Hey guys, I´m a little behind on my stories from last week, so I´ll try to catch up now. So much is going on hereª"/(()))¡¡¡¡!! Okay I am going to leave that gibberish to prove a point to you. Our school here has computers but they are all messed up. Someone, I suspect the other foreign kids who go to school here has changed ALL of the punctuation marks on the keyboard, so whatever mark it says it is is a lie and you have to press 15 buttons before you discover where the secret question mark is hidden. It is so frustrating that I can`t even type a contraction without pressing ten other buttons first"/(())¡!!!!!!!!!!
Soooo, last week there was supposedly some festival in Madrid so we decided to hop on over and check it out. Our host dad said he would take us to the train station and pick us up if we got back after the busses stopped running. So whenever our host dad gives us a ride, some disaster always happens and we get there late, so of course we missed the train that our group took and had to go just us four girls who live in the complex. We end up in Madrid and have no idea what is going on so we ask this random stranger and head for the palace. We wanted to see these fireworks that started at 9:30 and so we staked out a bench by a fountain and waited around for a couple of hours talking. So, the hour was approaching and it became very obvious that it wouldn`t get dark until way after ten, and it takes 45 by train back home and the busses stop at 11, and we don`t know when the trains stop and we got really paranoid and just went home. We had some drama when we took the wrong metro but we ended up finally getting the right train and getting back to Alcala at 11:15. So I call my host dad with my last remaining phone card minutes, and he starts yelling into the phone on the other line. I`m trying to be polite and ask him to come and get us and he says yes and hangs up on me. Or at least I thought he said yes. So then we parked ourselves down and waited for about a half an hour for our host dad until we figured that he definitely wasn`t coming. At about this time some really creepy Spaniards stopped and asked all of these questions like, Where are you from? and we lied and said we were from here, and then they asked us if we were Espanish, which means they totally knew we spoke english and we kept pretending like we didn`t until they went away. Except they didn`t go away, they just got back into their car and kept circling the parking lot staring at us! So we got really freaked out and there was only one taxi left so we decided not to keept waiting for our host dad and just take the taxi home. We got home, but not until after the taxi driver insulted us by telling us we had bad accents. We´re working on it, ok! Seriously, everyone here thinks we are the biggest idiots because we can´t speak perfect Spanish. I´d like to see them try in the U.S., except for that is not possible because the U.S. is accomodating and everybody speaks spanish.
Anyway, we finally got home and then began the Spanish Inquisition from Ricardo. ¨Why didn´t you call me?¨ We explained that there had been a miscommunication with the phone and we thought he was coming for us, etc. He started shaking his head and told us we were complete disasters. He told us he´d ¨forgive us this time,¨ but that we were wasting our money because of our stupidity. He also gave me a complete explanation of a proper phone call as if I were an alien from Mars who had never seen advanced technology, ¨Is this Ricardo?¨ ¨Yes¨ ¨This is Gianna, can you please come get me?¨ ¨Yes.¨ Hmmmm, that is actually exactly what I did say, but I decided not to argue. The next day, Kristen, my roommate was really sick with alergies and didn´t come down immidiately for lunch. When she did come down. Ricardo asked her, ¨Kristen, what did I tell you last night?¨ Kristen looked at me puzzled, and said she didn´t know. He said that he had warned her that she hadn´t been wearing enough clothes and now she was sick for not ¨paying attention to her elders.¨ He also referred to the men who had approached us the night before and a senile old man who had come up to us at the bus stop and said that ¨men wouldn´t approach you if you were wearing more clothes.¨ Ummm, yeah, we were pretty annoyed about that.
The next morning we were to leave for Lisbon and Ricardo had offered to drive us. Our director has explicitly told us that she will leave us behind if we are late, so we told Ricardo we had to leave at 7:10 so we would still have time to catch us bus if he didn´t get up--his normal time for waking up in the morning is after 10:00 so we were trying to prepare ourselves. So the morning comes and Margarita was up fixing our lunch, so we were sure Ricardo was going to get up. We were taking our time getting ready and all of a sudden we realize Margarita is gone and Ricardo is still in bed. It is now almost 7:15. Our neighbor girls were really worried and said if he wasn´t up in 30 seconds they were going to the bus stop. We didn´t want to get yelled at for not waking him up, which he has done before, but were definitely not going into his room. I knocked on the door pretty loudly, but he didn´t get up so we decided to leave and deal with him when we got back from Lisbon.We get to the bus stop, which is a short walk from our house and sit down to wait a few minutes. I reach for my bus pass and realize I don´t have my purse, which contains my money, camera, phone cards, house keys, EVERYTHING I need! The bus schedule says the bus is coming in 10 minutes but it is never certain and the stop is a little ways from our house. Plus we live in a minimun security prison and it takes forever to get in and out--I´ll explain later. I´m kind of freaked out, but I decide to run for it and luckily I make it back for the bus. The bus comes at 7:30, the ride takes 20 min and we have to have already boarded the tour bus by 8. We were a little worried. When it gets to about 7:45, Kristen tries to call the director on her cell phone, but it doesn´t worked. We are all totally panicked, so we commence to ask complete strangers to use their cell phones. After that embarrassment their phones don´t even work and we are really scared we aren´t going to make it. The bus barely arrives at our stop by 7:50 and we have to book it to get there. We were the last ones to board. Lesson learned: never, ever accept rides from Ricardo.
But Ricardo really isn´t that bad. He is actually really nice to us the majority of the time. Usually our only issue with him is food, because he is in charge of feeding us. Spanish culture is really generous with food portions and they get kind of offended if you don´t accept. Sometimes he gives us something we don´t like and we don´t want to eat it, but even if the food is delicious, there is just too much of it! It is even worse because the family doesn´t eat with us. They make us our own separate portion and it is really obvious if we don´t eat it. And it is difficult to hide that we aren´t eating it, because he will stay and watch us until we are finished. The worst thing he ever gave us was BBQ lasagna. That is lasagna with BBQ sauce instead of tomato sauce. It was disgusting. The neighbors girls were over so I kept waiting for him to leave the room so I cold force feed them some of my portion, but no matter how slowly I ate, he stayed until the bitter end. And I took a long time. It was too hot to touch when he gave it to me and cold when I finished. Because of this, Kristen and I have gotten kind of creative with our food. When he isn´t looking, we´ll switch plates if our portions are different and someone likes the food more or has a bigger apetite. Or, Kristen will agree to eat all the tomatoes out of the salad if I will agree to finish off here soup. Stuff like that. Sometimes we´ll spot issues beforehand and we can solve them by telling the other person to take the other seat so we don´t have to swith the plates that are already on the table. It works pretty well. So tonight was a typical night of overfeeding, and Kristen and I just couldn´t stomach (I couldn´t help myself) any more. We really don´t like to waste food, but we had no other outlets. As soon as he left the room, we popped open the trash can and moved things aside so we could but our food in the bottom. I didn´t really like what we were eating, so I tried putting in sandwich form so I could finish it more easily. While I did this, Kristen cut up her meat in tiny pieces and put it in her napkin and ate all of the tomatoes out of our salad to make it look like we´d eaten more. We started arranging the trash around so our thrown away food wouldn´t be so obvious. You really have to be creative. Unfortunately, our neighbors didn´t get fed tonight, so we could have given then the other half of our dinner! Bad timing, I know.
Ok, minimun security prison. We live a ways out of town, so you think people would feel a little protected from the crime of the city. Not these people, no, they have to make sure. We live in this giant housing complex. All of the houses are more like apartments because they are all connected side by side, but they are three stories a piece. So anyway, there is a tall brick fence surrounding our complex, there might also be some sort of protective metal on top of that, but I can´t remember exactly. Once you unlock the gate to the entire complex, the only gate by the way, which is really annoying because you always have to walk all the way around to the front, the apartments are separated into cell blocks. We live in ¨H¨ and our neighbors live in ¨F.¨ The cell blocks are closed in by a locked gate on each side, and each gate uses a different key. Once you unlock whichever gate you decide to use, we only have the key to one of them so we don´t have much choice, you also have to have a key to your front door. By the way, the front door locks automatically so good luck if you forget your keys and the door closes behind you. If by chance, you have a visitor, there is a system of intercoms and they can buzz your house to be let in. Oh, and don´t forget the underground parking garage. The houses all lead into a basement which leads into the garage, that door by the way also has its own key which is different from the front door key. Then if you take your car out, there is a garage door that opens to a ramp/driveway, which leads to another gate in the wall surrounding the complex, which finally leads to the street. No word yet on if both garage doors have their own remote, but I´m assuming they do. So lets review: one key for the front gate, two keys for each inner gate, two separate house keys, and two different garage door openers. Don´t forget that the gate locks are often temperamental and you have to fight with them to get them open. So if you can imagine, it was a feat for me to run all the way home, get in and out of the security measures, and make it back to the bus with time to spare. I really don´t know how these people could be so paranoid. I really think a deadbolt is sufficient.
Wow this is a really long post. I hope I´m not boring you all with my posts and I´d love to get e-mails if you all have the time. I hope everyone is well and happy!
Love, Gianna