Elections, Espressos, and Italians (Italy Part 1)

Hello all, it's been one hell of a long week to say the least but a great week all the same. It was definitely an exciting week for everyone in North American and a bunch of us here since Tuesday was the USA presidential election. Because of the time difference it was a pretty late night for those of us out here in Spain who stayed up to watch the election coverage, the results were announced around 5:30am our time, needless to say I was not awake to see the final results be announced.

Pre-election coverage, my friends and I were all studying for midterms at one of our fav restaurants, it was fish & chips night there which was delicious, haven't had real fish & chips in so long. After the excellent dinner and some tasty strawberry trifle, blondie set us up in the back room which was really kool of him. We had a bunch of tables all put together with a couple laptops streaming the election coverage and a dozen bag of chips along with lots of school work all over the them. I left around 2am though, needed to sleep more than I wanted to study/watch election coverage.

Wednesday morning my newsfeed was of course covered in Obama statuses and I was definitely filled with relief and happiness! Obamallamarama! Went to my morning classes but ended up leaving half way through my grammar class, it was painfully slow that day and had lots to do before our trip to Milan. Did a bunch of running around and packing and then met up with the gang at 5pm to head for ze bus station to start our journey to Milan for Tonio's bday!

We caught the 6pm bus from Granada to Malaga and then from Malaga we caught a 10pm flight to Barcelona. In the Malaga airport we were heading through security and Tonio realized that he had left his swiss army knife in his bag, we didn't check any luggage so the woman said he either had to throw it out or check it or mail it back to Granada, Tonio decided to hide it in the airport in a plant instead ahaha. Problem solved.

Our flight from Barcelona to Milan wasn't until 6:30am so we had lots of time to chill in the Barcelona airport that night. Both flights were Ryanair, awful disorganized airline I have to say, the landing on the first flight was rough too, almost thought we had crashed or something it was such a jolt. We tried sleeping near our gate area for awhile but it was honestly so cold I had to get up and walk around and do jumping jacks just to stay warm, I wandered over to the area where all the cafés and restaurants are, they were all closed but it was a lot warmer over there for some reason, eventually I found a couch type thing over there and crashed there for awhile. At 6am we started getting ready to board, when we got to the front of the line they told us that we needed our tickets to be stamped by Ryanair before we could get on the plane..are you serious? I guess it was kind of our fault because on our first Ryanair flight we had to get our tickets stamped too but since this was our connecting flight we never even thought about it because we never left the gate area once we had arrived in Barcelona airport. So we literally had to run out of the gate area into the main terminal, find the bloody Ryanair desk, get them to stamp our tickets and then run back through security and to our gate, luckily we had talked to the Ryanair people so they waited for us to show up but it was really tight, by some miracle we actually made it onto that flight and it still left more or less on time. I just about had a heart/asthma attack by the time I made it there though, we pretty much ran the entire length of the airport. Stupid Ryanair.

Thursday Morning we Finally got into Milan, of course the first thing we did was go find a caffé. We came across some fancy looking art caffé and went inside, turns out it was more a restaurant that was just opening, it was only like 10am after all, the owners didn't exactly thrilled when we walked in but whatever. The owners and all the workers were asian which was a little weird, I'm still not quite used to spanish and italian-speaking asians, asians really do run things everywhere in world. We all got our first espresso shots of the trip -there was many more to come- and then went out in search of some breaky. We found this amazing little bread shop and bought some focaccia bread, this spinach bread, an apple strudel and this apple blossom thing, all so delicious! I think the focaccia bread from there was the best we had all trip. Then we went in search of our hostel, Hostel California (welcome to the ho(s)tel california...) it was on this street called via Lambrate, you wouldn't think it would be that hard to find, well apparently there's also a whole little area of town called Lambrate, needless to say we were lost as hell for awhile, we had looked it up on google maps before leaving Spain but we didn't have any real directions or even a map of milan upon arrival. Eventually we used one of our phones to googlemap it, there's definitely no way in hell we would have found it on our own, it was tucked away on this small little side street.

When we finally found the hostel and went up hoping we could check in right away although our check-in time was 11am and it was just past 11am by the time we got there, knowing how europe works we weren't that hopeful that our room would be ready. The guy at the front desk was a little sketchy, he told us they needed 10 more minutes to clean the room and that we could go chill upstairs, there was a little kitchen area on the 3rd floor, so we went and sat there for a bit. After going back about 15 minutes later he told us they needed another 20 minutes or so, of course, so we just went café down the street and got another espresso. Eventually our room was ready, the guy wanted a copy of all our passports and a room deposit and all this stuff before giving us the key, which was this old school, harry potter looking thing, it was quite the process. The dude gave off such a weird vibe, I don't know. To get to our room we had to go up this spiral staircase which was kind of kool and it was like a little attic room with 6 beds in it, not gunna lie it was a pretty sweet room, especially for a hostel, we even had our own private bathroom. We dropped all our stuff off there and headed for the city.

We did acquire a map so we had some idea of where we were going, we were all exhausted so we just took it slow and wandered through the city most of the afternoon. We spent most of our time on this main street that leads down into the centre of the city called Buenas Aires, a lot of the shopping and commercial kind of places are there like H&M, Pull and Bear, Zara, etc. plus lots of restaurants and fastfood places like BK and McD's (eww.)  Wandering through the streets we stumbled upon this fancy looking theatre and there happened to be a Dance Fusion Show on that night, we wandered in to check it out and ended up buying tickets.. Front row tickets, for like 27 euros. On our wander we found some really sweet bread and meat shops and got some real prosciutto which was absolutely delicious, along with more focaccia bread and some yummy olive bread too. We wandered through one of the big public gardens too which were beautiful, it wasn't really a garden but more of a park, the leaves were turning red and yellow, there was a duck pond and old statues on mossy rock faces, it was beautiful. Definitely one thing I miss while being in Granada, there isn't much greener here and therefore the seasonal colour changing is fairly absent.

Later that night we got our first taste of real Italian pizza and then headed for the show. It was in this beautiful theatre covered in red velvet and mahogany, highlighted with gold. We were literally sitting in the centre of the front row, it was amazing. It was quite an artistic, interesting dance show. There was 8/10 dancers that performed a serious of dances of all varieties, some were quite contemporary and abstract, then there was one that was a tango fusion, another very ballet-based one, etc. It was pretty incredible, one of the dancers were absolutely amazing. The one male dancer though was so ripped you could see almost every vein in his entire body..I'm not even kidding, it was kind of gross, I've never seen anyone that ripped in my entire life. After the dance performance we ended up at this bar called Swiss Corner, it was a trendy little place, glass windows all around the outside, very pink lighting with artistic images of famous peoples faces on the walls. Not the most italian place, but a very kool place all the same. We got mojitos and crepes (both sweet and savoury), all of which were delicious. We had fun conversing with our waiter Roberto, at first we tried speaking italian with him but eventually we flipped into spanish and as it turned out he also spoke spanish, he was a kool italian guy and am attractive one at that  ehe.

Nov. 5-8

Halloween, Visitors, and Cheesecake

Happy Guy Fawkes Day! (I'm not really sure if 'Happy' is the correct word there, hmm) It's the first week of November, how INSANE! Where did October go, like seriously?? Well with the end of October does come Halloween, woo! Most people have probably seen the picture by now of my costume (spanish word for halloween costume: disfraza) but incase you haven't, I dressed up as a Botella de Vino Tinto aka a Bottle of Red Wine. Hilarious, I know. REDREDRED. Ps. Get ready for another LONG post.

My friends and I started off our Halloween celebrations on Tuesday night (Oct 30th) though with some tradition pumpkin carving (con vino, queso, y pan, como siempre) at Kiki's (K now = Kiki)  house which was a fun and ridiculous, as most things are with us. Our pumpkins definitely all turned out quite different, pictures are the only way I can really show you what I mean. Once we had finished carving the pumpkins we took the seeds and fried them up in some butter, and brown sugar, omg Delicious! 

 On actual Halloween I still had my 6 hours of class, but can't complain too much, in my Flamenco History class our prof gave us gummies and talked about Spanish traditions while playing 'This is Halloween' in the background aha was quite entertaining. I don't know if it is a coincidence or if it's always like this but this weekend was also called Puente which is holiday in Spain -yes another holiday- and therefore a long weekend so Wednesday was my last day of class for the week, whatwhat!  

So, having no class on Thursday and big hopes for the evening,  the Halloween celebrations commenced. After ditching out half way through my 4pm-6pm class (because there was literally 6 people there and we were watching a movie and our prof had left the room) I met up with two friends to find Halloween costume bits, mostly checking out the Bazars for ideas. We all eventually found all the bits for costumes, Taco (A now = Taco) was a Flamenco dancer and Mads (M now = Mads) was the universe, and of course I, the vino tinto bahaha brilliant. 

However, the night didn't really turn out as planned (although it almost never does). A few of us went and a three course dinner at one of our fav restaurants which was delicious! Free first cocktail, starters of pumpkin soup, then chicken, mash potatoes, and some delicious spicy ribs for themain course, and then some heavenly, mouth-gasm cheesecake for dessert. After that dinner we split up and I headed over to Mads' to start the drinking, mostly wine of course aha, and then eventually began to figure out our plans. We met up with another group of friends down in the city and headed down to a club called Mae West. Mae West is a 'fancy-schmancy' club that normally has a dress code to get into and is one of the more expensive clubs which is why we hadn't gone before, but on Halloween the dress code was costume and the entrance was free -with costume of course- so we decided it would be the best time to go. However, the line-up was a mile long, and it wasn't moving particularly fast either. We did have some friends further up in the line that we were gunna meet up with but 10 people butting into a crowded club line-up probably wouldn't have worked too well.

After about 25 minutes of waiting most of us gave up, the few that decided to stay went and joined our other friends up a head in the line, and they eventually did get in and I'm sure had a great ol' time. We however wandered over to another club called Campus, some of the people I was with are roommates with the guy who apparently designed the signs and things for Campus so we were hoping some name dropping might get us in faster because there was also a massive line-up there too. But no such luck, so after waiting for a little while in the slow moving line we decided yet again to give up and went to go meet up with my cousin Kat in Hannigan's Pub which is more or less in my neighbourhood. We hung out there, got some shots, did some dancing, and whatnot at Hanni's for awhile but by 4am we were feeling like it was time to just give up and head home. 

As per usual Taco and I were going to crash at Mads' so we all headed in that direction, stopping to shwarma on the way there, omnomnom. While we were there we ran into a few other friends of ours, they'd also tried to get into Mae West but hadn't been successful either. Then as we were standing there waiting for our food, the owner of Paddy's Pub -which is Irish pub (yes another one) right across from the shwarma place- walked across the street, handed our friend TinTin (C now = TinTin, nicknames are more fun than initials) a full bottle of Heineken, said "Here's one for the road", kissed his cheek, and then turned around and headed back to Paddy's. It was definitely a strange moment, we all stood there in weird awe for a moment and then TinTin had his little moment of happy-spasm = :O ! Clearly TinTin spends a lot of time over there. 

Then there was a bit of oddness because a friend of a friend had ended up staying with my group when her friends had decided to go home, and she was still with us when we decided it was time to go home. I mean, I kind of knew her because she's in one of my classes, but I don't know her that well and it was the first time she'd met Taco and Mads, so her kind of attaching herself to us was a little odd. I almost didn't even realize she was there until we had gotten back to Mads and realized she was still there.. so as any good hostess would do, Mads asked her if she wanted to crash there too. She left pretty early the next morning, taking Mads pj shirt with her and leaving behind a strange feeling. There was a couple other things that seemed to have gone missing that night but I won't say anymore about that.. but it was a really strange situation. 

Anyways, thursday was a study day because I have midterms this week so nothing too exciting happened. Thursday night though I had planned a (very last minute) dinner and invited anyone and everyone who wanted to come, I figured that at best half them would show up. It turned out to be quite the party though, all my UBC/Canadian friend's showed up and brought other people with them, as well as some of my American friends and their other friends, definitely way more than I was expecting. Everyone was great though and brought stuff to contribute! It was a crazy feast, we had bread and cheese and wine coming out of our ears -as usual- and then there was some pumpkin soup, two salads, a ton of pasta, brownies, and crepes! I'm so happy with the way it turned out, was definitely a full house! My friend CapeGirl also came from Barcelona to visit me for the long weekend and she showed up just in time for dinner too which was great! 

(my poor, crazy kitchen)

Friday was food and partying day, CapeGirl was in town so I got to be tour guide for the weekend, which was so fun! We took her to some of our favourite food spots so she could experience the amazing tastes of Granada, then began the drinks. We wanted to show her more of the city but unfortunately it rained on and off all weekend so touring around wasn't the most appealing option. We bar hopped around for a bit and then ended up at one of new fav restaurants and one of the waiter's -Blondie- who we've now made friends with offered to get us into the club Camborio for free because he literally knows half the staff there. How could we say no to that? The group of us first went up to Blondie's apartment so he could get ready and whatnot and we cracked (another) open a bottle of wine to share, then began the hike up to Camborio.

Camborio is way up on the hill in the Albycín area and has a nice terrace which has a spectacular of the Alhambra, especially at night when it's all lit up. It was CapeGirl's and Taco's first time being there, it was a good night, we ran into a ton of people we knew, got lots of free shots thanks to Blondie, and danced the night away until about 7am. Stumbled home about 7:30am, watched the sky get lighter as we made our way home, and eventually passed out around 8:30am, was definitely a good night. 

The next morning, well afternoon, we took CapeGirl to our hangover-cheesecake-spot and shared some delicious coffee and cheesecake, that really is one of the best hangover breakfasts ever. Then it was exploring time, again the weather wasn't exactly great so, exploring time turned more into shopping time, which is also a great pass time here, it's generally really cheap to shop. I Finally found some red jeans! Been trying to find some for weeks now, I know that might sound kinda weird but they are Awesome! CapeGirl bought lots of shoes, some accessories, and a cape -hence the name- so was definitely a successful shopping trip! That night we decided to just stay in for dinner and had our own little Italian night, blasting opera as we cooked some delicious penne pasta, and adding bread with olive oil and some wine as our sides. 

We then went out to an awesome little bar called La Antigualla, it's very Medieval themed and the tapas there are Huge, we ordered a bunch of mojitos -which were So good- and then got a plate of grilled ham & cheese sandwiches with fries as our FREE tapa. I Love that place. Then we headed over to Mads house party, the first house party they had there a couple weeks ago was a TON of fun, so much food and drinks, it was ridiculous! This one was just as fun, met lots of interesting people as usual, had some interesting discussions over many glasses of wine, but then came the best part. A group of us girls snuck into Mads room to indulge in some bread with MAPLE SYRUP. OMG. Mads mom is visiting from Canada and brought some with her, best party snack ever. Maple Syrup + girl time = excellent party :P. Bahaha, anyways, decided to call it a night around 3:30am and headed back to my place since we had been up so late the night before.

Sunday morning I met up with my cousin Kat and we took CapeGirl for churros con chocolate, another thing you definitely must eat at least once while in Granada. Then we went to a kool little restaurant called Patio de Toros that had a big bronze statue of a bull in the middle of it and got a pitcher of Sangria and some foods. It was seriously a food-weekend, but then it was study time. Taco and I headed to a cafe to study and CapeGirl met up with some of our other friends to go explore and shop some more. We all met up that night for a big dinner because it was CapeGirl's last night and one of our fav restaurants was having a traditional English Sunday Roast, ohmyfreakinggod I can't even tell you how amazing it was. Roast beef, boiled potatoes, a Yorkshire pudding, all in yummy gravy sauce with broccoli, cauliflower w/ cheese, carrots, and bread as sides. And then for dessert we shared apple crumbles and slices of cheesecake (the best cheesecake Ever), Heaven. 

It was pouring rain outside most of Sunday night, of course, so we ended up sitting and talking for a long time at the restaurant, eventually all the other groups in the back room cleared out and it was just us, we didn't really want to go out in the rain so we ended up grabbing a deck of cards and playing President for awhile, man I haven't played that game since like high school. It was definitely a fun evening, we were going to call it a night but then decided watching movies would be more fun. We ended up at my friend Hiccup's place and watched Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, because none of them but me had seen it before -crazy right?!- they all enjoyed it though, of course! By the time it ended it was already like 3:30am so it was definitely time to head home. 

When we got home CapeGirl had to pack up all her stuff because her flight was at 9am which meant she had to be heading to the airport around 7/7:30am so I mostly just napped on and off as she packed up her stuff and whatnot. We ended up passing out around 5am and sleeping until about 7am and then we said our goodbyes and she headed off into the receding darkness. It was pretty much sunrise by the time I actually got to bed around 7:30am, the sunrises sure are beautiful here, I'm sure I'll see at least a few more before I leave. 

My alarm went off at 9:30am but I just could not get myself out of bed, I ended up having a slow morning, getting up around 11am which meant skipping my 10:30am class, having a shower, studying for my midterm at 12:30, finishing an assignment for my 4pm class, etc. It was definitely a coffee kind of day.

Oct 29-Nov 4

Is This the Real Life or Is This Just Fantasy?

Another week of new experiences. I've been here for almost a month and a half now -which is INSANE- and I'm still surprised everyday by the amount of new/interesting experiences I have. I feel like a broken record saying that I had quite an interesting week, but being here in this crazy, beautiful, random place, my weeks are really all quite different and interesting.

Wednesday night I went over to my friend A's place for dinner and made (well mostly watched A make) a Tortilla Española (Spanish omelette) which is essentially an omelette of potatoes plus cheese or peppers or whatever else you want to add into it. I know that probably sounds like a really weird food but it's delicious and a very traditional/common food here. I love it. After devouring the tortilla along with some wine of course, A and I headed over to Hannigan's Irish Pub to meet up with other friends, it's a pretty kool pub and of course it was just crawling with American students, most of whom are in my faculty, of course. A couple shots and a pretty tasty beer con tequila (yeah a beer WITH tequila and lime in it, sounds weird but was actually so good) we decided to head to a discoteca along with some other friends we ran into at Hanni's.

For anyone who's known me long enough, this next little bit of the story will not be surprising. We got to the club Granada 10, got some drinks, and proceeded to dance our faces off, as always. There's platforms (usually with cage bars around the outside of them) at Granada diez and on this particular night there was no cages so the platforms were fairly empty, when I say platforms, I mean like wooden box like things that are only like 7ft x 4ft and maybe 2ft or 3ft high. So of course, my not-exactly sober friend decides that dancing on top of one of these platforms is an Amazing idea and pulls me up as well. T'was an interesting night, especially after a few drinks (random side note: tried my first ever rum and coke, it wasn't too bad, I can see why people like them, don't think I'll be having another one tho.) Not gunna lie, jamming on top of that platform thing was pretty freaking fun, another ridiculous place/thing I've danced on to add to the books aha.

Thursday went to a International 48-Hour Short-Film Fest for Young Aspiring Directores (well that's more or less the English translation anyways) which was really cool, one of my friend's roommates actually produced one of the short films, so kool! There was definitely some pretty interesting short films (all in Spanish of course or no dialogue at all) of every genre, even a western one which was pretty weird and hilarious.

It was raining buckets all of thursday which made plan making a little difficult since walking anywhere somewhat far away in the rain was not very appealing. I definitely found my bed more comfortable than the thought of walking to class in the rain Thurs morning, what else is new. Anyways, that night a group of us ended up going to this random Italian bar we'd never been before to meet up with another friend of mine. At first it seemed a little far to walk to in the rain, but 2 bottles of wine later it didn't seem like such a bad idea anymore. It was kool little bar, the crowd was pretty randoms, some italians, some old guys, some uni kids; quite the variety. We went to order some shots, they didn't have what we wanted so we ended up having rum shots followed by limoncello shots which were quite delicioussss. Then we wandered up to a techno/dubstep club called Quilombo that was actually quite close to my place, there was a free dubstep concert on at 3am (supposedly, they always start later), we got there pretty 'early' aka like 2am so the place was totally empty still, after a couple drunken games of pool and fooseball, and some interesting conversations with Italians and Spaniards I ended up just going home, I was too tired to hang around for a crazy dubstep concert that probably didn't start until 4am.

 Holy Knights of Columbus! -Anchorman quote- This blog post is pretty long already and I haven't even gotten to the actual weekend... please feel free to tell me if these blogs are unnecessarily long.

Anywho, Friday did some shopping in the afternoon with some friends which is always fun and dangerous for the wallet. That night there was a big Italian pasta night dinner at M's house, the pasta was made by legit Italians with assistance from some of the other international people. Was one of the most delicious carboneras I've ever had. Followed up the pasta with conversations in Spanish, Italian, French, and English which was definitely an interesting time, but the best part of the dinner was definitely when our friend C brought out the Norwegian chocolate, OMG SO GOOD. After dinner I decided to go check out my first Flamenco show with some friends, it was at a little cave-shaped bar called Chien Andalou which was conveniently close to where the dinner was. Amazing guitar playing and beautiful singing and some impressive footwork is all I gotta say. Will definitely be checking out many more Flamenco shows in the future, I loved it. Watching pure Spanish passion is a very moving experiencing. The pitcher of Sangria on our table that disappeared during the course of the show was delicious too.

Saturday was actually a responsible kid and went to a café to study/do homework with some friends. We ended up at a kool little place called Café Picaro, it's a jazz-bar and so the decór was pretty artsy and random, there was even a baby grand piano in one of the corners. They were playing old classic music like Whitney Houston, the Beatles, The Supremes, Elvis etc. which was pretty interesting. After a couple hours of studying a large group of Spaniards rolled in and sat at 4 tables behind us, they all must have been in their 50's or so but they sounded like a group of rowdy teenagers, no joke, it was rather entertaining to watch but definitely broke my focus and started giving me a headache after awhile, so that was the end of our study sess.

Saturday night we went for the first time to check out a real Salsa bar called Barrio Latino. Loved it. It was a pretty legit place, lots of good salsa and bachata music, some hilarious 2 min dance lessons by one of the guys who worked there, it kind of reminded me of my salsa classes at UBC. But here in Spain people can Really dance. So. Much. Fun. After some legit salsa-ing a bunch of us met up at the discoteca Vogue, that place is pretty sweet, the music is actually Good, not just top 40 shit. Left there around 4am and got some Delicious pizza, omg it was Amazing, and as per usual I crashed at my friend M's place after some late night cereal of course.

Today was a pretty chill day, started it with some coffee and some cheesecake, perfect combo, which was followed by some sun tanning, and then a little walking excursion up to the Albyzín area on the mountain side of Granada. It was a gorgeous sunny day and the walk up the hill was lovely, we also ran into one of the guys we had met the night before at the salsa bar, super random. We wandered over to the main look out area and just sat and relaxed there for quite some time. As we were sitting up there drinking in the view a couple of guitarists came and sat besides us and began playing with amazing artistry, it was an afternoon of quiet perfection. I am so in love with this place, I know I've said that many times before and I'm sure I will say it a few more times in the future, but I really am, everyday this place gives me another reason to fall in love with it. I still can't believe this is actually my life right now. I am loving every single second of it. I am so lucky and so thankful for everyday that I get to be here.

España, te amo.

Perfecto.

Oct. 22-28

Wine, Accents, and More Wine

Went a little crazy this week, for no real reason in particular. School is starting to get a bit more intense and our social groups are expanding. Tuesday and Wednesday night I went out with some friends to get some tapas and a long with tapas there is inevitably glasses of wine..many classes of wine. Thursday I was smart enough to at least take a break and stay home, although a bunch of my friends went out drinking and clubbing and whatnot. My cold has kind of relapsed, probably from all the going out and lack of sleeping but ohwell. It has definitely been quite an interesting week. Getting more into a routine now I've started cooking more and shopping around more, here if you want meat or cheese or  fruits/vegetables or fresh bread you have to go to different stores or outdoor markets and order them, it's an interesting kind of way to go grocery shopping, sometimes can be tiring.

Also have started watching more tv and whatever with my roomie. We just got a new antenna set up, (my roomie, the landlord, and yours truly set it up together, was a bit of a challenge) and I have since been exposed to Spanish news shows, there's a Spanish version of CP24 (more or less) and a Spanish version of a Jon Stewart-type show, and there's some great Spanish game shows that mostly seem to be word-based tv shows, one is called something like 'fall!' where basically the contestant is competing against challengers in guessing words based on clues and whatever and when the challenger or the contestant fail, the round is over and the platform the loser is standing on opens up and they fall through the floor bahaha. Hilarious right. Watching English movies like Uptown Girls, Oceans 12, and James Bond in Spanish is pretty entertaining too.

By random chance, one of my cousin-in-laws is here in Granada teaching English. I've only met her once before about 6 years ago at the wedding, her uncle married my aunt on my mom's side. So Friday we decided to meet up for lunch, her 4 friends were visiting her from Scotland (she's also from Scotland) so lunch was hilarious to say the least. My friend A and I met the 5 of them in front of Burger King, unfortunately there is one here. Then went to this small café in a plaza, it was hilarious, I'm pretty sure the waiter thought we were all crazy and that we seemed obnoxiously loud to the rest of the café, ohwell ahaha. They invited us to go out with them that night so we all met up at my cousins apartment to drink around 11, there was a pretty big group there, mostly a mix of Scottish, English, and American girls. Very entertaining, lots of wine, vodka, etc. Learned a lot about Scotland, educational systems in Europe, family and tradition, and Scottish accents which was quite interesting.

Amongst many of the interesting conversations I had that night, one of the koolest ones was with the Scottish girls discussing Scotland and the accents. 4 of the girls were from Glasgow but the 5th one was from Dundee (I think that's how you spell it) which is farther north in Scotland and apparently the Dundee accent is incomprehensible to Glasgow people, especially when it's thick and drunkenly slurred aha. It's basically like the Californian accent of Scotland, the inflections are different and they tend to raise the end of their words and use the word 'like' so it's actually almost easier for us North Americans to understand than the Glasgow accent, interesting eh. I also picked up a bit of a Scottish accent after talking with them for a few drunken hours, even now it's hard for me to resist rolling the 'r' when I saw great, I wanna say grrreat ahaha. The cops showed up around 1:30am due to noise complaint from some old grumpy woman 2 floors above which is seriously unheard of in Spain, especially that early in the night. Whatever.

We stumbled to a bar that one of my cousin's students works at, she teaches some adult english courses, and had some very cheap drinks there. Then we stumbled down the road -literally like 50ft down the road from the bar- to a discoteca called Vogue (pronounced vo-gay). It was a pretty sweet discoteca, it was very red-lit and had 2 floors, somewhere on one of the crowded dance floors I met J, he was an interesting local chico. Eventually the group started splitting up and people went their separate ways. I stumbled home around 5:30am and even that's a bit of a blur. There's definitely quite a few pictures from that night floating around on facebook and wherever now. Ohman.

Saturday was a little hungover but 2 cups of Spanish coffee and cheesecake for breakfast was definitely a great pick-me-up. Didn't do much with my day besides attempting homework, siesta-ing, and making food. That night there was a big house party at my friend's apartment, there was SO much alcohol and food, it was quite the extravaganza. Drank and ate way too much, as per usual. Met some really interesting internationals from Ireland, Germany, South America, Poland, England, and various parts of Spain. Needless to say I was kind of in love with all their accents. My friend A and I brought 2 bottles of wine to the party but needless to say those disappeared rather quickly.

They used two fridge fruit drawers to hold some of the large quantity alcoholic mixes, one was a fruit punch and one was a very delicious drink close to a White Russian. When you don't have large enough punch bowls, use fridge drawers, why not?..aha very genius if you ask me. I also tried this Polish Vodka which these two Polish girls were telling us was great because it was sweeter than normal Vodka and was only 38% instead of 40%...yeah it still BURNED your throat and had this weird cinnamon type of after taste...I definitely won't say it was great. That Vodka on top of everything was definitely enough to blurrr out a fair bit of my memory..luckily there are a lot of pictures of the night floating around...aha shit, it was a fun night though! Sometimes house parties are just as good if not better than going out to bars/clubs. Some people did go out to discotecas around 3/4am but I decided to just stay and crash at my friend's place.

All in all, a great weekend, although I was feeling DEAD this morning. Much of the day was spent on the couch and on the futon on my terrace lazing about. Some homework was accomplished but focusing was quite the task. Ahwell, there's a short version of my crazy week, hope at least some of you find it entertaining to read about. It was definitely an interesting week to live through aha.


Oct. 15-21

Dream a Little Dream of Me

Ronda. Oh Ronda. The city of Dreams, the city of incredible beauty. It's an ancient city with a gorgeous landscape and beautiful antique bridges, that almost had a LOTR feel aha. NerdAlert. It was breathtaking, I felt almost as though I had never seen true beauty before going there, how cheesy I know. But it's true, it's one of the most beautiful places I have seen thus far in my life, although there are some pretty spectacular places in Italy as well.

We got there by bus in the early morning - EARLY morning, it was still dark out when our bus departed. But once we got there we all met up at the Plaza del Torros - the oldest Plaza de Toros in Spain and then were given complete freedom for the rest of the day which was Awesome. Ronda is one of those places that photos will never do justice. 

We climbed down the cliff to the bottom of the Puente Nuevo -New Bridge (actually quite an old bridge that was built in 1751.) There's two other main bridges in the city but Puente Nuevo is spectacular because it's built in between two cliffs in Ronda and has waterfalls flowing at the bottom, so ridiculously beautiful. The cliffs, the bridges, the Andalusian landscape all mixed together just made for one amazing place. I definitely want to go back.

Ronda Countryside

One of the amazing views of the Ronda cliffs

Puente Nuevo 

One our way back to the meeting place, my friend M and I stopped at a merchant booth, there was some really kool wood carvings and things like that, we ended up talking to the booth owner (all in Spanish of course) for quite a while, he was a really nice old guy -probably in his 60's/70's, and we had a really great conversation about Canada and the USA, cultural things, environmental things, the natural beauty of Spain, Canada, and the USA, the First Nations (is that the PC term these days?) cultures and all kinds of interesting things. Was definitely a great way to end the day, he was the sweetest old man. 

After returning from Ronda, I ended up going to this club called Planta Baja with 2 amigos, there was a free DJ concert there last night, it was suppose to be some pretty sweet music, the DJ playing FOR FREE that night was noDJ : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeOY_ddu06M&feature=relmfu&fb_source=message

Unfortunately like everything in Spain the show didn't start until like 3am and by then one of my friends and I were pretty dead so we ended up leaving but Planta Baja is a pretty sweet bar/club, it has a bit of an older crowd which is kind of nice, more people in their mid-twenties to early-thirties. The music we were jamming to on the dance floor before the DJ was pretty awesome too. 

Anyways, that was my Saturday. Thursday night I went out to the club Campus which is always interesting, may have drank quite a lot, so I spent friday mostly recovering aha plus it was a Spanish holiday -again- but this time it was a National-wide holiday, it was Spain Day or Spaniard Day or something like that which just celebrated Spain all over the country.

Oct 13

Some pieces of the soul

A few random poems inspired by my España

winding roads
whispering winds
wandering through my mind
quick tongues
quicker flamenco fingers
plucking the strings of my heart
the ancient cracks
curled in iron
imprinted beauty in my eyes
doorways laced in flowered garments
flourishing shards of azul
piecing my mosaic back together
---
I wish I could tell you
how the night shines
under the pale moonlight
of this ancient love
but words could never express
what the eyes drink in
this beauty, only truth
steals my breath
like the nights we never held
remind me, my love
of the wonder, of the lust
lost in the effervescent lights
of the ageless city below

---

I am falling in love 

with the city of love

where all the lovers come

to fall in love 

oh to be in love

I am so in love with the love 

that this city gives 

if only I too could be in love

with a lover

in this city of great love 

how lovely the nights would be

to share love under the loving stars

and be at one with love 

---

church bells resonating

birds softly singing as they float in the sky

wind rustling through the ancient gardens of time

the sweetest melodies of spanish guitar filling my soul

basking in the midday sun

perfection.

---

every day I wake

feeling as though I still dream

for the beauty is inexplicable 

how could it be 

that this is my life
---
me la siento
con mi alma
la veo
con mi corazón
siempre
la tengo
en mis ojos
la perfección del amor
de mi ciudad, de mi casa

de mi vida en este momento
---
(older poem)
my thoughts
drift and dribble
in and out
connecting, forgetting
las almas de la noche
vienen por mí
robando mi corazón
somewhere in
between the lines
the words
the letters
caught in the white empty
spaces
de la noche
de la noche
estoy aquí
no recuerdo el tiempo o la lugar
but I cannot forget
you
tus ojos como el mar puro
those lips untouched
but soon to be
oh whisper
te quiero
te quiero
ahora
la noche corre
jealous of us
and our desires
en la oscuridad
tu piel en mi piel
la luna, el sol, las estrellas
no pueden vernos
esta noche

Classes, Curses, and Canadian Thanksgiving

A new week. Well it's now Wednesday but it's been quite an interesting week already. This is the first full week of classes since last week we had a holiday on Monday and whatever. This first kind of odd thing about these classes are that they want us to fill out little i.d. cards and put like a passpost size photo of ourselves on them, 1. that is pretty weird, why not just have an attendance sheet, and 2. it's a nuisance trying to find somewhere to either get passport sized photos taken or somewhere with a printer to print tiny bad-quality black-and-white photos of yourself. UBC has a good system with a class list with our student photos on them, then again we have actual i.d. cards there and not pieces of paper with a passport sized photo glue sticked to it. Anywho, I still need to actually get photos printed from somewhere, that's a friday task.

Classes have been pretty interesting so far, my teachers are all a little crazy which is always entertaining, they've got that sassy Spanish attitude, well some of the woman do, the male profs just like to joke around and all seem to have their own kind of quirks. Apparently one of the Art History profs just breaks out into random song sometimes and is actually a decent Opera singer, who would've guessed eh. My spanish grammar prof, who's name is África btw, is a small woman who is intimidating as hell and very sarcastic, love her and fear her at the same time. She's one of those profs who will just randomly call out your name and ask you a random question about whatever, she also calls me Canada which I find hilarious, although having such a nickname makes it easier for her to call on me..eek.

There's also a bit of a teachers strike going on at the CLM (and probably all of UGR). Because of the economy, the profs have gotten a pay cut but their hours have been extended, as a result, at least at the CLM, on both Monday and Wednesday during my spanish conversational class my prof (who's an adorable petite woman with puffy, curly hair and glasses) left for 15minutes to stand in the courtyard with all the other profs and protest with signs. It's a pretty odd thing to watch, I feel bad for them, the economy here has gone to shit this past year, Granada is holding up alright in general but the country has definitely been suffering as a whole. Apparently there's student strike going at the main UGR campus so they may not have classes tomorrow, I don't know, everything around here has a sense of underlying political problems. It's a crazy system.

My Italian teacher is also a bit of a crazy lady, she's from Milan, has long blonde hair and exaggerated expressions, she's Great. So far she's mostly taught us expressions, swear words, and well some actual technical things like past tenses but yeah, it's definitely been an interesting class so far. In that class there's two girls from Granada which is kind of awesome, finally a class that isn't all Americans! Aha, this is the Hilarious video we watched last class that 'explains' italian hand gestures:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVCuyrPk7P4

Anyhow, this past weekend was of course, Canadian Thanksgiving but since most of us were out of the city at some point this weekend we decided to have our Thanksgiving dinner on Monday instead. We being me, 3 other UBC-ers, another girl in the CLM program from Toronto, and my roomie. Of course being in Spain, it was a little challenging to have a 'traditional' Thanksgiving dinner so we just made the best of what we could find, it was like Thanksgiving Spanish-Style aha. It turned out pretty awesome though! We had chicken with carrots and green beans, asparagus, fresh bread, and of course, 3 bottles of red wine. With some chocolatey ice cream cake thing for dessert. Aha, weird meal but an excellent Canadian Thanksgiving Spanish-Style dinner I would say.

Dinner is Served...minus the plate of asparagus

Great company, Great food, Great night!

Oct. 8-12