in my life aka should have one in every place I live in from now on. I'm also pretty sure there was a small weed plant up there too aha. So the terrace was a great place for private tanning and having house parties when it was warm enough. The house itself was also a good size for parties, so we had quite a few, the living room was a good size and my room was right off of it which was also a good space for chilling.

The other upside for me was that it was 3 or 4 minutes closer to campus and was also on the street level which was kind of a relief for me and everyone since my old apartment was about 3.5 flights of very tiring stairs above the actual street. Anyways, so minus the few annoyances and a couple of ridiculous events, usually pertaining to noise disturbance, in December the apartment was a decent place to live, especially since I wasn't actually spending that much time there (like always) since I'm always out and about. January was fine since Cote was the only one who was really home, I was gone from December 28th-January 2nd to Glasgow, Scotland to spend new years with some fam and Taco had gone back to Toronto after exams ended on Dec. 22rd until the beginning of Feb. and I left again on Jan. 7th to start my 3.5 week travels. So the 3 of us weren't actually living together again until the beginning of Feb.

I was the first one back on Jan 31st, no idea where Cote was, but her and Taco both showed up the first week of Feb. But when Cote showed up she also had her mother with her. It looks like they had been in some kind of accident together (maybe a car crash) because they were both a little bandaged and bruised but seemingly fine beyond that except for Cote's wrist which was in a sling. Her mom was really nice although she spoke really quick, quiet Spanish so having a conversation with her wasn't always too easy. At first we just assumed that her mom was visiting for a few days or a week or whatever to help out Cote since she had hurt her wrist, she was from a city not too far away from Granada and whatnot. But long story short, she ended up living with us for the entirety of February, I actually moved out into a new apartment before she left.

Cote's mom living with us brought a whole new dynamic to the apartment. There was definitely some pluses to it, she was 100 times cleaner than her daughter and constantly cleaned up the kitchen instead of leaving pans and dishes sitting around for days, she even cleaned our dishes sometimes if we didn't get around to them right away, she also cleaned our fridge which must have been a disgusting task, the bottom of that thing was scary. And also since she was there, Cote's "amigo" who was a bit of an asshole came around a lot less. But there was also a lot of..issues too. Firstly just from a pure expense perspective, there was now 4 of us using all the utilities which made our bill for Feb. expensivee, not too mention our land lady had made us pay our portion of the January utilities even though neither me nor Taco were actually there. Cote somehow managed to use up 48 euros of electricity utilities all by herself and we had to pay for it...but anyways. Beyond just the logistical problems, Cote and her mom were constantly in the kitchen/living room, and as I mentioned before, the kitchen wasn't really big enough for 2 or more people so we started using the kitchen a lot less and began going out to eat a lot more because trying to share with them was just inconvenient and awkward. We didn't have much contact with Cote as it was and so trying to use the kitchen while her and her mom were in there cooking (which seemed like 5+ hours every day) became too much of an annoyance. Also having another person in the house made the dog even crazier. Also, if you are not aware, Spaniards are really loud, so when Cote and her mom would talk quite loudly (especially when arguing), over top of each other, at around 9am or 10am on weekends, they might as well have been talking inside my bedroom for all the difference our great house insulation made.

So, to say the least I started spending even less time at the apartment, unfortunately I still needed to be there to sleep and whatnot, so I couldn't totally avoid them, the worst was definitely the amount of times I was awoken or disturbed at some random hour of the morning while trying to sleep from one thing or another, the worst was when I had to be up for important school shit, and of course, those were the nights she would have friends over or her and her mom would stay up till like 5am talking or doing whatever. There was one night back in December where she was making noise till 5am and I had a final the next day, so after banging once on the wall, to no avail, I had to get up and actually ask her to keep it down because I had an exam at 10am, that night her "amigo" was over and was being a complete asshole which started my major dislike of him. We got our own revenge in some small ways though, having parties sometimes till pretty late in the night, sometimes when she had work in the morning or coming home drunk late at night and making some racket, if they get to wake me up during the week and weekends at the early hours of the morning then they can't really complain when I make noise late at night.

One of the funniest nights though, which I do kinda feel bad about, was a random night in feb, a friend was sleeping over and my poor bed had been becoming less stable since December because one night me and 3 friends had been watching a movie on the bed and it had collapsed under the weight because all of us were sitting on one side, it was never really the same after that ahaha. Also another example of bad Spanish design, the bed frames are designed so stupidly, hence the frame failure, anyways. So by Feb the bed frame had become pretty wonky and unstable so while we were on it,  it collapsed twice (only on the left side though), and you can imagine how loud metal is when it crashes onto tile floor, so needless to say we definitely woke up Cote and her mom and that was probably around 4:30am or so but ohwell, shit happens ahaa. It was pretty broken after that, even just lying on

So, by the end of the month, living in a house with a crazy dog, a clingy Torontonian (omg she was so clingy) and a loud Spanish woman and her mom, I decided I had about enough and luckily at that time 3 of my American friends, who had also been in Granada first semester with me, had an empty room because their 4th roommate decided they wanted to live with a house family, so needless to say I moved in with them. So yea, that was definitely an interesting living experience.  

Definitely had some good times there though, and all experiences, good or bad, are worth something right. I think next year I'll find myself a 1 (2 at most) person apartment aha.

Another kinda funny thing about that apartment was the landlords, the wife Carmen is the one who actually ran all the land ownership business, they lived in a building just down the street from ours and there place was NICE. Clearly they were pretty loaded, which I suppose you kind of have to be to be able to own apartment complexes and things. Anyways, they were a sweet old couple, probably in their 60's or so, Carmen was definitely a lot sharper than her husband though, she was quite a chatterbox, it was actually pretty hard escaping the house once you entered unless you had some good excuse like having class or something that you really needed to leave for. Her husband was a really sweet old guy but his hearing wasn't the best and he was always confused about things so her and him would little arguments ever couple minutes at the details of whatever aha it was cute and comical at the same time. He also had one of the strongest Granada accents I encountered so understanding him was kind of difficult sometimes.

So yeah, there's another crazy anecdote about my year.