Bulgarian Gypsies are pretty guay

Hey yall! So, the last two days were pretty eventful here in Granada. First, I´ll tell the story of my trip to the airport...

So, I booked my roundtrip ticket for Spain through a travel agency and it turns out that they have some ridiculous rules that (aside from not telling us about) forced me to take a trip out to the airport to book a return ticket a few days before my ticket would have expired. I wont go into details, but suffice to say that it was a stupid rule and I would write them an angry letter if I werent so lazy. So, Ben and I paid the 6 euros to take the bus to the airport and got there before siesta to go to the only Iberian Airline office in Granada. We got to the window and it was freakin closed. I then saw a man coming out of the office so I ran to him and bombarded him with frantic questions about if the office were open that day, when, how can i get a ticket, etc... to which he responded, I dont work here. I just handle the baggage. Oops. Embarrassing. Anyways, we waited half an hour and finally a woman came to the window. We asked her about the tickets and she told us we need to go to the other Iberian office window that didnt open until 5. We waited 4 more hours. We didnt want to have to pay 6 more euros to take another trip out to the airport and we really wanted to just get this done with so we hung out in the food court area and ate airport food for lunch. We also made our own deck of cards instead of paying for the expensive packs they had in the gift shop. We tore up pieces of printer paper I had in my backpack and wrote numbers and suits on them. We managed to play go fish, jacks and five, crzy 8s, war and soem other games before getting really bored.
In the end, it was 5 and we went to get the tickets fixed. Ben had no problem since he had his booked in advance and just had to sign some papers. However, when I went to do mine, the woman couldnt find any dates open in July for me to return as I had been planning this entire year. Instead it took her ages to keep telling me theres nothing. Finally, frustrated and just wanting a way back to CA, I asked her what about his flight? He just made it so it must still be open, right? And so it turns out I will be goign back to CA the 26th of June instead of the 15th of July. Iberia, YOU SUCK.

Ok, now abotu the Bulgarian Gypsies. Ali and I heard about a concert of Bulgarian Gypsy music yesterday and went to check it out with Isaac and Laura. It was up in the Carmen de somethin or other by the Alhambra and that place is realy pretty at night. You should all take a trip up there sometime. Anyways, we get to the ticket office and it turns out its not free like the band´s manaer told Isaac on the bus earlier that afternoon. So as I was about to peace out with Ali, the manager came out and saw Isaac and magic was worked and voila, 4 free tickets. Score! It was a really fun show, although I dont think Im totally used to Bulgarian gypsy music, but fun was had nonetheless. A big gracias to Isaac. Afterwards we made some mac and cheese (since my mom sent me 7 pounds of it in the mail) and watch Love Actually. It was a good night.

And now, I have nothing to do since I was actually productive this morning and wrote my essay and read what I needed to read for class. Now, Im off to watch the Simpsons. Later!!!

My neck hurts.

I woke up today super effing early so I could get to my first day of the 830 AM class that I unfortunately decided I really like and won´t be dropping. Somewhere in the middle of that class my neck started freaking out on me. I probably slept on it wrong and I want it to go away ASAP. It is super annoying especially because I am super aware of it since I have this ginormous break between classes that isnt quite ginormous enough to go back home and come back up to the facultad. So instead I have been rewriting my notes from class (since my latent guilt of the worst academic semester of my life last cuatrimestre haunts me and propels me to kick scholastic ass this semester), eating )the workers in the cafeteria are giving me weird looks since I went in there like 4 times), and reading the newspaper (which I dont think I have ever really done before). Now, as you can tell, Im blogging. Time wasting has never been so unwanted before. But I suppose I should get used to it since I will be up on campus at 830 AM until 830PM every Monday and Wednesday. I think I´m going to be super guiri and take a nap on a bench or outside or something. I think if I dont I will possibly die in one of my later classes today. Hasta que te veo en mis sueños.

Matteo: trasladado

Bueno, lo siento a todos de vosotros que no hablan español pero por la petición de mi prima, Katerina, esta entrada de blog está escrita en español. Y sé que solo has pedido una oración en español, prima mia, pero aquí tienes todo para ti. Menos mal, no?

Como dice el título de esta entrada, estoy trasladado. Jamás recibiré correo en calle Azacayas, jamás tendré fiestas de vino y queso en mi habitación gigante...sino que mis amigos y yo nos divertiremos en PLAZA ROMANILLA! Lut y yo hemos <> (theres a spanglishism for ya) y nos hemos mudado a otro piso chulísimo. El dueño es un poco raro pero bastante simpático. Nos ha dejado un impresora y los altavoces de su ordenador que son muy buenos. Además nos va a traer una tele! Supongo que estos regalos son remuneración para el piso más sucio del mundo que también nos dejó. Lut y yo hemos estado limpiando como hipcondriacos estos últimos días. Pero creo que tendremos un piso listo para una fiestita pronto (que suerte tenéis todos vosotros aquí en Granada).

También hoy es el último dia de mi primer cuatrimestre en la universidad de Granada. Gracias a dios!! Estoy harto de las asignaturas que tengo. Me alegrará mucho el cambio de horario y temas que viene el 18. No tengo ganas de saber más de la antropología de religión (la asignatura cuyo examen final tiene lugar mañana). Que más.... bueno, no lo sé pero si ma habláis por skype quizá os puedo dar una gira del piso. Pues nada, ya está. Hasta la próxima entrada!

Mateo

Apologies, legal jargon, set ups, and my return to blogging!

Dios mio, ha pasado un mes y no he escrito nada! Whoops. Bueno, ahora voy escribiendo una nueva entrada para todos vosotros. Now, there are some lengthy paragraphs here, I know, but they are good. You should not be scared of them; just keep reading. It's so worth your while.

Ok so, where to begin... I guess I left off at my xmas vacation plans with a promise to tell you all about them. However, I think suffice to say it was way fun, way cold (about -3 celcius everywhere we went except Barcelona) and all the pictures on facebook can tell the rest of the story. I´m sure there will be tidbits I´ll recall in everyday conversation so maybe you´ll get lucky enough to hear about some cool european adventures once we next converse.

Well, apart from getting back to Granada (a super weird experience to ¨go home¨ after a vacation back to Granada) I have been busy with finals prep...which is pretty ironic because as I type I am counting down to a final in one hour and 52 minutes for which I have not quite put in as much time studying as the syllabus suggests, but what the heck, everyday is an adventure here in Spain.

Also I have been getting hella work from my job that I have been doing. At first they would send me little newspaper articles to revise and it took like an hour each, but now it seems as though I have graduated to 20+ page legal documents with complex terminology and the requirement of consistency in syntax and word choice throughout the article. It usually takes me like 3 or 4 intense days of nothing but staring at the computer screen and reading aloud to myself trying to remember how English is supposed to sound (my brain is very cluttered with Spanish grammar at this point) but it pays well enough. Oh, well, it pays well enough once April comes around that is. See, I started working for this organization at the end of their 3 month payment cycle so I got about 50 euros for all my work until now because only December work counted. So between the end of December and the payment disbursements, I have a few hundred euros that I have earned unavailable to me until 3 months from now. I'm not too sure if I like this system...

Oh, AND I got set up on a date with a 30 year old chef. Thank you very much, Lut and Anna. Now, let me explain how nightlife interaction in Spain goes for me. First off, it's always in a pub or bar (bars here serve food, pubs are exclusively drinking cuz thats just how it goes in Granada) and there is loud music and lots of noise from other patrons of the establishment. Now, if you are an English speaker and you have gone into a noisy situation with me, you already know I can barely hold conversations in the context of my native language just because of the fact that my hearing is terrible. So, here in Spain I'm usually in that same context but with Spanish, naturally. So being a guiri (foreigner) when I need to ask a Spaniard to repeat him or herself they assume I just dont speak the language because somehow, everyone here has incredible hearing and has no problem conversing in loud bars or clubs. So, when I actually do have a conversation with someone, after asking for repetition a few times, they change gears into "speak to him like he's 3 years old". So it's fun to deal with that as well as the shameless and obvious flirting that goes on here. I cant tell you how many times I have gotten the "Te voy a ensenar espanol *wink wink*" here. Then if I reject said flirting they will try to backtrack by saying something like "oh, no you dont understand, its a spanish thing. thats all." And while Im polite enough to not say anything back, in my head my response ready to go is "Yeah, I'm sure you squeezing my ass as you wink at me and tell me you're going to teach me spanish is just a cultural thing."

Alright, I need to go do some last minute cramming for my final in one hour and thirty four minutes. But I will end this entry on a happy note by letting everyone know that I eat so much shawarma so frequently that the workers in about 4 shawarma shops on calle Elvira know me and give me free stuff. Woo hoo! ....is it bad i dont even know their names?... oh well, keep the shawarma coming, dudes.

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!