c18 h21 no3-

recently, i sent out an email to my sisters letting them know what i'm up to here in spain. i told them i've been super sick lately, and that i'm finally going to go to the doctor after 2 weeks of self-imposed quarantine. i joked about how mom has implemented into us this hesitancy towards going to the doctor and seeking medical attention. basically, a type of approach whereby if it's not protruding and/or dangling by a sinew, then just put some robitussin on it and walk it off.

(out of 'tussin? add some water! shake it up! more tussin!)

so i call mom today to check in and be dramatic about my doctor's visit. she responded with, "what? how could you get sick? you're not even doing anything over there. just drink some robitussin!"

i shit you not.

my mom is abrasive but cute. slightly predictable but undeniably lovable nonetheless.

i've got the hook ups now with some type of codeine syrup that i'm drinking straight from the bottle all gangsta like. not as strong as what i had freshmen year that made me have vivid half-awake dreams of dancing purple dinosaurs chasing me through the forest, but i admit i was watching an episode of lost on my laptop and my head nearly rolled off my bed.

just my head, yes.

one more swig and then i'm gonna go lie down again. and stare up at my ceiling some. weeeeeeee!

hi.

ugh. it's the type of cough that keeps you up all night, and you get up in the morning feeling like you've done a million sit-ups. oh how unfortunate, you still look like shit. that's not a six-pack; that's a keg. your hair is greazy and you passed out before you changed, so now your last pair of pants are all wrinkled.

primavera is already here...can you believe? did you know that time springs forward 1 hour today? no, no one told you. you're out of the loop since you've quarantined yourself in your room all week. but nice lady, so nice lady, reminded you tonight. it's already 9:30pm! where the hell did the day go? give me back my fucking hour.

this is why you couldn't meet up for sunday coffee. because you, thinking you were right on time for once, were 1 hour late.

and such is life.

it's sunny and hot. don't you feel stupid for waiting til the last minute to pack? now all you've got are winter clothes and a big, poufy black jacket that resembles a garbage bag on rainy days.

but it's ok. it's practically april and where did the time go?

there are ups and downs and good and bad, but the lows only help to remind you how good the highs are. and oh what a beautiful high.

it's april already...

spring forward. lean back. enjoy the ride.

beautiful, beautiful high.

i can almost see home from here.

amazing.

dinner and dragshow for part II of my 21st bday celebration. food was good and cheap, and drag show was amazingly entertaining. if i hadn't been so full of gin, i don't think the strobe light effect would have gotten to me as much.

we also saw willie from real world philly macking on some bois. i would've asked him for a pic if he didn't have his hand and half his arm down some guy's pants.

21st

ahhhh sooo excited! flying to paris in a few hours to meet up with jp, dominick, and possibly rose.

an early birthday present, if you will.

i know i'll get to the sevilla airport and sit there waiting for my flight and pretend like i'm flying home to dc. it'll make me sad, but whatevs. definitely gonna be good to see some great friends.

it's been so long since last we met.

pictures from the weekend are promised.

---


grrrooowwl, says dominick.


yes, i am lame.

el carnaval update at last

we left for el carnaval in cádiz saturday 5pm and got homestay at sunday 8am. what happened inbetween was quite interesting to say the least.



crossed a few to dos off my life list which include:

- dancing in the rain
- literally standing on the streets til 5am
- getting kicked out of bars
- grabbing boobies (but only b/c they grabbed mine first)
- being asked to pose for pics with random people
- changing outside a bus station
- getting interviewed by a tranny named Devorah Cunt
- doing the whole mob/cattle herd charge when the station doors finally opened at 5am
- confirming that tim’s dress did in fact show more leg than mine

















ok, must go. running out of internet cafe time.

you can look but you can't touch

some friends and i are going to the shore to check out mardi gras-esque carnival in cádiz. we went costume shopping last night. i´m going to be a viking complete with a plastic, obscenely large bosom. tim is going to be spartacus, and the costume he bought basically looks like a bedsheet. it´s practically see-through.

i hope it rains a lot. like a lot, a lot. ;)

jk but it does look to be crappy weather. can´t turn back now though we´ve already bought our bus tickets. we leave 5pm, up all night and catch the 5am bus back to sevilla.

should be interesting. i have a feeling it will either be super fun or way crappy. we´ll see.

valentine's day and sharing

i didn't realize today was valentine's day until i opened the care package my best friend had sent to me. it was filled with lots of valentine's day goodies! how thoughtful.



i don't remember what the hell i did for valentine's last year, and perhaps nothing too extraordinary happened today, but i have a feeling i'm going to remember this valentine's for a while.

after class some of us decided to go to an actual restaurant for a valentine's dinner. there's nothing wrong with tapas and bars, but we felt like we had to sit down for this holiday. i think no one saw it coming that we would end up in a chinese restaurant. it was kinda surreal sitting there with the waitress trying to speak to us in broken english but then realizing that we could all communicate much better through spanish.

we each only spent 8E on dinner, dessert, 2 bottles of wine, and 2 pitchers of sangria.

amazing.

the service was good, and so we left a .35E tip. i'm still not used to this whole no tipping deal. we didn't want to leave nothing, but then none of us could get over the fact that .35E seemed somewhat insulting.

they wanted to stay out after dinner, but i peaced out early b/c i'm a lamer and have to get up at 8am.

the buses stop running at midnight, so i caught the last one home. while waiting at the stop i started talking to this old lady. i asked her how her valentine's day went, and she said it was ok - nothing special b/c she doesn't have a pareja. awww! i told her i don't either and offered her one of my chocolate kisses from the heart container that i received in the aforementioned care package. and oh she was so delighted! she told me to sit down next to her, and we talked while we waited for the bus to come. when it finally came, she insisted that she pay for my ride.

of course i refused but the old lady was spry and wouldn't take no for an answer. so i thank her and follow her into the near empty bus and oh how awkward! there's my friend harmony sitting in the middle. and she waves all excitedly and moves over for me to sit with her, but then i didn't want the old lady to pay for me and me not sit with her.

afdjdfsakldfsakjldfsajkl.

i stood there all confused and awkward. looking diagonally back and forth between the old lady and harmony with both of them telling me to go sit with the other.

finally we compromised. i sat with the old lady, harmony sat in front of us, and we all talked the entire way home. the old lady, Rosa, lives in the next street over from me and so i walked her home. soooo cute. she definitely made my happy mood even happier.

when i got home i actually talked to my hawt host brother pepe. i offered him some chocolates too!

in case you missed it, he's like hot.

i noticed, out of all the chocolates, he chose to eat one of my chocolate balls. which means nothing, but i wanted to point it out anyway.

moral of the story: i like sangria.

class?

univ courses start today for the semester.

the different faculty buildings are spread throughout the city.

students here pretty much just stick to one faculty for their entire studies. which sucks since i'm pretty much in 3 faculties and having the hardest time finding classes that i can make it to in time. miercoles i have class 10 -12 at the psyc building, and then 12:05 - 1:45 at the palacio which is a good 30 minutes on the other side of the city.

all 5 of my classes have this type of conflict at some point and time.

so i think it's safe to say it's the first day of class and i don't know my schedule.

anyone surprised?

obviously.

andalucia

we traveled to cordoba, jerez, and carmona this week.


me sitting on a grave in a burial ground at the roman necroplis in carmona. wow how many prepositions did i just use?

they let just walk around in the ruins and touch shit in the museums. way cool, but i'm a dork so whatevs.


one of the 4 groups of kids reenacting some roman war. this was the green bow and arrow group, the other groups were broken down by color and weapons: spears, swords, and the last group was shields.

i would have been pissed if i were a bunk ass shield. we kept running into them as they marched throughout the tiny city of carmona in battle formations and shouted war cries while deflecting deflated kick ball-esque boulders thrown at them from the palace walls of the alcazar. too cute.

i kinda wanted to play.

córdoba

today we went to Cordoba. The 1.5 hr bus trip was nice and uneventful. 5 of us were supposed to go, but 2 slept through their alarms and didn’t make it to the 9am departure. perhaps celebrating the end of class and expecting to get up in time to make it to the bus stop was a reach goal.

here are some pics:


cordoba w/ its history of la cultura arabe is all about the patio


so we took a patio tour








mezquita turned into a catedral during the reconquista


but so pretty they kept all the arches and the mihrab in tact


this is the dome of mihrab section. the position of the mihrab points to the direction of mecca


alcazar of cordoba


view from the alcazar tower


this is from the night before. a guy/hooker all in white that caught my attention


we were there all day and got home a little after 10pm. fun stuff. a day of cultural exploration to make up for a month of bad decisions and gross time mismanagement. yay!

where are the boundaries?

this whole homestay thing takes some getting used to. for instance, the other day i drag myself out of bed, stumble out into the hallway, and pretend not to notice my host senora leaning out the window and hanging my clothes out to dry for all the world to see.

she pulls herself back in and tries to make conversation while holding my underwear in some type of death grip. i kinda wanted to grab it out of her hands and run away, or at least try to explain my apparent lack of taste.

but instead i said good morning, avoided eye contact, and quickly wandered away.

tranquilo, toro.

tonight was a very much needed break from the stresses of maribel, the anorexic professor. she takes her anger and life frustrations out on me. it's ok, maribel. you're cranky because you're hungry. i forgive you.

we hung out at the waterfront. some side street overlooking the palm trees and the rio while having our very first botellón aquí.

it was pretty b/c we were facing the water and could see across the river all the lights and music coming from the nightlife. afterward, we went to a bar that was filled with people representing all countries but spain. go figure.



the music was horrid, but such is calle betis and we worked with what we had. this 30 y/o dom grabbed me and kissed me. i cannot seem to get away.

why couldn´t one of the hawt frenchies mack on me?

le sigh.

i used to feel ambivalent toward meeting new people b/c enjoying someone's company and then never seeing them again made me sad. but the book i'm reading says we should practice loving, and the best way to do that is to give our time and attention to others. b/c time is something we can never get back and so essentially we are giving up part of ourselves to them. so yeah, perhaps we will never see each other again, but at least we had tonight.

and it was a good one, yeah?

spechul shekshun

haven't been up to much, but still finding myself with not a lot of time on my hands. class is taking up a lot more time than any of us had expected. still have time to run around every now and then, and perhaps go out for some drinks and tapas, but that's probably not the best idea. or is it?

doesn't help that the profesora has pretty much singled me out to be the class idiot. i haven't made attempts to talk to her outside of class, but she's been coming up to me (before and after class, mind you) and asking me if i want to switch to a lower level.

so i'm a bit rusty. eff off. that's what i wanna say, but you know me. i like to buy into it and lower people's expectations only to later wow them with my dazzling grammatical prowess.

except i'm lazy and probably will never get around to the latter part of my plan.

everything is in spanish, but when she speaks to me--and only to me--it's in english b/c i'm just that good.

she suggested talking to lucia, the ciee coordinator, to see if i wanted/could switch from advanced liberal arts to regular liberal arts. ALA students are allowed to matriculate directly into the university system here b/c they're fluent enough in spanish to keep up in university classes. LA students aren't allowed direct matriculation and only take classes at the ciee center with other american exchange students.

i feel like everyone is either a spanish major/minor or has studied abroad for at least 10 months in some other spanish speaking country. for me, it's been years since i last touched anything related to the spanish language. most of my 2 months in chile (2 years ago?) were spent scrounging around in dumpsters looking for food and being forced to "put the lotion on" whilst my host mama walked around in leather straps and a zippered ski mask.

but i digress.

adding the fact that i'm just naturally slow, then it shouldn't be surprising that i just need a little more time to get going.

maybe i fooled the evaluators and should be in LA instead? i can understand and speak spanish well enough, but i haven't read a lick of it for the longest time.

on the plus side, i am finally starting to get a feel for what it's like for the kids i tutor and why it's so difficult to get them to read. i don't understand half of what the hell i'm reading and large, detailed paragraphs are intimidating. long chapters are impossible b/c once you get lost in the first few pages, there's no way to claw your way back. practicing helps, but you don't want to practice b/c it takes too much effort, and like i am doing now, you try to put off reading for as long as possible.

also, the influence of one's environment has been reemphasized. ever since my prof decided i was stupid, and approached me all condescendingly, i kinda don't want to show her my true spanish skeelz (1337 as they are).

this is a reminder to myself that when i go back to teaching/tutoring, which doubtlessly i will since this has been such a good learning experience for me, i should be more proactive in encouraging my students. instead of waiting for them to do well before i comment, i will comment that i know that they can do well.

wow, look at me being all grown up and shit.

enough of that. back to procrastinating. i'm going to go raid the kitchen.

boogala boogala!

ahhh!

last night i finally decided to read one of the books i brought over, sex, drugs, and cocoa puffs, but halfway through chapter 1 and the entire apartment building loses electricity. from 10pm-7am no phones or lights or anything. ghetto, but fun.

everyone eats dinner pretty late here, so the electricty went out just as my señora was setting up the table. we ended up having a candle lit dinner, with tiny candles all over the table and two big ones stuffed into empty long neck beer bottles. it was fun. and romantic.

hahaha.

today marks the first day of class. we have intensive course for 3 weeks, and then real university classes start in february. the particular group i'm in doesn't meet until 6pm. what to do, what to do? i now have 4 thick blankets along with a small heater in my room. siesta anyone?

yes, please.

¡mira quién baila!

spain has its own version of dancing with the stars!

i don't know who this guy is, but he's peekable and just did the cha cha with some chick. if i had my phone i'd vote for him, and his skin tight cha cha pants.

still can't understand much of what they say on tv, but it's mostly dancing, so all good. the overachiever in me thinks i should practice watching tv more. ;)

my first week here is wrapping up. saturday and today i got to sleep in. beautiful. from now until february 3 (pienso?) my only commitment is a 3-hour intensive course from 6-9pm monday - friday. university classes start in february after this intensive course, so we have 3 weeks to pick our classes and finalize everything.

basically, i'll have a shitload of time to wander around and take pics. speaking of which, es un poco raro porque i am realizing that i suck at being a tourist (though can you really call yourself a tourist if you've got a visa longer than 3 months?). i'll have the normal monument/art/famous building foto every now and then, but most of my pics are of everyday things that occur in the city.

yesterday, we took a tour of the church of san fernando and it was really neat b/c they're restoring it and we got to tour the crypts as we heard about its history and how it used to be a muslim mosque but was converted to a church after the conquest of spain. i prob took one pic of the whole thing. after we left, and as we were walking through the tiny streets, we stumbled across a big ass garbage truck that got stuck and was scraping all these parked cars. this was happening in front of another church where someone had just gotten married, and there were all these dressed up people standing around yelling at the truck driver for hitting all the cars...i stood there and took a shitload of pics, as opposed to my 1 or so pics from the tour.


restoration of iglesia san fernando


elena posing. they made us wear hard hats for safety reasons. for further safety reasons, no pic of me and my hat will be shown, as it was painfully embarrassing, the near inability of my hard hat to fit on my head.


walking through the maze of tiny ass alleys that look like cars couldn't fit and shouldn't pass through but trust me they do and they will. also, if you look closely, you can see the sidewalk.


ducking into a shop b/c the truck came by and would have hit us if we didn't act like we were making sweet, sweet love to the walls & also the driver saying thanks for doing so.


garbage truck hitting all the cars and the tuxedo'd people WTFing


*sorry for the semi-dark pics. the flash on my camera sucks, and yesterday it rained for the first time since we've been here (which is good b/c they're currently going through a drought), so it was cloudy to begin with. i'll take better pics cuando hace sol and share them b/c the city really is quite charming when it's not soggy.

language barriers

the other night some sketch balls were handing out business cards trying to publicize some big event at FunkyClub (poonkie cloob), doubtlessly catered toward american tourists willing to pay for overpriced food and beverages.

i did not go, but i heard it was terrible so yay for saving both time and money.

in any case, reading over the card and notice the bottom right corner says, "welcome to our bomb ass"

and just stops.

i suggest turning it over to see if it continues on the other side but nope.

welcome to our bomb ass, period.

til this day it still makes me giggle.

sad face.

this pic is from my last day in the states:



my sisters and tristan dropped me off at dulles international. everything was fine until we had to say bye and then ate started bawling like a punkass. and like a domino effect, tati and i joined in.

ok, ok, admittedly i was crying in the basement before we left the house, and so i thought i was all cried out for the aiport, but man you should see ate go at it. ;)

i thought about home a lot on the plane and as i was lying in bed my first night at the hotel, but i didn't start missing home until now.

triggered by this picture.

i kinda feel like crying, but i'm not quite sure why. things are good here, am meeting lots of cool people, and my host family is really nice. they also feed me well as opposed to that whole chicken fiasco from santiago, chile.

but sometimes, like today when i woke up from my siesta and everything was dark in the apartment, i realize i feel a little empty.

and so i went to the kitchen and jacked a muffin. i ate it in my room, like a true rexi, but it only helped a little.

so it's not a physical emptiness.

go figure.

azahar

it really is quite beautiful here. orange trees lines the streets, and john picked one for me yesterday. it tasted like a lemon, but not as bad as everyone says.




i live in triana, next to the river which i cross everyday.



the center of the city gets crowded, but in one of those romantic ways. i bet if you were to lean out the window of one building you can touch the wall of another building. this city is old, but the beautiful colors of the buildings will do well to fool you. flowers hang from overhead and it's just amazing. but don't spend too much time staring because the small alleys are really streets and at any moment a car or someone with a fashion mullet riding a moto will come zooming by.






i'm in the honey moon phase and romanticizing the city, yes. if you really want to know, it's also grimy (like any capital), has dog shit everywhere, and people pee everywhere even in broad daylight.

mama ooOooh

day 3 in seville. today we check out of the hotel ingleterra, where we've been staying for orientation, and move into our homestays. our host families picked us up in from the front lobby at 10:30am. it was weird because everyone in the program brought their luggage down and so everything was crowded, and we left our luggage to go sit in the waiting area. each of the 4 groups had their little corner, and one by one we were called and had to exit the room and head out to the lobby to our awaiting families.

it felt kind of like an orphanage, or even a pet store, and i kept hoping that i wouldn't get picked last. we were joking about how the families probably received a photo of us, and we wondered how many of us got rejected by the first family because of our less than stellar mug shots.

i don't know what to call my host senora! the double last names here confuse me just as much as the hyphenated names do in the states.

hmm, i'm sure a plaintive sounding "mamaaaaa" will do just fine. i just finished unpacking at my homestay; i'll be living in an apartment building for the next 6 months. my room is tiny, and i feel like gigantor on my little bed. i can stand in the middle of the room and touch both walls (this of course could all be a result of my big-ass-ness-ism). hahaha but this should be a good thing, as larger rooms are harder for me to keep clean.

i swear the first thing my host mama said when she opened the door was "this is your room; it is tiny." thanks, ma.

my host brother pepe lives down the hall and across from his room is an empty room where the last exchange student lived. it's bigger, but i think that's where my host dad paints and where they store random things. they've had 11 exchange students so far, and there's this american map with flags sticking out of it and all the names of their conquests, orphans, students.

the apartment is nice. 4 bedrooms, kitchen, 2 bathrooms (get my very own, which btw i just finished christening).

i'm not sure of how my internet access will be. i'm supposed to talk with my host dad when he gets home from work b/c he knows all the technological stuff. i have high hopes though, since the other 2 bedrooms have computers. right now, i am jacking a WiFi connection but i have no idea where it's coming from or if it'll always be an open connection. if that doesn't work, i still have my 40 free hours at la internetia cafe that ciee gave us. just a matter of walking my ass the hour+ there.

hahaha this little lady just came in and said she was my host mom's mom. so i kissed her twice. i've been kissing so many random people since i got here. they do the same thing in santiago, and mason thought i was on crack when i came home and kissed him. my bad. oh yes, back to the little lady. she put on an apron and started cleaning/cooking and i was thinking oh did she say she was the host mom's mother, or the host mom's maid? and then, omg did i just make out with the maid???

it's the abuela though, so phew. that would have been awkward. she said i was hermosa and kept approving of me, which is a good thing b/c i really don't want to get sent back and exchanged for some aryan looking skinny bitch.

here is a pic of my room hot off the press:



my table and bed.

and at the foot of my bed is a dresser and shelf:



it's all marble floor so it's really cold right now. perhaps i'll sneak around later and take pics of the rest of the apartment.

lunch soon. i can hear the two of them cooking, and it smells good. afterwards i'll be meeting up with some other students who live in the triana area so we can walk to the palacio together for our ciee interviews.

we're heading out for tapas tonight. i don't mind getting lost on my way home, but the thought of getting lost by myself late at night spooks me.

hola

made it to seville safe and sound.

then this guy macked on me in barcelona. or i macked on him. not sure, but he ended up carrying my luggage and paying 30E for my ride to the hotel.

swoit!

will write more when i get a chance. last night we went on a horse drawn carriage ride around the city.



tonight we're watch a flamenco performance y tapas después.

yummy.