Perks of living by a bar.

So when I was looking for pisos here in Granada it was always in the daytime, of course. Therefore, I never noticed that the piso O chose is literally the building next to a bar by calle Elvira. Quiero decir, it´s loud. Most of the time it´s very bearable and I´ve learned to ignore it at night if Im gettign to bed early but some nights loud drunkards stand in the street and yell things or start singing and clapping. Clapping is HUGE here. It´s like... beatboxing except EVERYONE does it. Not just the rap/hiphop inclined. Anyways, there have been times when I am woken by the Spanish voice of a colonel Sanders (yes, the KFC man) who stood in the street convincing a younger man to follow him in his political crusade against the king of Spain. Once the man saw me staring at him he pointed to me and yelled ¨el enemigo!¨ (the enemy). I immediately closed my window shutter and huddled in the dark corner half expecting the man to try to throw something through my window or come up the stairs and who knows what. But everythign worked out and colonel Sanders hasn´t returned since.

So that is a fun story, I know, but what really prompted me to write this blog was a man yelling outside just today. At 3:17PM to be exact. Not AM as usual since the bar closes about then, but in the middle of the afternoon in the middle of siesta. Rude. He was screaming about how a woman left him and it really hit a chord with me when his voice cracked as he yelled. So sad, so emotional, so hilarious. He kept calling her a ¨sinverguenzas¨ which is like a shameless person but it´s a big insult that packs more of a punch here. Then he started having a dialogue with her in his head, but only speaking his side of it. So I would hear ¨claro que no puedes! claro! Sinverguenzas! Como que no puedes?! Eh!? Que te de por el culo! Puta!¨ It was really funny. I even looked out my window to see what this spurned lover looked like and although I couldnt see him I could see all the other people passing by on the street stopping and staring at him. There was a dog that wandered into the street right by the bar and the origin of the yelling and I assumed it was his dog. The poor thing looked so embarrassed to be with that guy. I actually had it´s ears back, its tail between its legs, and kind of a pissed off look on its face. I named it Scout because thats a cool name that actually makes sense unlike other dog names here where for the most part are 4 letters long and alternate consonant, vowel, consonant, vowel. Like Deka, Moko, Luri, etc etc...

Fun times on calle Azacayas.

Loja.

It's a small town about an hour to the west of Granada set in a valley with the autovia on one side and beautiful, nearly untouched mountains on the other. Todya was my first time visiting. We caught the bus at 9AM and arrived at about 9:45 on this Sunday morning. Now, if you are to learn anything about Spain, especially rural or southern Spain, you should know that on Sunday, people sleep in and shops do not open. So we arrived in the deserted Loja with not a clue of where to go so we aimed ourselves toward the mountains and started our journey into the city. In the entire walk through the center of the town we saw maybe 4 people total. However, we did see an unnatural amount of dogs running about or barking at us from behind fences and balcony railings. Something was very wrong.

Turns out, as rumor has it, that people get turned into dogs when they go to Loja. And all the dogs are barking trying to warn the non-canine visitors and citizens of the town to get the hell out while they still can. BUT the genius of Loja is that people are turned into small dogs. Not like Australian shepherds or golden retrievers. Rather small ones with shrill barks that drive anyone crazy instantly. So no one listens to their warning. Ok well, this was the rumor about the town we made up while we were there. But I sure hope it sticks. Some other interesting things we found out about Loja are the following:
- The Lojan mafia buries their victims upside down so the feet are at the surface of the ground. We found the foot of someone while frolicking through a field.
- All the old men of the city take their morning walks on the dirt roads in the back of the town. And the rest all drive identical tractors along those same roads.
- Maria cookies make excellent Frisbees if you throw them from the mountain tops ...and if you know how to throw them right.

Other than those things, our trip to Loja was a great success especially after our steep hike/rock hopping when we bought Magnum bars (for those of you not in Spain, they are some of the BEST icecream bars you will ever taste). Also, today I felt a big step into integrating myself into Spain and the Spanish life. Not sure why, but on the bus ride back to Granada I was looking out the window and felt very at peace with my spanish surounding. Yay!

Im makin risotto!

This is pretty exciting. I am literally in the proces of making asparagus, spinach parmesan risotto right now in the kitchen. Im sittign at the table stirring and chopping and typing all at once. And let me tell you, this risotto is going to be BOMB! it already tastes really yummy and i havent even added in the veggies yet. Oh lord, Im excited. Ill let you all know how it turns out. And ill take a picture too. Im so gourmet.

Anyways, last night was pretty fun. I learned a new card game from Ali and I will be playing it many times more when drinking with friends... or strangers. So the premise it that you deal out the whole deck first and someone picks a category. For example, fruit. So each person takes a turn and flips down a card kind of like war or egyptian rat slap or a game of that sort. So you never know what card is going to come up. But if someone plays the same card as someone else has on their turn those two people must then shout the other's name. So I'll recap how it went last night.

I play a 4, Emmy puts down a queen, Ben plays a 4. Uh oh! I start shouting banana! No, shit, that's my fruit. Kiwi! er, peach, shit shit shit and Ben yells out banana! So since he said my fruit before I said his, I lose and take all the cards he has played in front of him. His fruit was pear. So the game continues like this until someone runs out of cards. It gets creative with the categories too. One round we played vulgar words or expressions and there was a lot of nonsensical cussing going around the room. Anyways, you should all try out that game.

Thsi just in, the risotto is delicious. I am really really proud of myself. Oh and for the non spanish speaking readers of my blog, sorry for the occasional spanish rant such as in my last entry. That was the alcohol talking. Talking in Spanish. Ok so. not much more to report right now. I'm gonna go eat my super yummy risotto now, buen aproveche to me!