I missed my second final, Historia Contemporánea de las Américas, because Danielle and I heard the teacher say the test was at "dos y media", when all along she had said the test was at "doce y media". Luckily the test was offered again at 7:30pm that night, so we came home napped and studied a little more before taking the final for real. My third final on Cervantes was probably the scariest of them all, because for some reason Erin and I thought our final was on Thursday morning. But when Erin went to a study group Tuesday night she found out the final was actually Wednesday at 8:30 in the morning. Needless to say, I pulled my first all-nighter ever (for school purposes, of course). There was no major disaster with my fourth final on literary myths of Spain. I basically got to write another essay on Don Quijote. After all the stressing and cramming, I'm so happy to be done with those classes. Those early mornings, the fight to stay awake (as you can observe in my extensive note-taking), and many a "cafe con leche para llevar por favor", has paid off and I probably learned a few things this semester like... the US civil war was fought between the northern whites and the southern slaves (???), Don Quijote is a lunatic who thought a flock of sheep was an army, Spaniards don't really like immigrants (unless their Chinese, since they're hard working), and... yeah I can't think of much else.
In between studying for finals I got to celebrate the birthdays of my two roomies, Danielle and Erin. When the clock ticked midnight on Danielle's birthday we surprised her with handle pulls, loud music, and we even made her do a birthday dance. Later that day we went to a delicious sushi restaurant off of Gran Via called 19 Sushi Bar. I ordered the dragon roll and it was delicious but I'm not so sure it rivals the dragon roll at Kyotos in Santa Barbara. Oh how I miss California food. Anyways, later that night we had a raging botellón (pregame) at our piso and then went out! Here's some fotos (not released on facebook yet by the way!).
Last night we celebrated Erin's birthday by going to La Mordida, a mexican food restaurant in Chueca. Santi and I shared nachos and fajitas de pollo. Q rico los nachos! While they don't even begin to rival Freebird's nachos, they do the job. Mexican food has definitely been one of the things I miss most about home. I'm shocked at how uncommon good Mexican food is here. I understand that Spain and Mexico have completely different cultures and blah blah blah, but c'mon, why does my Spaniard boyfriend not recognize refried beans on our plate of nachos? And why did he confuse the words frijoles and jalapeños once? I'm not surprised because he's spanish and should know, I'm surprised because I think EVERYONE should know the difference between jalapeños and frijoles.
We had a debate the other night when Santi claimed that spanish food had more variety than american food. Not possible. I've lived here for a solid 5 months and I've even grown to appreciate spanish food, but there's no way it has more variety than american food. The main ingredients of spanish food are: jamón, manchego cheese, bread, egg, jamón, olive oil and potatoes. How can spanish food have that much variety when you don't even know what beans are? But Spain, it's not your fault you don't have that much variety in your food, the only real neighboring country that would influence you is France, and we all know Spain and France aren't besties...and it's pretty obvious you haven't taken any pointers from France...since their food seems to be danker.
Now America, although you have high levels of fuel consumption and obesity accompanied by a steady decline in levels of education and literacy, your food es de puta madre. How lucky you are to have such a bountiful selection of native foods from North, South and Central America to choose from. The world can thank the Americas for avocado, chili peppers, tomatoes, vanilla, pineapple, peanut, papaya, corn, and chocolate since all these foods first originated in the Americas.
Anyways, back to Erin's birthday. After dinner we came back to our piso to drink and play with our new stereo! Our old ipod player broke somehow so we decided we needed a new one in time for Erin's birthday party. I didn't realize this, but we live literally one block away from the street in Madrid most popular
for having stereo system stores. Although the stereo is really too big for our piso... Danielle and I couldn't resist such a good deal. Even though I've had finals, I managed to make it to two soccer games in the last few weeks! The first game was Real Madrid vs. idontremember. We ended up arriving really late to the game because someone thought it started like an hour later than it did. Not fun paying 50+ euro to see half a game from the highest possible seats available. The second game was much better! A bunch of people in my program all got together at cien montaditos before the game and then we went to together. It was Spain vs. Colombia and there were a lot of roudy fans on both sides. The stadium was so full of excitement and cheering and weirdly...drum rolls. It felt like I was in a modern day Colosseum. K I can't blog anymore, tengo resaca.
Here's some more random pictures I haven't loaded on facebook for all those who have requested more photos! These are pictures from nights in Madrid and there's also a picture of the salad I like to make.
