Madrid

So. Lately I´ve been running around like a chicken with my head cut off this past week trying to get everything in order for leaving. Buying plane tickets, finding a hostel for my mom who is coming to visit right before I leave, trying to find someone to take over my lease, etc. I´m quitting work at the end of March so I can hang with my mom while she´s here. I toyed with the idea of having her stay in my apartment, but I soon realized that this was probably bad news. Spending 24 hours a day with The Mom for ten days with no means of escape is probably not a good idea. So I found her a cheap but clean enough I think hostel to stay in, which I think is definitely a better idea.

Okay, I have a funny story about finding someone to take over my lease. I think I have found someone, but in the most unlikely of manners....

Last Saturday I was hanging out with Nicole. She was really depressed because she had accidentally just died her hair this truly heinous shade of red-purple, so we decided to drown her sorrows in a bottle of vodka. We drank about a third of it and then headed over to my friends Cara and Emily´s apartment, where we proceeded to finish it off. Then the four of us headed off to this guy Phil´s house who was having a party. Needless to say, by this point I was rather quite intoxicated. The party itself is kind of a blur, but somehow I ended up in a conversation with this nice English bloke. We were talking, bla dee bla, and it came out that he hates where he is living because he lives WAY out of the city and doesn´t have a car or anything and he really wants to move. ¨YOU CAN MOVE INTO MYYYYY PLACE!!¨ I say. Conveniently enough as well, he has a friend who is looking to move too, which works out perfectly, because one of my roommates is also leaving at the end of March and needs someone to take over her lease as well.

Anyway, the night progresses a bit. This dude, his name is Ben, says he´s going to be spending the night and his friend´s house, also named Ben, who is the other guy who wants to move. But I say, ¨Naw, why do that? You can spend the night at MY place!¨ I think you see where this is going. Me, I was just really drunk and confused..I don´t even remember if I was consciously making a pass, but I suppose that´s what it amounts to. So later we leave the party, he comes back to my place, and inevitably, we end up making out, and he spends the night and stuff. It was, of course, really fun, but I´m not like, super into this guy at all. The next day, Sunday, I have a bit of a hangover, and so does he, and he ends up hanging around my house for a while. Some might say a little too long. We talk and stuff. He´s a nice guy. His English accent is out of control. But still, eh, not super into him.

BUT..I´m still very interested in him or his friend taking over my lease. So Ben 1 and Ben 2 come over last Wednesday to check the place out, and it seems pretty okay to them, so they call Jose the landlord and I really think it´s going to work out that these guys are going to move in. Who´d a thunk it? What a way to find subleasers. Hahahaah. So I guess, when it really counts I can make it happen. I think the key is to get completely, completely drunk. Then I´ll talk to anybody. Ah, liquid courage.

But anyway, the thing is, this guy Ben is super into me. I think he likes me a lot. On Thursday he texted me saying they had talked to Jose and it looked like everything was going to work out and oh by the way did I want to do something on Sunday maybe we could hang out or something. I didn´t reply to him right away because I was going to a class. So, about 20 minutes later, he texts me again. Just in case I didn´t get the message. Oh hi just texting again my phone is shagged so I´m not sure you got my other message but looks like everything is going to work out, oh by the way do you want to do something Sunday? I, once again, didn´t reply, and didn´t even read the message, because I was teaching. But then, I get a PHONE call, which once again I don´t answer because I don´t recognize the number and I´m in class. But then, I get ANOTHER phone call, so I´m like, UGH, and I answer it. And it´s him of course, so I talk to him for a second but tell him I´m in class and I´ll text him later. Which I do.

Why is it never the ones I really like who chase me like this? I hate men. I really do. Gonzalo today has for like the upteenth time flaked out on me. We were going to hang out but something came up, as usual. Fuck him. But the thing is I probably partially like him beCAUSE he keeps flaking out on me. What is wrong with us?? Why do we do this to ourselves?? Fucking AAAAAAA. I´m not sure what to do about this Ben kid either because well, I´m not that into him, but he totally wants to hang out, so why not I suppose...why should I turn down this opportunity for easy, care-free play? Besides, he has a real job and stuff so maybe he´d buy me dinner. God I´m such a bitch!!! Only human though... But the thing is, he´s probably going to move into Stacy´s room on the 29th of March, which means we´ll be living together for a good week and a half before I go back to the US. That could potentially be very awkward. Or..a potentially very short booty call. Augh! I don´t know what to do! Well, I´ll probably hang out with him, that´s what I´ll probably do. Eh, whatever. It´s not such a grave situation I suppose. Either way, it looks like I´ve found someone to take over my lease, and that´s cool.

Okay, so my plans over here have changed a bit. I got the job working in Alaska, which is totally awesome. For a few reasons. 1) mucho dinero. 2) I wouldn´t spend any of the dinero because there´s like, nothing to spend it on, and they pay for our housing and food. 3) Mel will be there, and we´ll probably be roommates. 4) It´ll probably be the most awesomest experience ever.

But, the thing is, I have to start working in the middle of APRIL, so I have to leave Madrid in like a month and a half! This is a lot sooner than I had mentally prepared myself for. So I´m just like..aaaughgh..woa. That´s soon. So now I´ve been scurrying around trying to find plane tickets, I need to find someone to take over my lease as well because if I don´t I´ll have to eat the deposit, not to mention piss off my landlords which I don´t want to do because I want to live in the same building next year. Besides they were so totally nice to me in helping me move and everything. And my mom is coming at the end of March and she´s going to be here until I think April 6, and I´m probably going to fly to Seattle April 10, so that´s like..not a lot of time. And I´m just trying to deal with all this stuff...

I am a little worried about experiencing some SERIOUS culture shock moving from Madrid, a city of over three million people when on any given day I probably see over a thousand faces, to a tiny-ass remote little island off the coast of Alaska that is only a few square miles around and has no permanent residence. There will only be like 20 people living and working there, so the pool of potential friends is relatively small. I will, however, definitely have Mel to hang out with, and all you REALLLY need is one good friend to be happy. Others are always welcome, but the one at least is necessary. Besides, Jacob Berg will also be on the island, so maybe we can be friends. Or..not.

I´m not sure what job I actually will have working there. Probably something retarded like doing the salmon bake, but I really don´t care a whole lot. As long as I´m busy, and that I definitely will be. In April I´ll be doing ¨maintanence work,¨ whatever that means. Probably cutting bushes and stuff.

OH, but I forgot to tell you the funniest thing about all of this. Okay, so Ron, the dude who hired me, last week before I had the job he called me and said he saw my application and wanted to call me for a phone interview. I was a little confused about the time change, so I told him to call me between 11 pm to 1 am my time over here, when I intended to tell him between 10 and 12. But anyway, he emails me and says, okay, I´ll try to call you Friday. Friday? I thought. I was planning to make dinner and get drunk with my roommates. So Friday night we´re hanging out, we make dinner, I´m drinking just a skosh but taking it easy because I know he´s going to call me. So it´s like 11, 12, 1..he hasn´t called. So I think, fuck it, he´ll call me later, and start to drink away. So then, wouldn´t you know it, he calls me at like 2 in the morning, and I´m totally drunk! I would not go so far as to say trashed, but definitely intoxicated and above the legal limit. So I saw the phone ringing and I´m like, holy shit, should I answer? Aw, what the hell. So I DO answer. And I totally had my phone interview drunk off my gord! And I got the job!! AAHAhaha. How hilarious is that. If Ron turns out to be cool, I´m going to have to tell him about this. I did however get the job due in no small part to Mel´s words of praise and also Gretchen´s, for which they have my eternal gratitude.

Oh, and I need to tell you something else hilarious. Okay, so a few months ago I was waiting for the metro, and this girl standing next to me started talking to me in Spanish, and we had a nice little conversation, at the end of which we exchanged numbers. I never intended to call her, but I was like eh, what the hell. So the other week she actually CALLS me and invites me to go out on Saturday. Her exact words (loose translation from badly understood Spanish) were, ¨My friends are having a party..you should come¨ or something like that. So I´m like hey, party, why not. She tells me to meet her and her friends at a metro stop at 5:30. What kind of party starts at 5:30? I wonder to myself, but quickly disregard. So I meet this girl, and she has a couple of friends with her, one of whom decides to hit on me aggressively throughout the rest of the evening. Unfortunately however, he was not cute.

But anyway, so I´m with this girl and her friends, and we go to this building, down into the basement into this room which is set up for like a meeting with chairs in rows and a table at the front with a boom box on it. Uhhh..where´s the vodka? I think to myself. So I´m like talking to this girl and her friends, when I notice out of the corner of my eye a book that looks suspiciously like a Bible. Is..is that a Bible? I think to myself. Naw... But then I see another one. And another. And it becomes readily apparent to me that somehow, miraculously, I had found myself in the middle of a church youth group meeting!!!!!!! Soon thereafter everyone stands up and starts singing Bible songs in Spanish, and I find myself clapping along and thinking, this is one of those moments in life where you really have to look around and wonder WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOING HERE???? So, I just went along with all that was happening for the full hour and a half, at the end of which the youth group leader guy asked me if I wanted to accept Jesus (that´s hey-sus to you) into my heart, to which I responed a resounding, No. He seemed dissapointed.

Anyway, after that I hang out with this girl and her friends for a little while longer and then went home. What a weird, weird thing to happen.

Besides that though, nothing too out of the ordinary these days. I´m getting my haircut in about an hour. We´ll see how that turns out.

the shit finally hit the proverbial fan with my roommates this past week. My oh my oh my. This is what happens when instead of actually discussing a problem you have with someone with that person face to face, you talk to everyone else exCEPT that person about it, including the landlady, and bitch quietly on your own without actually trying to solve the problem. I don´t think I mentioned this before but a few weeks ago my landlady, who is pretty nice, encountered me in the hall one day and said that she had heard there was some ¨tension¨ in my apartment, and that there was a room opening up on the fifth floor, and if I wanted I could move in. I thought about it, but then decided not to bother since, well, I´d been in my place for a while, moving is a pain in the ass, and who knew what my new rooommates could be like. I could have been moving out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Then, last Sunday, the shit went down. Okay I´ll make this brief. To make a long story short, Martin, instead of simply asking me to clean this little bit of food I had left out of the sink, wrote a sign and put it on my door telling me to do it instead. I thought that was entirely lame, so I went up to him and told him, look, if you have a problem with me, why don´t you just tell me instead of putting a stupid immature sign on my door. Anyway, after that, it all came out that, well, I´ve been bitching about my stupid roommates for a while now, but little did I realize that at the same time, they had all been bitching about me. Apparently, as Martin explained, none of them liked me, and none of them wanted me there. They would all be a lot happier if I moved, thank you very much. So...yea. I don´t know who it is that whined and tattled to the landlady about me, what about specifically I don´t know because I haven´t exactly been a bad roommate (and besides, she wasn´t mad at me at all), but you would think that if they wanted me out that badly, why didn´t they tell me BEFORE when Chelo was offering me a room to change into?? Are they really THAT passive aggressive? Are they really THAT afraid of confrontation? Apparently so.

So in other words, my living situation quickly became very, very, VERY uncomfortable. I would come home, and no one would even look at me. I would move into the salon to eat or something, and whoever was in there would get up and leave. I really, really don´t understand what I did to deserve this kind of treatment. Why don´t I know? Oh yea, because no one ever TOLD me they had a problem with me. Call me crazy, but don´t you think it´s more effective to tell someone something that is bothering you, so they can change it, rather than whine and bitch about it to each other and ostracize that person without him or her knowing why? At first, after this falling out with Martin, I was like, fuck them, they can´t kick me out if I don´t want to move. But I quickly realized that that would be cutting off my nose to spite my face, so I went and talked to Chelo about moving. Of course the room she had offered me was now filled by Charles, the silly drunk goof who previously lived on the first floor. But, thank God, Charles was nice enough to switch rooms with me, so now he´s in my old room, and I´m on the fifth floor. He´s friends with my other stupid roommates anyway, so he´ll be happy there. He was also nice enough to help me move all my shit, which I am eternally grateful for. I don´t think there´s anything much lonlier than having to move by yourself...

So my new roommates are three American girls, Jenny, Stacey, and Amber, all teachers, and all quite nice and friendly. Also a girl from Chile, who doesn´t speak English, which is great because I have to practice my Spanish with her then. Also Amber´s boyfriend who is from Argentina lives with us, though not officially. This is a much happier situation. I still feel kind of awkward though. I am like, super super nervous that I´m going to do something to make them hate me too, so I´m being probably over-careful about cleaning up and stuff. I just don´t want to piss anyone off. I still kind of feel like the odd one out though, because Jenny, Stacey, and Amber are already quite good friends...anyway I don´t know. Everyone has been nothing but perfectly nice to me, but I still feel a little strange. I almost feel like, damaged from the other situation. A little broken or something. I mean, I´d never been in a situation like that before. Where everyone you live with, literally HATES you. Like, you´re not home, they´re hanging out, feeling fine. You come home, and instantly, they are less happy. I mean..ughhgh. Bad, bad energy. And I really don´t understand it. I don´t understand why this happened. Maybe if someone had TOLD me, yea, that would have helped.

But let´s look on the bright side. This new apartment is way nicer, with a MUCH bigger kitchen and salon. But only one bathroom. My room is smaller, but also cheaper. And, best of all, I dón´t have to live with someone who smells like rotting dog carcass anymore. All in all, the good outweighs the bad.

This week has just been a hard, hard week. On Monday, the worst day of my life, before I knew for sure if I could move or not, I went to my class with my two eight year old brats, only to discover that the family had actually called Canterbury to cancel the class for good, but nobody had bothered to call me and tell me. So then I had an hour to kill before my next class, and I didn´t want to go home, so I ending up just sitting on the curb somewhere and bawling my eyes out. And I told you I was starting that class at eight o´clock right? I don´t remember if I said this, but I have to take the bus to get there, which is really really confusing. Tuesday I managed to find it alright. Thursday though, I tried taking a different bus that supposedly went to the same place and ended up getting COMPLETELY lost and wandering around for 45 minutes trying to find the place until basically, class was over, and it was too late. That really, really sucked. And when I was coming home on the metro, all dejected and defeated, I was walking down the stairs to the platform, and it was super crowded, and I ran into this old man (he ran into me, really..well, it was mutual) and he scatched me with his nasty old man fingernails and started screaming at me. And the other day I had my class with my eleven year old boy Eduardo, and then after the class on the metro I realized that my blouse was like completely unbuttoned and had been probably for the entire class. Okay, that´s kind of funny, but also rather awkward. At this point on the metro I had to make a difficult decision between leaving it open and hoping no one would notice, or reaching down to my shirt and fixing it, thereby drawing a significant amount of attention to my boobal area. I chose the latter, and the woman standing directly in front of me was kind enough to pretend she didn´t notice.

I don´t know, I´ve been having a hard time. I´ve been feeling really quite homesick and lonely lately. But it´s hard though because the home that I miss no longer exists, you know? I don´t really have anywhere to be homesick for. Which maybe makes me feel more homesick... And I keep talking about going out and meeting more people and then not doing it. Fucking A. Well, maybe though, these new roommates of mine actually are interesting people and do more than sit around every Saturday night playing Risk and getting drunk off Champion brand cerveza. Maybe I can go out with them some, expand my horizons. If I can get over this weirdness I feel with them. It´s bad...because I feel a little weird, so I act a little weird, they pick up on the weird way I´m acting and start to think I´m weird and then act weird in return and then it just snowballs. I think this is part of what happened with the former roommates. But I don´t know how to like, not feel weird you know?