Friday night I headed over to casa de Lizzie, Valerie, and Emily for the ‘90’s party! I was fully-prepared to get my Spice Girls on until, sadly, the ‘90’s playlist Emily had created was boycotted and then terminated. Come to think of it, it was Emily’s house so, not sure how she lost out to guests—next time. The best quote of the evening came from Amy while playing kings. Patrick had drawn a 10, which is “categories,” and he had to choose any category (like NFL teams or car brands) and then everyone had to name one until someone repeated an answer or said an incorrect answer. Pat chose “flavors.” The progression was: “chocolate,” “strawberry,” and then Amy’s: “White”…………
At this point it would have been better to swallow your mistake (she was intending for white chocolate, but still) instead of trying to defend yourself. “Amy it’s flavors. White isn’t a flavor.” “Well then how was strawberry right?!” Um…..
We then played ride the bus which is just cruel. Also, at some point during the night, I adopted a British accent.
Monday in class I nearly decapitated a poor girl sitting behind me. I was in the process of fanning Elissa off with my manila folder when I decided to pick up the fanning pace. A glossy cardstock flyer decided to whip out and bee-line it toward this girl’s face. Her head is still intact.
Remember how I said our final project for my speaking and writing class was to sample tapas bars and report which were good and bad to our fellow classmates in a Powerpoint presentation? Well, after class Monday, I joined Elissa’s group to participate in their quest since I had nothing better to do. I really underestimated the whole concept of tapas; these tapas were amazing and a good size. At the first bar we had mushroom crêpes (minus me) and pork-filled tortellini. The next stop was maybe even better—I got my cheese sticks!!!! I saw queso frito on the tapas menu and I could not stop smiling. I had literally just been telling someone a few days earlier how I really wanted some cheese sticks. Anyway, the fried cheese came with a raspberry jam which I wasn’t a big fan of, but it wasn’t too bad. The real star was Elissa’s panini—it was so incredibly good. It was basically a thick piece of French bread topped with chili con carne and melted cheese. I normally don’t eat off of anyone else, but I couldn’t help myself in this situation.
It was also a night of firsts: Chante and I tried green olives for the first time together. I don’t even remember where they came from, but she and I had both picked one up and were examining them like some objects from outer space. I had said something like “Oh, God. Here we go. My first olive.” Chante then said it was her first time too so, we decided to try it together. When I first bit into it, the juice hit my senses first, and I was actually thinking “Wow, this is pretty good,” until the rest of the olive caught up. There were so many nasty things going on in my mouth and the only solution was to spit it all out and dry heave. I saw Chante watching in horror to my reaction as I was a couple seconds ahead of her. She didn’t like them either.
The next night, I went out for tapas with my real group. Our first stop was a little modern tapas bar close to my house, El Cielo. Although it was pretty dead, the tapa was amazing! There were thinly shaved pork loins with a baguette and oil and vinegar drizzled over it. Afterwards, we headed to La Pateleta and by some stroke of luck ran into Andrea. I must add that our second tapas here was a plate of blood sausage and I valiantly tried it. Andrea had extended an invitation to join her and her friends at the chupitería (€1 shots bar) later. Ashley and I agreed to go but we wanted to try one more tapas bar with our group first which worked out because Andrea and her friends were going to a different bar before the chupitería. After splitting up with Andrea, we headed to the last tapas bar which, of course, was packed, as well as the covered patio. There was a pretty moderate rain so, we decided to just call it a night and Lizzie and Valerie decided to go home while Ashley and I were going to head over to the chupitería.
El Cielo
That's the blood sausage in the back =/
But first, Ashley was craving “fried chocolatey goodness” which sounded amazing at that point to me as well. We set out for one of her favorite places for such a treat, but it was closed =/ I then thought we should head to the Gran Vía (one of the main streets) as places would certainly still be open—wrong. Next, we headed over toward the chupitería area on Ronda (another big street) because they really should have a place open since this is the drunken area of town—wrong again. Mind you, it was still raining. Ashely had an umbrella, I didn’t. So, at this point, it has been a half hour of walking in steady rainfall. At some point we ran into an “acquaintance” of Ashley’s and I asked him if he knew where we could find fried chocolatey goodness, but he didn’t seem to care.
Fried chocolatey goodness was ditched. Both of us were wet, cold, and the tapas buzz dead, and just wanted to head to the chupitería, that is, if we could find it. I thought it was directly on Ronda, but after walking up and down Ronda for an additional 20 minutes, I was thinking this wasn’t so. I asked about three or four convenient store owners and they didn’t seem to know. By the way, here in Spain, it’s the Chinese that own all the convenient stores, not the Indians. Moving on. By some miracle, I heard English being spoken behind us as we were just pointlessly wandering in the rain. I turned around and saw two girls beginning to cross to the other side of the street. I yelled “Excuse me!” like five times before the one girl, now halfway across the street, glanced back. We caught up with them and asked them if they knew where the chupitería was. “Yeah, that’s where we’re going right now.” Thank you Jesus!
Once we walked in, we stood out like sore, sober thumbs. It was someone’s birthday from the CLM (where we attend school) and they were pregaming before the club. Everyone was up and over the moon drunk, especially this one girl I had met at Emily’s party on Friday. I had only met her that one time, but she greeted me like we’ve been friends since childhood. She was happy, so extremely happy. She then started giggling and told us how she stole the little container of sunflower seeds she had in her hands from the bar. Her next statement left me perplexed: “I haven’t even had one shot!” I didn’t think second-hand drunkenness existed but I was beginning to think she was proof, that is, until she pulled out a massive bottle of something from her shoulder bag. That would explain that.
Chupitería
Shots were definitely in order for Ashley and I. The place is pretty small, and the atmosphere isn’t one for starting impromptu dancing, and considering we didn’t really know anyone, we had to assimilate. After my first shot, I was confused by all of the bad things I heard about shots because mine was delicious! It was called a Buddha which consisted of Vodka, apple, and mint. I could drink an entire bottle of that. The sympathy for shots soon faded as soon as my second one went down. I contemplated punching the bartender for giving me straight up hydrogen peroxide. It was awful. I had heartburn for a good twenty minutes. Scratch that one from the list. Soon after, Andrea showed up and we hung out for a while longer. After shot number three we were still nowhere close to the rest of the crowd and Ashley and I had an 8:30am class that morning—time to go.
There was another mosquito in the bathroom. I was in a less-vulnerable state this time than the time before. I quickly grabbed the air freshener and used the stream of aerosol to blast the bastard on the floor. It didn’t fall to the floor initially, but was bouncing off of the wall. After a couple more blasts, it finally fell on the ground and was now hopping/hovering around. I was doing some type of Irish jig trying to position my foot above it and push down. Thankfully it didn’t take too long because I was about to pass out from all of the fresh lavender fumes.
The only thing from this past week that I’m still trying to piece together is the man I saw cruising down the street in his unicycle like it was a customary means of transportation. Was he going to work? School? Birthday gig? Possibly en route to throw himself off of a bridge?
Un saludo,
Bryce
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