The other night, I came home from Santiponce around
7:30pm. I tried to turn on the light in
the lobby. Nothing. Tried to push the button for the
elevator. Nothing. This guy came down, passed me, said “hola”,
but nothing about the elevators not working…weird. So I walked up 9 flights of stairs to find
that we had not only lost power, but also gas and water. WHAT?!
I felt like we traveled back in time to the dark ages…except for the
fact that I still had my laptop and phone working…but still. It had stormed briefly earlier, but I
definitely wasn’t expecting the power to be out. Also, I was extremely annoyed that my lovely
neighbor hadn’t mentioned anything when he saw me pushing all the buttons with
a perplexed look, on my face, but that’s beside the point. We only had a couple candles in the
apartment, but they worked fine for lighting up the living room at least. Now the issue was what I was going to eat for
dinner. I hadn’t been grocery shopping
in a while, we couldn’t cook anything, and I wasn’t about to go down and come
back up 9 flights of stairs to go get food.
So, my roommates and I compiled what we had…bread, crackers, cheese,
jelly, olives, ham, chorizo, and salami.
It actually turned out to be a really nice dinner, better that whatever
I could have come up with myself…and it was a candlelit dinner, even
better. That day, I had printed out some
Halloween coloring pages. So to keep
busy, we colored and listened to music on my laptop, which was thankfully at
full battery when I got home. Without
the TV, internet, kitchen, shower, or lights we ended up having a really fun
night, but there wasn’t much else to do but go to sleep after a while, since
none of us really wanted to go out in the rain.
Luckily when we woke up Friday morning, everything was restored back to
normal.
Cheers to crackers, jelly, and cheese!
Roomie pic in the candlelight.
Ok more fun things…since I haven’t taken any trips yet, I
can keep updating you all on the random stuff I’m doing. A couple weeks ago, one of the teacher’s at
my school, Manuel, invited me to go to the climbing wall at one of the sports
centers in Sevilla. He had invited me
many times last year but I was never able to go. This time, I had no other plans so I said
sure why not! I invited Milena to come
along too and she said yep. Our plan was
to meet at a bus stop near the train station because I had class in the evening
and she would be coming from home. When
I got to the stop I couldn’t find her so I walked around a bit and still
nothing. As much as I hate spending the
slightest bit of money by using my cell phone, I gave her a call. No answer. Uh
oh. Called her again…and again…and
again…no answer. I kept walking up and
down the street thinking maybe she got off at and one of the other bus stops. I
still couldn’t find her. Now it was getting close to the time we were supposed
to get picked up so I had to give up my search and go. Manuel picked me up and we drove the rest of
the way to the sports center…which was actually really close to where I already
was, but I had no idea. On our walk in,
we passed the football field and track and all of a sudden I hear “Dennis!”
(That’s what Milena calls me, and all my other roommates for that matter.) I looked around and saw her just chilling in
one of the seats around the track.
What?? How?? When?? I couldn’t
believe she was there. She explained
that when she didn’t see me at the bus stop, she looked around but couldn’t
find me. When she realized that she
didn’t have her cell phone she started walking and asking people where the rock
wall was. Apparently she had been waiting there the entire time I was looking
for her. Of course. The good thing was that we all made it. Now that were actually at the climbing wall,
I began to wonder why the heck I agreed to this! The last time I successfully climbed anything
was in my high school adventure challenge class when I was 17. I tried the climbing wall at Lifetime Fitness
when I worked there last summer, and that was an epic fail. I was really nervous, but I figured I would
give it a try. What was the worst that
could happen? Manuel’s friend Fran came
to join us and the four of us suited up.
We started out on the easier walls and worked our way up to the harder
ones. I had so much fun! It wasn’t easy, but I made it to the top
every time…with lots of help and encouragement of course. The last one we did was the hardest. It might not have been a good idea to save
the tallest wall for last, since I was already pretty tired, but we did it
anyway! I had to take a couple breaks
and I thought I couldn’t make it, but the adrenaline kicked in and managed to
squeeze out a few more steps and made it to the top. It was really funny too because somewhere
close, a band was practicing Semana Santa music so there were dramatic trumpets
playing as I struggled to the top. I’d
post the video, but it’s embarrassing…and over 8 minutes long. Milena did an awesome job too, I was really
impressed. And Manuel and Fran are
pretty much pros, so they helped us a lot along the way. This last sentence used to say, I hope we can
go again soon, but since I first wrote this, we’ve gone again already! This time Milena and I made it there
together. We had a blast again. I feel like since we shook the cobwebs off
last time, we were a lot more adventurous this time. I have the scrapes and bruises to prove it. Also this time, we climbed one of the harder
walls, which is slanted outwards. It’s a
lot harder to hold on because it feels like the wall is trying to shake you
off. I barely made it to the top, but I
did it! The way down was pretty funny too.
Since the wall is slanted outward you can’t really repel on your way
down, so I curled up into an awkward ball and was just hanging from the
rope. Of course Milena starts taking
pictures, and Manuel stopped lowering the rope about 15 feet off the
ground. And I was like ummm can you put
me on the ground already?? And he says, “Sorry, it’s just too funny!” I guess it was pretty funny now that I’ve
seen the pictures.
Some shots of Milena and I climbing!
A couple Sundays ago, my roommates and I hosted a merienda,
which is basically a designated snack time around 6pm where people drink tea or
coffee and have some kind of snack. I got some of my friends here hooked on a
certain brownie recipe and they were bugging me to make them again, so I
decided to invite everyone over. I was
really excited to have people over to see our apartment and hang out. We may have gone a little overboard with the
desserts for a typical merienda which is usually just some cookies or crackers,
but it turned out great. I made brownies
and Oreo cheesecake, Milena made a chocolate cake, Andrea made vanilla pudding,
and Mary made cinnamon rolls. In total I
think we had about 15 people over, some Spanish, some German, some Italian, and
some American. It was quite the international bunch. We listened to music, played cards, and ate…a
lot. There were hardly any leftovers, which is good because otherwise I would
have kept eating them.
Happy Halloween!
The last couple weeks we’ve been doing things at school to
celebrate Halloween, and it’s been a lot of fun. They decorate the whole school, play games,
and bring treats just like at home. A
lot of the little kids dress up too. I gave myself a sweet paint job on my
nails and dressed up like a black cat as I mentioned before. It was a lot of fun. I also made brownies, Oreo cheesecake
cupcakes, and witch finger cookies.
Everything was a big hit. I got a
lot of requests for recipes so I’m going to have to work on translating them
and converting the measurements to metric so they understand. (They don’t use cups here, mostly grams.) One
thing I got a huge kick out of was one day last week, I walked into a second
grade class and they were just about to start a game. The teacher had written
HALLOWEEN vertically on the chalkboard twice, once for each team. The object of the game was to write words
pertaining to Halloween, one for each letter so nine total. Each word had to include one of the letters,
so for example, they could have written “ghost” for the H. I was a little skeptical because these kids
are only like seven years old, and I thought it might be a little too hard for
them. Here’s what happens when you take
two teams of seven year olds and pit them against each other in a spelling
race: they spell things wrong…very
wrong. They forget the worksheet that
they just did that had all of the words written on them and they spell words
the way they sound. Here’s a little lesson on linguistics to explain why some
of the following bizarre word spellings happened. Unlike English, Spanish is a phonetic
language which means that letters are pronounced a certain way and words are
spelled the way they sound with almost no exception. English pronunciation is much more
complicated. So, if a student doesn’t
know how to spell a word in English, they will more often than not spell it
phonetically in Spanish. Here are some
of the words that were written on the board:
panquin, esqueleton, epaider, and halloguin. If you know what all four of those words are
supposed to be, give yourself a pat on the back and a gold star for the
day. If you guessed pumpkin, skeleton,
spider, and Halloween, then you are correct. Here’s why this game was too hard
for these kids. First, they didn’t even
realize that the word Halloween was already written on the board and all they
had to do was copy it. Second, they didn’t
realize almost all of the words were in plain sight on a worksheet on all of
their desks. Thirdly, these kids are
still learning Spanish, so it is very complicated for them to spell English
words they just learned. Needless to
say, I got a kick out of it, especially pumpkin. Pumpkin is a hard word for non-English
speakers to pronounce correctly because of the vowel sound of the “u” and the
combination of the “mpk.” So, most
Spanish people say something very similar to the word “punky” when they are
really saying pumpkin…and for that reason, the student spelled it panquin. Well that’s my fun anecdote for now, and my
next update will be the awesome weekend I just had in Madrid with my roommate
Mary! 
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