


So I haven't updated you on my shenanigans in a while and I have A LOT to tell you!! there will be a Carnival blog to follow this, which I am sure you are all insanely interested in because the only way I can accurately describe Carnival in the Canary Island is INSANE! First I want to update you on the excursions that my lovely and beautiful roommates took part in the weekend before we embarked to Tenerife and surrounded ourselves with glitter and insanity. So here we go:
FIRST OFF: ALWAYS BRING MORE THAN ONE SET OF KEYS OUT WITH YOU!!
Yeah, sounds simple right, but when your three girls and you all live together why bring three key rings with the same keys especially when you are about to go dancing and there are pick pockets everywhere. WELL! We assume we never leave each other's side but hey accidents and insanity happens and sometimes you end up at a club crowded with people, your roommates no where in site and you have no keys to get into your building. STORY TIME!!
So we had a three day weekend, and to celebrate a bunch of us decided to go out to a really famous club here in San Seb called Bataplan (WHICH I SWEAR IS CURSED... but thats a different story.) We have a few cocktails and meet up with our friend hannah, and our guy friends: Jeff, Ben, Jeff F, Brent, Tyler and Dan. We are all stoked on life and ready to have a good time and decide to dance the night away. We alternate in going into Bataplan and a bar just a few blocks away called Molly Malone's and beers are being poured and every one is having a great time. We all go back to Bataplan, and I am dancing with Ben and Brent and Morgan and Hannah are no where to be found. I then turn around and Ben and Laura are gone so Im like okay me and Brent will just keep dancing and they will come back. THEY DON'T. So we start looking for them and cannot find them and obviously this is an issue because only one of us has keys to our apartment and it sure as hell not me!
So its around 5 AM and we are all tired we are calling Ben's phone, mine is out of minutes and neither Laura nor Morgan brought theirs either. So Brent and I end up finding the two Jeffs and we end up walking back to their apartment. They tell me I can crash there and everything will be fine which is great but I am still wondering where the hell everyone is. We finally get back, get ahold of Ben, who is with Laura sitting outside OUR apartment building and I can here Laura in the background going ALLIII!!! so apparently, she doesn't have the keys either... MORGAN HAS THE KEYS!
SECOND OFF: PULL OUT COUCHES SAVE LIVES!
Neither one of us have no idea where her, hannah, and tyler and dan disappeared to but Laura and Ben come back to ben, the Jeffs, and Brents apt and Laura and I are lucky enough to sleep on their pull out couch in the living room. and let me tell you, we CUDDLED! haha. But not after each boy, one by one, came out and delivered us blankets, Ben closed the blinds for us, and Jeff played us good night music from his computer. Talk about adorable. So we go to bed laughing at this situation hoping that Morgan is okay, and the Hannah made her bus to Barcelona that was leaving at 7:30 AM. By this time the sun is coming up, it is almost 8 in the morning and we are just going to bed.
The next morning comes and we awake to Morgan's voice coming into the living room shouting us to wake up and that spending the night in our apartment alone is no fun! We were so happy to see her and us and all the boys laughed and kicked it for a little while. Also, Morgan came PREPARED! With money for us all to get Ice cream for breakfast to celebrate life, and with numerous ideas to go on hikes and have a great Friday. So we leave the apartment, Laura and I still in our dresses and tights from last night ( The old ladies were not pleased with our walk of shame attire). We get ice cream, eat it outside and finally head back to our own apartment where we change into work out clothes and go hiking with they boys for some afternoon adventure. It was great and later on the 3 of us ended up surfing at sunset and the water was amazing and the waves were PRIME! Poseidon definitely loved us that day.
So it can be said that every night here is basically an adventure and keys should be a must have at all times. Pull Out couches are insanely comfortable here in Spain and every guy should take some damn notes on how say good night properly to girls. Warm blankets and pearl Jam can do the trick haha. Random. Funny. Sporadic nights are my favorite.
But if you think this blog is over you have another thing coming...
So then Saturday hits and Morgan, Laura, and I decided to go on a day trip to the city of Bilbao which reminded me a lot f San Francisico to see the famous Guggenheim Museum. It was amazing! to say the least. The architecture was beautiful and I could not believe all the crazy, awesome, beautiful, and sometimes different pieces it had to offer. I was able to see three original Andy Warhol's which I was very STOKED about knowing that he is my favorite artist and being able to stand there and wee the actual piece rather than a print in my room was Phenominal. I saw "150 Marilyns", "Orange Disaster Number 5" and "Self Portrait" all done by him, all amazing. There were plenty of other pieces that I fell in love with and if you check my face book album I snapped a few pics so check em out!
After the Guggenheim we decided to get a glass of wine, and once again celebrate life and eat some ice cream in a bar near by. It rained all day but it wasn't too bad and the city was still very beautiful. I could tell that the waiter was a little concerned when all we ordered was ice cream and Vino Roja but he laughed and served us anyway. After that, we decided to get more wine and drink it in a park we found while exploring, but instead of getting one bottle we decided it was a much wiser decision to drink a bottle of wine each and walk around with it as we arrived at the park.
Something that we have learned in Spain is to preface things. Often our actions our prefaced with the question: Will this be frowned up?
and the answer is usually, YES! but we do it anyway and almost always enjoy our decisions. The Abuelas were not very pleased watching three Americans walk around with wine bottles in their hands and we got a lot of scowls and frowns but continued to enjoy ourselves on a ledge we found in the park that sheltered us from the rain.
and then the creeper came to talk to us... his name was Haviv and he was trying to speak to us in english with the same three sentences over and over and it was really weird and awkward so after a few sips of wine Laura thinks its a great idea just to hop over the ledge and escape from him and drink our wine elsewhere. Morgan and I being hesitant about this decision still do it and safely hop to the ground. Laura, however, slips and falls in the mud where her ass of her jeans is now covered in dirt. Not only is this seriously really funny but becomes more hilarious due to the fact that Creepy Haviv points and laughs at her too! We made a spectacle of ourselves and every one in the park is looking at us and we seek refuge to help Laura clean off her pants on a bench and finish our wine. It was sooo funny. We laughed for a good ten minutes and were very thankful that we were able to get away from the creepster with ease even if Laura fell and took one for the team. Seriously, as I write this I am cracking up because she literally just slipped right onto the ground and it was the funniest thing I have seen in a really long time. If only my explanation could do it justice.
The night was followed by empty wine bottles, awesome pinxtos and beers at a bar, mass amounts of souveneirs for purely no reason at all, and Laura and I on a quest of nonsense to find cigars. THEY ARE NOT CALLED CIGAROS IN SPANISH! just fyi. All those translation book are wrong. But I will not bore you with a Spanish lesson and we will jump to the fact that we missed our train home. We got the time wrong on the schedule and showed up 5 minutes too late. Seriously I HATE EUSKO TRAIN! First Mundaka, and now Bilbao. I am starting to feel like it has some bad karma against us or something. So we are standing on the platform trying to get everything figured out and these four 16 year old girls start talking to us in Spanish. They find out we are from California and all of a sudden we are CELEBRITIES! They want pictures with us and they want to throw us a party in their small town some time while we are in Spain. They are also now Laura's friends on facebook and message her constantly about meeting up again. Pretty funny. Gotta love California.
Soo we miss our train, and its like 8:45 and we know that there is a bus that leaves at 10:00 back to San Sebastian and it is the last bus and way of transportation possible for us. Problem is we have no idea where the bus station is so we start asking everyone, and the thing is we only understand about 60% of what they are saying since it is all in Spanish. First we ask the train lady she points us in the direction we need to go and says some thing about a train, and going up two streets. We run up two streets, ask another person who tell us us to go up a few more blocks and catch the train. WHAT IS THIS TRAIN? we are so confused and I end up knocking on a bus drivers window while he is stopped at a red light to ask where to go. We finally are able to put together that we have to take the metro train to a certain stop and walk up a few blocks and we will finally be at the bus station. We end up running to get there on time and once again people are staring at us, but we make it in time to purchase our tickets, grab a drink, with 10 minutes to spare. I was pretty impressed with ourselves!
We get back to San Sebastian at midnight and make home to our charming little piso and pass out. It was an awesome, adventurous day with my lovely roommates and I swear to God that there is never a dull moment in our lives! I am so blessed to live with such awesome people and I know that when we return to Chico we will still be joining in many adventures together when we all hang out. Consider this a little foreshadowing of what the Canaries brought us because it included: SO MUCH GLITTER, an incredibly dirty hotel room, Jeff Dean being abandoned as a practical joke gone wrong, and a lovely but smelly Spaniard sitting next to me on the plane wearing nothing but white tights, fishnets, and a man thong. Oh yeah. It was an insanely fun, awesome, crazy time that I truly enjoyed with all of my friends so I hope you enjoy me catching you up and probably tomorrow you will finally hear about the CANARY MADNESS!!
Miss and love you all!
Much Love,
THE KOOSE