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.

Nearing the End (part 1): How Strange

I know it's been a long time since I've blogged, well since I've posted, I have 2 or 3 other blogs in the works at the moment from all my other adventures but it's just one of those blogging-about-one's-strange-life kind of days. The last week or month really has just been a series of crazy, strange things, but what else is new. Leaving is always the most bittersweet part of my life, but as a person who just can't sit still it's a fairly frequent heartache. One of the many things traveling and living abroad has taught me is that there are so many people out there who can change your life or make an impact, even if only for an instant. I have met so many amazing, weird, crazy, scary, and interesting people this year and there is a good chance I will never seem many of them again, but who knows... life is kinda funny like that sometimes, you never who you'll see in the strangest of places and at the weirdest of times. There's so much on my mind right now and I just don't know how to get it all out at once. I'll try and rewind a little and explain the recent strangeness of my life.

This semester seems to be a lot more hazardous than last semester for some reason, maybe it's because there's been so much rain or maybe because there's more Americans and foreigners than last semester or maybe it's just that bad luck has just found Granada this semester, perhaps because my roommates like to try and summon the spirits every once in awhile.. who knows. So, in the past month about 6 or 7 phones have gone missing.. they were either stolen, lost on transit, drunkenly left somewhere in a bar or club, or accidentally dropped into the river due to concussion haziness (that actually is what happened to Hiccup's), most of our laptop chargers have also ceased working, perhaps because of the voltage difference or perhaps because of all the traveling abuse, we are now down to 1 charger for 3 macbooks although Juanito is suppose to be getting a new one soon which he ordered over spanish ebay? We'll see how that goes. Juanito is also the only one in our house with a nice, fancy, functioning phone, 2 of us have text-and-call brick phones and Hiccup still is phoneless, it's starting to seem like it might be time to go back to North America for all of us.

Also, for the first time in my life I filed a witness report in a police station and above all that it was in spanish. Don't freak out too much before I explain.. So there has been a recent, well not really recent, but recently exposed incident with a neighbourhood creep approaching and sexually harassing many of the exchange students here. It's not quite as bad as it sounds although some of the girls here were kinda shaken up by it. I actually met the guy back in september when I was still naive and adjusting to the life style here, it was actually the first or second weekend I had actually been in Granada and he approached me on the street on a saturday night while I was drunkenly walking home and asked me what time it was, I told him and then he proceeded to ask me where I was from and where I was going. We talked for a bit, introduced ourselves, he told me his name was Juan Carlos or something and then asked me if I wanted a ride home on his vespa, well I was still a decent walk from home and not knowing any better I just said sure, why not? (When in Spain right?..) Well he dropped me home and then said he had to go meet some friends but would come back another time, I was like yea, sure, whatever, he didn't even get my phone number or anything. And then when he was leaving he did the double cheek kiss, as is custom here, but then tried to like hug me and pull me into him and kiss me but I was like dude, I don't even know you, wth? He pretended to be kind of offended since we were now "friends" but eventually left to meet his friends. He did actually return the following night, which definitely surprised me but he did say he would come back? It was kinda late, I was pretty freaking tired, my roomie wasn't home so being home alone with him was a little weird, he tried kissing me again and I let it go a little further, what can I say, I had just gotten to Spain and there was a decently attractive spaniard in my house. Eventually he left, again without my number or anything and said it was nice to see me and hoped it would happen again. Again I was like, yea sure, whatever. But over the next month he would randomly show up at my house, usually around midnight or later and knock on my window or on my door and ask to come in, sometime's he would try and talk his way in even when I told him to go away and if I didn't know it was him since I couldn't see through the front door, he would step inside as soon as I opened the door. In retrospect it kind of was creepy and could be considered sexual harassment but eventually I got so pissed off that I yelled at him to go away and eventually forced him to leave and he 'apologized' for bothering me and I never saw him again after that, except for a couple times on the street in the neighbourhood where he tried to talk to me or hug me and I just brushed him off.

So, this semester around the end of april there was a bunch of girls who were being approached and kind of harassed by some guy in the neighbourhood, well guess who. The only reason this whole thing exploded was because my friend Steph posted about her experience on fb and in one of the study abroad program walls and then had several other girls comment on it saying that the same thing had happened to them, it also happened to one of my roommates and several other girls that we knew. At first there was no proof that it was the same guy but one night my roommates and I, plus some other friends were all in a bar in the neighbourhood and he was there and we all freaked out and then realized who this guy was. Shortly after everyone sprung into action, all the directors of study abroad programs were notified, my campus put out a warning post, and a bunch of us were asked to go down to the Police Station to file witness reports. We still have no idea how long this guy has been creeping on exchange girls and we have no idea how many girls he harassed last semester who left in december without saying anything, I mean, I thought I was the only one until one girl from last semester and at least half a dozen more from this semester came forward about it too.

So that wednesday after the news had been spread, I went with 2 other girls and one of the ISA directors to the police station, it wasn't just any police station it was wayyy over on the other side of town which apparently deals with these kind of affairs specifically, hence why only 4 of us went at a time -you can only fit 4 in a taxi- we got there and I immediately felt like I was either in a hospital or an insane asylum, it was all white, modernized, with marbled floors, grey and white high ceilings, and there was a chill in the air even though it was like 25 degrees outside. The only people around were 3 or 4 police near the entrance desk and the rest was silence except for the faint sounds of beyonce playing over the sound system aha. We waited around in a little side room until one of the policemen came to get us, we walked past the security desk through a black door, down a hallway of black walls and white floors till we came to a door that lead to the hallway where all the offices were, shortly after sitting down on a bench outside of there, 2 policemen and 2 men; one in handcuffs, walked out making a fair bit of ruckus, slightly startling. After that I was really starting to feel like I was in an insane asylum or something.. A few minutes later an investigator guy walked out and asked which one of us spoke the most spanish, which was me, so I went in to talk with him while one of the girls went in with the ISA director for translation help and eventually the third girl came into the same room I was in to talk with a woman at the desk diagonal from the investigator I was with. We were there for what seemed like forever, in reality we were there for like 2.5 hours but that's a pretty long time to be in a cold, white walled police station trying to dictate a witness report in spanish.

So, that happened. Don't know what's come of it since then but the police told us that anyone who saw him after that should just call the police straight away as they now have grounds for arresting him. There's been lots of craziness this semester, I don't even know where to start. For those of you who don't know, since my last blog was for St Patricks day and the one before that was from..january or february? (I really will finish those blogs sometime soon) I moved in with 3 crazy americans (Hiccup, Lorena, and Juanito) at the beginning of march because the roommates at my last apartment were driving me NUTS (but that's a whole 'nother story that will be explained in another blog.) Also because I moved last minute, I didn't get my deposit back on the last house but ohwell, I couldn't live in that old apartment any longer and I got a last minute chance to move out before I paid March rent so I jumped on it. Living with them has been an awesome experience for the most part, we were all friends last semester and make up about a 3rd of the small group of those who remained from last semester. We've had so many crazy, drunk, ridiculous nights it would take a novel to write about them all. I love my roomies, but sometimes they can be difficult and insensitive..

But that's pretty normal, no matter how good of friends you are, there are always some roomie problems. We had some normal ones like cleaning schedules and things like that but what really pissed me off was that in April, Juanito went back to New York for his sister's wedding and came back with a large suitcase full of everything-peanut you could imagine. I know Americans miss peanut butter while they're here because it is harder to find and if you can find it, it is expensive but since he lives in a house with someone who is deathly allergic, I thought it was little insensitive to bring back peanut butter, peanut granola bars, thai peanut sauce, a large box which has bags of cashews, almonds, and peanuts, and reeses pieces cups.. I don't think I missed anything.. so, as you might be able to imagine I was a little stressed and paranoid having that many peanut things in the house, which have remained in the house til present day. Maybe it's just me, but that seems A LITTLE insensitive, and whenever I would try to talk to them about it, at first trying to be kind of joking about them killing me, they acted pretty nonchalant and told me not to worry because they'd be careful and it would all be fine..yeah sure, I've watched them be "careful" on multiple occasions, especially when friends are here, I watched our friend Morgan drop peanuts all over our couch and blankets, fun times.. but I'm not dead so, rant over.

Moving on, I guess I'll share another random story about paths crossing... So Courtney, my best friend from UBC, was here visiting me for two weeks which was awesome! (yes there will be another blog all about that too.) Anyways, it was our last night together and we were in Málaga because she had a ridiculously early morning flight from there the next morning, so we got into Málaga around 10pm and went to check-in at our hostel. When we got there Courtney wanted to pay for the hostel with a creditcard but they said they didn't accept creditcard for charges less than 25 euros, so she went to find an ATM machine and I just chilled by the check-in desk at the hostel with all our stuff. While I was waiting, another traveller showed up to check-in, he was having problems speaking spanish to the reception desk people (and by having problems I mean he didn't really know much spanish at all but the people at the front desk spoke english anyways) so I was kinda helping him out till the guy at reception told us he spoke a bit of english (could have spoken up a little sooner but whatever), so anyways, we got talking and he's an australian but had been working as a journalist in London for the last year but had just up and quit his job and decided to come traveling around Europe for a couple months. So, I invited him out with Courtney and I for dinner/drinks once we were all checked-in and whatnot. We all went out for drinks, Courtney and I got food, he was really tired and ended up leaving after a drink but we decided to keep drinking. Around 1:30am we headed back to the hostel but neither of us wanted to end the night so we got as far as the entrance to the hostel before we turned around and headed for another bar, shortly after we were another sangria deep and decided that it was maybe time to head back to the hostel, it was around 2:30pm, the bar was closing and Courtney had to be up at like 5am. I had no idea how much I was feeling that alcohol until I got into bed and then realized the room was spinning aha. Anyways, around 5am I got up to help Courtney get her stuff to the taxi then passed back out till about 9 30am. Was suppose to meet Aussie for breakfast around then plus had to be checked out by 10:30 anyways, before heading down to breakfast I had a nice/weird talk with a 40-something year old Columbian woman who was in my room, she was telling me about learning to belly dance and other random things.

So met up with Aussie for breakfast and then we headed to the beach were we spent the remainder of the morning, it was nice and sunny for awhile but then started clouding over around 12, which actually wasn't so bad because it stopped it from being ridiculously hot. The Aussie went into the water a couple times even though it was Freezing, I decided to just stay and lie in the sun, it wasn't quite warm enough for a nice swim. We lazed around on the beach for awhile, there may have been some kissing, and then around quarter to 1 we headed back into town to find some lunch, we found a kool little cafe a little further from the centre of town and got some delicious fish and tinto de veranos, after that we just wandered the city for awhile, I can now say I have basically seen all of Málaga, and eventually headed back to the hostel so he could change and I could use their internet even though I wasn't technically a guest anymore, such a rebel I know. Anyways, after that we wandered back into the city and decided to go see a movie since there was movie theatre in the big mall-plaza thing across from the bus station, I didn't really have a certain time that I needed to be back in Granada so I was just kinda going with the flow. We saw this really strange American movie that was dubbed in Spanish, there was some parts I had to kind of explain to the Aussie because his Spanish wasn't great but it was a really interesting movie and experience over all. We went for dinner after that and then I dragged myself back onto a bus back to Granada.

The rest of that weekend was pretty chill, kind of just rested and recovered from all the traveling, spent a lot of time alone which was a nice (and needed) break. Also found out some really interesting gossip which I will share further down in this blog. Monday afternoon the Aussie showed up in Granada, he had told me over the weekend that he was thinking about coming to Granada but I didn't know he was coming for sure until monday morning when he told me he had bought a bus ticket. He showed up mid-afternoon, I met him at the bus station then came back to my place so he could drop his stuff and whatever, I had class at 5pm-6:30pm so he just wandered around the neighbourhood during that time and then met me at the school when I was done. We came back to the apartment and he met all my roomies, yada yada yada, and then we went to an intercambio (language exchange) at one of my fav restaurants near by with a bunch of friends. It was fun, we were all drinking and talking multiple languages and eating and whatnot, there was definitely a fair amount of flirting going on as well aha. We were thinking about hitting up another bar but all ended up being a bit too tipsy/tired to move so we just came back to the apartment. Now here is where the story gets kind of strange, we walked into my apartment to find my 3 roommates having a séance in the middle of the living room, yup, that's right, an actual séance; a ring of salt on the floor, candles all over the apartment, a bowl of olives and 3 small candles in the middle of the circle and all that shit. I honestly wasn't that surprised since my roomies are weird as can be and every day with them is something different, unfortunately the Aussie was kind of weirded out, even though I had warned him before hand that they were really crazy, but to be fair, it was a new level of weird, even for them. We hung around silently in the living room for awhile as they fell into a meditative state, Juanito suggested asking the spiriti a question but no one said anything, apparently earlier they asked the spirit to respond if it was there and a couple seconds after Juanito's Google Voice call thing started ringing which scared the shit out of them aha guess it's a technological ghost, oh Toby (that's the name of the ghost btw). Shortly after that I decided to head to bed and then heard them chanting a few minutes later which was pretty interesting. Aussie definitely seemed kinda freaked out about it, but who could blame him. I'm just used to my roomies doing all kinds of weird things, like I said, never a dull moment with those 3.

The next morning I had class at 10am and the Aussie was suppose to meet me after it at 11:30am in the school courtyard but never showed up. I waited around for awhile but no sign of him, eventually went back to my apartment and found all of his stuff was gone, it seemed pretty weird and random, I had no idea what was going on. My one roomie was kind of sketched out about it, which is fair, but nothing was missing so it wasn't like he had robbed us and then quickly left or anything. But I still had no idea why he had suddenly picked up and left without saying a word or anything. I actually didn't hear from him until the next day, as it turned out, he had been sorting out his backpack and realized that his passports (Aussie and British?) and some money had been stolen somewhere on his travels before coming to Granada, freaked out (rightly so) and headed for Malaga since that was where the closest British Consulate was. Poor guy, losing your passport while traveling is just about the worst thing that can happen to you. He got an emergency passport and is now back in UK though.

Another really strange development that week was when I found out some really interesting gossip about one of the people in our friend group (this is gossip I briefly mentioned earlier). So as it turns out, Taco is a kleptomaniac..yup. Two of our friends (K and F) that she hung with all the time (mostly because the rest of us kind of stopped hanging out with this semester, she's That friend in our group..anyways..) had realized that Taco had been stealing money from K (about 200 euros in total) and then had caught her red-handed digging through K's roommate's friend's bag, we came to a crossroads trying to decide what to do about the situation. A couple months earlier I had also caught her wearing one of my t-shirts which is super weird since she's a bit bigger than I am so it looked to tight on her and what not. So anyways, we knew she was stealing but we weren't really sure why, but she never seemed to have financial issues during the year so we figured that probably wasn't the reason and figured that she had to be a klepto. I mean, it's one thing to steal money from people because you're really broke and too ashamed or whatever to ask people for it but it's a whole different thing to just be stealing..well because you want to/can.

So the question was, what should we do about it? Well, at this point I had barely seen or talked to her in a month or so, so the option of just ignoring her all together seemed fine to me but F and K (well mostly just F) wanted to do an intervention on her because she is a friend..well 'friend' of ours, I do use that term quite lightly, and Steph and K wanted to use a more aggressive, accusatory approach.. in the end we just left the decision up to F, and a couple days later F and K did end up talking to her, in a calm, non-accusatory way, and she admitted to Everything. Apparently she's had this problem since she was 12 and no one has ever said anything but instead starting ignoring and de-friending her, I'm not too sure on all the finer details since I heard the story second-hand but by the sounds of it, she was kinda happy that they had said something to her and then she proceeded to send out an apology message on facebook to everyone she had apparently taken things from (some people at that point didn't even know they had anything missing), I'm not too sure if she did actually pay back some or all the money, I eventually got my shit back from her which turned out to be 3 or 4 articles of clothing, only 1 of which I actually knew was missing, so that was interesting. In her message to everyone she had apologized, asking for forgiveness and said she hoped she could still be our friend but that if we didn't want to, she understood and blah blah blah. I just replied to her saying that there was only like 3 weeks left for most of us in Granada and so there wasn't any point holding a grudge or whatever, I just wanted to get my stuff back. Because by that point I had a lot of other, more important things to worry about than being mad at some crazy girl.

So, there's a small recap on some of the strangeness that's happened in my last few weeks in Granada, there's still many more stories to come, but most of them are a little less random and strange.


20/05/13

Drink, Drank, Drunk in Ireland

Thursday night I hopped onto a 2am bus to Madrid, I ended up sitting beside a weird 40-something spanish guy and of course the people sitting behind me happened to be a mother and her like 5 month old baby.  Luckily I managed to pass out for the majority of the ride although the baby did start crying around 5am when we made a pitstop. Around 7:30am we got the Madrid airport and then I just hung around in the airport for a couple hours in Starbucks since my flight wasn't until 10:45am and I needed to charge my phone. I swear Starbucks is the only place in spanish airports (and spain in general) where you can find electrical plugs besides in the bathrooms, it's so annoying. Landed in Dublin around 12:30 and then waited around in the airport for my friend Mara who was flying in from Barcelona around the same time, we eventually found each other and then headed into downtown Dublin. We hung out there for like an hour, it's such a gorgeous city, there was people EVERYWHERE and of course a ton of decorations and whatnot, we stopped in a pizza shop because Mara was starving and we wanted to ask for directions to the bus station, the pizza was pretty good although we had 1 piece left which neither of us wanted so we ended up just wrapping it up and taking it with us. Before leaving we asked the guy at the counter how to get the bus station, he gave us some directions then another guy started saying there was a faster way to get there then just said he would show us, Irish people are so nice! Definitely a nice change from all the grumpy spaniards. We found the station and caught a bus to Galway, a city about 2.5-3 hours away by the west coast, there was 2 old men sitting close to us on the bus going on and on in very thick Irish accents about all kinds of nonsense, it was definitely very entertaining to listen to. We were suppose to be meeting 3 other friends either in Dublin or Galway, none of our phones were getting much service so we couldn't really get in touch with each other but luckily when Mara and I got to our hostel in Galway the other 3 girls were already there. 

We all got ready and went out into the city, our hostel was pretty much in the downtown area which was awesome and convenient, not that Galway is that big anyway. We headed over to the main street for some bar hopping, and just took turns buying rounds, omg the Guinness in Ireland is soo much better than it is in north america/spain. We went to some pretty cool places, some with traditional décor, some with live music, altho pretty much nowhere was serving food which kinda sucked so we ended up getting italian food for dinner, so random right. The pasta was good but a little pricey, my friend found a little pearl in her pasta with mussels, which was random and kool! We hit up another bar then just went home because we were exhausted from traveling and we wanted to get up early to do some sight seeing the next day. 

In our hostel room there was the 5 of us, this american couple who were annoying as hell and this older guy who looked like humpty dumpty plus a couple random girls we never met. We all went to bed around 2:30 although I couldnt sleep because the couple were on the bed in front of mine and they were watcing the Big Lebowski so the light from their laptop was in my face and they kept laughing and whatever. Kind of obnoxious. For awhile I just gave up and watched it with them for a bit but i eventually wanted to sleep so I asked my friend toss me my ipod. Then there was also humpty dumpty sleeping below me, he was snoring and moving around and sneezing and coughing and whatever else, was an interesting night. Next morning we got up early and went on the tour to the Cliffs of Moher, it was gorgeous, the weather was mostly sunny with some clouds, we stopped at a few historical and cultural sites along the coast of Ireland, drove along lots of tiny roads which our very Irish bus driver/tour guide described as 'tight as a fish's ass' ahaha before stopping in this cute little town of Doolin for lunch, the fish and chips there were amazing! We got to the cliffs around mid afternoon, the sun was shining and the view was spectacular, we walked along the cliffs for awhile, taking lots of pictures and resting on cliff sides here and there. It was a whole day trip pretty much, we left around 11:30am and didn't get back till about 7pm because after the cliffs we stopped at one more site of an old castle and then drove the long way back to Galway along the cliffs. When we got back though we had to run around like crazy people trying to shower/get ready back at the hostel because there was a pub crawl our hostel was running which started around 8/8:30, it was quite a sight. 

Thankfully the couple had checked out and there was a new guy in our room, he's around our age from the USA, super tall and lanky, he was an odd ball but a pretty kool guy all the same. We felt kinda bad for him since it was just him and the 5 of us in the room when we got back and we were all running around this tiny room trying to get ready. It was actually hilarious, 5 girls fighting for the one mirror and one straightener in the room while he stood awkwardly by his bed, the poor guy. As we were leaving we noticed that there appeared someone's stuff on my bed and that there was now stuff in one of the drawers under the bed, we didn't know if humpty dumpty had checked out but it didn't look like it. So either someone had just left their stuff on my bed or I was short a bed for the night due to over booking? We asked the guy at the front desk about before we left but it said that everything was fine. hmm. Finally, we made it out to the first pub of the pub crawl, met up with some other UBC-ers that Mara knew which was awesome, and then met up with two guys from granada as well. We went to a bunch of kool pubs, we got a free drink at all of them as part of the deal, one had live traditional irish music, one had a crepe place outside, one had a live band doing awesome covers, and one even had a stag/stagette party at it, which was hilarious! They were all in ridiculous costumes and whatnot. We met some kool people from all over europe in our pub crawl group, saw lots of hilariously drunk irish people, and may have gotten some free beer here and there too aha. 

Lots of shots and beers later we ended up a club as the last stop on the crawl, we got another drink when we got there and then danced lots, the tall lanky american guy was too funny, his dancing was so bad and so entertaining at the same time ahaha probably the worst dancer I have ever seen, definitely made my night. At the bar I met a guy, tall, dark haired and Irish of course, he bought me a drink we talked for awhile longer and then I went back to find my friends. We ran into each other again a bit later, talked for a little while, then I danced more with my friends, then ran into him again and went back to bar, he bought me another drink and we talked some more, he was gunna buy me another one but by then I was definitely drunk enough so I said no, then he asked if I wanted to get out of there with him and I said yes, so went and found my friends and told them I was leaving...before you think anything too horrible of me, as you may recall there was possibly someone occupying my hostel bed which had been in the back of my mind the whole night so I actually kinda needed somewhere to stay because as it turns out they had overbooked the room and there was a girl in my bed so I would have had no where to sleep had I gone back to the hostel plus I got 22 euros back from the hostel management. Woot. Anyways, so we left the club and caught a cab to his place, he's from Galway and lived about 5mins outside of the centre, he lives with his family since he's doing his masters at Galway uni but his parents and sister were gone for the weekend so it was only him and his brother who were home for the weekend. 

Got up at like 8:30ish because I had to get back to the hostel to meet the girls since our check out time was 10am and Irish guy had to go into town to meet friends before work or whatever. Got back to the hostel, felt like death and couldn't get back into the hostel room because apparently the door code had changed, luckily Mads heard me trying to get in and opened the door. It was only like 10 to 9 but there was a girl in my bed so instead of going back to sleep I just ended up in the hostel kitchen area double fisting coffee and water, I was so freaking hungover, I actually still may have been drunk aha the only thing I had eaten the day before was a crepe and lunch at like 3pm on the cliff tour trip, definitely a bad idea to drink on such an empty stomach. There was this older irish guy and this quiet Argentinean girl sitting near me in the kitchen and we all started talking, I was pretty dead but the irish dude was so chatty I kinda got sucked into it, he definitely was missing a few marbles but he was really nice and he actually got me the coffee so can't complain. The rest of the girls started showing up around 9/9:30 and our guy friends showed up around 10 so we got our stuff together, checked out, got breaky and then headed into the main square to watch the parade. It was pretty awesome parade, so many cute kids in costumes, floats, cultural clubs, and lots of irish dancing which was kool. After the parade we ran around grabbing food and doing other last minute errands, I was finally started to get over the hangover and then we caught a bus back to Dublin just after 2, 

We got there around 4:30pm then had to find a way to contact my friend who were staying with in Dublin. Eventually we found this odd little cafe/restaurant/club place and finally got in contact with him  using the sketchy wifi, we were gunna meet him around 5:30 by Trinity college, we were suppose to meet 2 other girls from granada there too but we had barely any contact with them so we had no idea where they were since they didnt seem to be at the meeting spot when we got there. We got there more like 5:45 since it took us a little while to find Trinity college but luckily when we got there we found my friends although there was no sign of the 2 girls anywhere. We waited around for a couple minutes then decided we should just head for the apartment, and try contacting them again from there. While walking though we actually saw them across the street at an intersection purely by chance which was insane !!! Thank god tho,  who knows how long it would have taken us to find them otherwise. Luck of the Irish or something eh. 

So we got to the apartment and there was like 15-20 guys there already drinking, we threw all our stuff into some of the bedrooms then met a bunch of them (one of them was from Toronto and studied at UofT go figure) and started drinking some beer, a bit later they did another beer run so we pitched in, we drank there for awhile, at some point a few of us were hotboxing in one of the bedrooms then we drank so more..4 or 5 or 6 beers later we all headed out to find a bar/club to go to. Unfortunately sometime during the house party 2 girls had left their stuff somewhere in the living room and ended up having some money missing, we have no idea who it was or how it could have happened since there was always part of our group in the living room but there was neighbours and random friends and whoever coming in and out of the house all night..anyways the ended up freaking out and leaving for the airport around 11:30pm, it was really unfortunate, I felt terrible. When they headed for the airport Mads went with them since she had a lot of studying and assignments to work on so then it was just Aless, Kiki, Mara, and I left with the guys. 

We ended up at this club which was kinda empty at first but it was only 5 euros to get into because one of the guys we were with knew some of the people working there, so we figured why not? We didnt know at the time but the guys we were with definitely had a bit of money to throw around because we went into the club and like 10mins later we were led into one of the little side room areas with black leather couches and little round tables and soon after 8 buckets of alcohol showed up, by then there was like 30 or so of us in the small back room. Soon enough everyone was pretty gone, dancing around, going from the room back to the bar/dance floor for awhile but eventually always ending up back in the private room. I flirted with a guy from uganada and a guy from Ireland and a few others, aless drank way too much so one of the guys from the apartment took her home, eventually I started chugging water to try and sober up a bit since we all had early morning flights. Kiki and I went to leave around 3am, Mara and this nigerian guy Ed ended up leaving with us, we finally got all our shit and went out to the street and then Mara and Ed disappeared. Luckily we ran into a couple of the guys from the apartment cuz we didnt really know where we were going, we ended up at this grocery place called SPAR because we were all drunk and starving, there was like a thousand people in there so took awhile aha everything was so chaotic and messy ohman, there was one guy just outside of SPAR that had gotten beaten up and had a really bloody face and shortly after that the police showed up. There was like 2 gajillion ppl in the streets, somehow eventually we got back to the apartment, everyone was in the living room half passed out because the main bedroom with all the mattresses was being occupied by 2 of their friends having sex so me and one of the guys, Andrew went out and got pizza down around the corner which was amazingly delicious. Eventually the guys yelled at the two in the bedroom enough till they stopped so we could go in grab our shit because we had to leave for the airport and the guys wanted to go to bed. It was like 4:45 when we left the apartment, we had to leave so early since aless and kiki's flight was at 6:30am, mine wasnt till 9am but everyone besides the 3 of us and Mara were already at the airport so I didnt wanna stay at the apartment by myself all those guys. It took awhile to hail a cab because it was still super busy in the streets, these 2 girls tried to steal our cab but I bitched them out since the other 2 had to catch their flight.

We all got to the airport and split up cuz we were in different terminals, I just chilled around for awhile and eventually took a bit of a nap around 7:30-8:15 in this dark room with comfy round, red chairs where they were playing these weird 60 second movies. I got to my gate around 8:30 when the boarding was starting and was looking for the 2 granada girls who were also on my flight but ended up spotting kiki and aless first because aless was wearing her bright green top and I was like wtf?! Of course they missed their flight, they had passed out somewhere in the airport at a restaurant and decided to take a 15min nap, slept through all their alarms and missed their boarding time..epic fail (it costed them 300 euros each for the new flight.) So the 5 of us flew back together after that disaster, we got into malaga around 1:45pm, got to the bus station a bit after 2, got food and then caught the 3pm bus home, I slept the majority of the plane ride but I was studying on the bus back because I had a midterm at 5pm, so ridiculous. We literally got back into Granada at 4:45pm, caught a cab and I got to campus right at 5pm, booked it into my class and wrote my midterm ahaha I think it went ok.. I dont really know though since I was so dead...yup so there is the tale of my St. Paddy's day.