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!

I AM SO DRUNK BUT NONETHElESS GLAD THAT LAURA WILL BE IN BUDAPEST WITH US!!!

as the title states, drunk. Yes, i am. but Lut is more drunk and throwing up in the bathroom now. I feel bad because I know she has a lower tolerance than me but I played card drinking games with her anyways until this point of vomiting.

IM SORRY LUT! But in good news, Laura will be joining me and Max and Emmy in Budapest (provided we find a train to get there from Zurich) and it will be a blast! I can´t wait until the navidad break....after my anthropology of religion presentation where I have to speak in front of a class of many Spanish speaking students in Spanish. Oh I am so nervous. But thank god today was my last day of work so I have many more hours (24 per week to be exact) to work on academia and make me not get deported for failing classes. No worries to all of you reading this, I promise I´ll pull off at least passing grades (if not better, for you padres mios) and wow i can´t write more because it´s nonsensical and its amazing that I can still speak in one language. Porque hablar en español es demasiado difícil para mi ahora mismo y prefiero comunicar todo lo que me ha pasado en una lengua que tiene razon. Espe, eres la unica persona que conozco que es española y que lee mi bl0g, entonces perdona mi estado de estar emborrachado y disfruta el blog como si no fuera tan emborrachado! jajajaja, bueno, ahora me acuesto porque este blog se convierte en..... basura. No tengo ni pies ni cabeza ahora mismo. Hasta mañana cuando no estoy borracho!

matt

(submit comments with suggestions of a title for this entry)

Exciting piece of news number 1. Tomorrow is my last day of my receptionist job. Its been only a month at Hostal AB and at first I thought my intense desire to flee from that job was a sign of patheticness, but it turns out, no one really likes the boss. I hope he doesn´t facebookstalk me and find out I have a blog and read this, but you guys should know. He´s a creeper. I think a large part of me having no ganas de staying there was him. Right from the get go he made me kind of uncomfortable. Oh well, that short short chapter of my life is reaching its proverbial final period.

Also, my plans are solidifying for this navidad break coming up. Here´s an outline so if any of you are in the same place at the same time we can meet up and find somehow to not freeze to death (average predicted temperature for this trip is about 3 degrees celcius). In any case, *December 23rd- I catch my .01 cent flight to Barcelona Girona and then make my way into the city from the tiny airport in the middle of nowhere known as Girona. Hopefully rendezvous-ing with Max will happen since we are staying in the same hostel, Sant Jordi Diagonal. Then at some point Emmy and her family step into the picture and there is joy and merriment as Christmas passes.
*December 26th- I fly out of the MAIN airport of Barcelona (eff you ryanair!) and arrive a few hours later in Zurich, Switzerland where the temperature is sure to be close to freezing with a RealFeel temperature of -5 degrees. FANTASTIC! But thank you to Max´s uncle who is letting us stay at his place for a few days while we wander through the Swiss winter wonderland.
*December 30th- Although this is still in the planning stages, hopefully it will solidify later today when Emmy and I have a planning party... We catch an overnight train, with beds and everything! so exciting!, to Budapest, Hungary where we check into the hostel with an unpronounceable name where we will reside until New Years. Hopefully there will be awesome parties and things to go to. Emmy´s cousin recommended a really fun bar that occasionally puts on drag shows, which would make great photo opps for facebook albums. I can imagine now, ¨Me and Minnie Coffee in Budapest on New Years. We later took shots of absinthe.¨ How bad ass will that be? Well, painful too, you ever had a shot of absinthe? It burns.
*January 2nd- I have to go to class soon so I´ll wrap this up. We will take a train to Vienna, Austria for four days (hostel yet to be reserved) and have much much Viennese fun until we return home by ryanair....*sigh* to Granada on the 7th... or 6th. I cant remember. Good thing we´re having a planning party today.

Off to anthropology! Hasta la hora!

stupid granada weather...

So here in Andalucia it doesn't rain much. However when it does, it RAINS if only for 10 minutes. Today I was at work and as 830 rolls around and its time for me to make the 20 minute treck home, it begins to pour, naturally. So I decide to take the bus home and walk down to Camino de Ronda and lucky for me there is no bus stop to be found. So I keep walking until I get all the way to the end of the street (soaked, of course) and I decide screw it. Im buying an umbrella. So I walk into a.... I hate using this word....chino, and buy an umbrella and literally the second I step outside it has stopped raining. So not only am I soaked already, I have an extra umbrella. THe rest of the way back home I walked under the rain gutters that spilled water into the street just so I'd have an excuse to use my new, excessive umbrella.

Now for an anecdote about how I'm a total nerd. Locale - Anthro of Religion class. People - Rachel, Lauren, Ben, me. Topic - Spanish, as usual. Ben comments that its interesting that when Spaniards say things like ski or spanish, they actually say "esqui" and "espanish". However, with words liek super, it just comes out "supe" not "esuper". He then said, "I wonder why that is." Now you all know I am a sucker for linguistics and it just so happens that in my Structure of Romance Language class back in SC we cover exactly this topic. I was so excited that I was actually fidgeting waiting for him to finish his sentence so I could chime in and explain this. When it was my turn to talk, I thought to myself, speak slowly and clearly and not too stupidly excited so they dont think you are bizarre and possibly asthmatic. I then overcorrected by having the excitement stress my voice and I started talking like I was panting or something. My moment of linguisticy glory had corroded into embarrassed wheezing, basically. Entertaining, right? I thought it was blog worthy..

Que mas... oh, I'm 21 now for those of you who werent in the facebook birthday notification loop. Yes, I got cards and presents (mostly alcohol, but the good stuff) and a email from my dad that said at one part "we're going to go out for cocktails once you get back." and I imagined to myself that scenario. I would walk into a bar or restaurant or wherever and order somethign deliciously sophisticated and of course, alcoholic, and then they'd ask me for my ID. I can understand how on your 21st birthday you actually WANT to get carded but I feel like after a year in Spain where the drinking age is .... well, its not all that clear if there is one actually. But my point is, I think I'm going to feel insulted if I'm carded. I mean, I'll not only have been a year into drinking in anyestablishment and buyingn alcohol whenever I want, but I'll already be 7 or 8 months into being 21. Anywho, I made a really dlicious veggie over rice dish with homemade peanut sauce and I really want to eat it. So hasta luego everyone~

Guest post - Wine, Scrabble (as in Scramble) and Cominos

Shalom!
Ali here. You may or may not know me. I am a friend of Mateo's. He's a super nice guy. And I'm a generally nice girl. We get along well.
I am in Mateo's cocina. Ben and Emmy just left to buy more vino. Mateo wonders if we should chip in. "Girlfriend" by Avril Lavigne is playing. He says this is the better version. He is taking out the trash. He just said "berb" as in to signify "brb".
Anywhos. This is Ali, still. We just created a bizarre form of food. Digression: we just took a shot. It tasted like scope. Normally I don't use scope. It really hurts my mouth. Germs don't go easy. Mateo is drinking milk now. And he added this bizarre scope business. Green milk.
Hokay. So. About our dinner.
Setting: Mateo's kitchen, Albaicin, Granada, Andalucia, Spain, Iberian Peninsula, Europe, Eurasia, Western Hemisphere, Earth, Solar System, Milky Way, Universe.
Time: Right now? About 23.27
Peoples: Mateo, Emmy, Benjamín, and yours truly
Food: Turkey Pancake Scrabble. Yep, it's as good as it sounds. It has turkey, potatoes, eggs, milk, butter, salt, pepper, cominos (lots of), and romero. You should try it.
Drink: Vino and scope

What else to say? Very little. Over and out.
Pace,
Ali