and to think that i saw it on mulberry street, or in other words, our first day on tenerife (spring break #3)

day one in tenerife:

we get to tenerife, get to the hostal, meet manfred, and since we basically haven't slept all night other than moments on the plane, we immediately lock ourself in our beautiful yellow room and nap together on the bed we share. fortunately, manfred interrupts our nap to inform us that the entire island closes up on sundays, and that if we want food we should go to the market immediately. so force ourselves out of bed and go for some snacks at the market (prinipe cookes, bread and jam, and munchitos aka the best chips in the world), continue to nap.

waking up in the sunshine of our room, we eat all of our chips and a roll of cookies, and head out for a walk. the town is ridiculously cute and beautifully amazing, i fell in love. here are some highlights:

1) we learned the wide definition of public art with this crazy window that was covered in gum. it was gross and awesome all at the same time.

2) this apartment was for sale and tessa and i decided we should buy it. best possible dream home. we would sleep on the balcony (hammock?) and feed the birds and eat tropical fruits.

3)we went to a cafe for an afternoon dessert, and made some friends...we ate and spent our time discussing how we were in paradise, and eating an amazing dessert in the sunshine. every once in a while we would hear some noises from the other part of the courtyard, but didnt think anything of it. all of a sudden, as we were finished eating, there was a peacock. seriously, a peacock was just walking around the tables randomly. the waiters would walk around him, nobody even seemed to notice the bird. meanwhile, tessa and i were freaking out with excitement. so then we decided to walk around the courtyard and see what else was around. there were birds all over the place, a random statue of a cow (reminded me of home sweet home) and a tinman sitting on a bench!

after some more exploring we come home starving, only to realize that everything was closed, and we had forgotten to get food for dinner. all we had was bread and jam. so we had an extravagant meal of bread and jam, we even had to steal the butter (quite an experience that involved trickery, mathematics and taking turns watching the halls for people coming, haha)

a character introduction (spring break #2)

we spent the first part of spring break in the canary islands, on tenerife. we got there, and had no idea how to work the bus system so it took us almost two hours to get from the airport to our hostel. when we finally get there, there are no signs indicating that the address we have is actually a hostel, and nobody is answering the door. so we go to the corner and sit on some benches to figure out what to do, when suddenly manfred appears! (with an austrian accent: are you looking for the hostel?) it was the beginning of a great relationship.

manfred is amazing, and knows a ridiculous amount of information about everything on the island. he is from austria, but has a traveled and lived in an incredible amount of places. (unfortunately i do not have a picture of manfred, but this guy was on the desk outside our room, so he'll have to do)

the hostel was so wonderful. our room had bright yellow walls and a huge window that led out to the courtyard area. it was in the area of the island called orotava, which is near puerto de la cruz, only way better. it seemed mostly residential. it was quiet and really pretty. all the buildings were painted bright warm colors, which just automatically makes you happier

hummus is the best, and only way to start spring break

so my spring break was awesome, and we did a lot of random things...so it is going to be broken up into a ton of little blogs.

this first one is the first weekend, staying in barcelona.

most people left for spring break as soon or before classes ended on thursday, but tessa and i weren't leaving until the weekend. so i had some time to waste. i spent most of the time wandering around with my camera. so there isn't really much to say. EXCEPT that tessa and i went to this most amazing place called pangea that i am kind of in love with.

i had been there before, and since i can't remember if i already wrote about this i am going to tell the story here. the first time i went i got a chai tea (which basically doesnt exist in spain) and was sitting alone reading. when my phone rang and i started talking in english, this german woman (the only other person there) started talking to me. we had a pretty long discussion, and it was amazing. i mean, i'm pretty much european now. she was hilarious, and even gave me this post card with information about her band and told me to call her if i go to berlin.

ok, so anyway, tessa and i were going to go to juicy jones for lunch, because we are obsessed with it. but it was packed, and it was raining really hard so we didnt want to walk around and wait...so we went to pangea for hummus. it was a good choice.

the rest of the afternoon involved a lot of us walking around corte ingles (super evil empire of a store), buying lipgloss, and eating at the amazing italian place below tessa's apartment.

that night we had to get in a taxi at 3 in the morning, so we just weren't going to sleep. instead, we sat in her room awkwardly staring at eachother and playing with our cameras.

my hair is spanish

ok, so i got my hair cut. it was a scary experience. i did not in any way shape or form want a mullet (no offense my beautiful megan), and don't know any hair vocabularly. i made tessa come with me, and she documented the entire experience. haha.

so, you ask, how did you tell him what you wanted?

basically, i said, i want a simple, boring cut. haha. and then pointed to some pictures.

the guy that cut my hair was really nice and funny, and even stopped in the middle of the cut when he saw tessa was my photographer, and posed for a picture. (i wasn't quite ready for the picture though...)

and then they tried to style it, and didnt understand that my hair doesnt curl. i ended up going home with a half way curled head. but thats ok.

i know its not that different from what i had before. but i have bangs now. and, i mean, i got my hair cut in spain! that should be credit enough.

(i'll get a pic up of the final product soon, i promise)

where cava comes in tanks

so, we went cava tasting. it was this super old winery (when its a cava place do you still say winery?) called codorniu. to get there we had to take the train about an 45 minutes outside of barcelona to the cutest little town (san sadeniu ardeniu?)...but when we got there we had no idea where exactly the winery was and even though it was a saturday nobody was around. everything was so amazingly quiet. after going to a competing winery to ask for directions and then walking around, we ended up going back to the train station and calling a taxi. we SO could have walked, i think, but the girls i was with were being wimpy and nervous.

the good part is that since we had some extra time before we needed to get to the winery, we got to play at a playground!! it, unfortunately, did not have a pyramid of death...but fun nonetheless

ok, so then we get there. and by cava tasting i really mean a crazy tour with a free glass of cava at the end. the place is crazy. our tour started out with this ridiculous brainwashing movie about how cordiniu wines and cava are the best and pretty much taking over the world. and then the guide took us through the gardens, and showed us the "family house" which was nothing close to what i would still consider house. maybe mansion. and then we walked by the museum, but couldn't go in cause they were preparing for some event. mostly, i was distracted by this...in the picture, do you see those blackish boxes on the right? that is all cava!! there were so many of those boxes too, they just kept popping up.

and then the cellars...which the guide kept calling caves, which i guess thats what they are, but it made me laugh a lot. also, keep in mind that in the group with us, were these men who had clearly been to a few other wineries before this one and were so drunk. they were rude in a hilarious way. thankfully, i dont think that the tour guide minded.

ok, so cellar time. and it was amazing, and basically they just showed off their ridiculous amount of cava and wine. they just kept going. we even had to take a little "train" ride to see parts of the cellars there are so many of them. it was just rows and rows of wine bottles stacked up on top of eachother. they also talked about how they make the wine a little, and how it has changed since back in the day. (did you know that to get the yeast particles out of the wine...after it settles in the neck, they freeze the neck and then it just pops out?! i want to see it so bad, but the bottling area was closed for the weekend).

and then came the tasting. basically it was just a free for all, where they placed a plate of crackers in the middle of a table (made from an old wine barrel) and handed everyone a glass. basically, the cava was good, the crackers were good, the day was good. what more would you expect?

fish hooks and nata (random weekend events)

i went on a field trip with my oceanography class. and i just want to say that it was ridiculous. we went to a little fishing town called palamos down the coast and watched fishermen and talked about their equipment, and then watched the fish auction where they sell the fish, and went to a crazy museum (where the gift shop floor was made up of pictures of bins of fish, it was gross

and about spanish fish markets. there is no modest about them, anywhere. heads are left on, and they stare at you from their ice filled buckets. and the shrimp and snails and crabs crawl around on everything. sometimes they arent even in their own bucket. its a big blob of seafood. and when you want some salmon, or some of a very large fish but not all of it, they bring out the hugest knife you have ever seen and slab it up right there in front of you while you listen to the tearing of flesh. (and the sad thing is that i used to actually like seafood) sometimes the fish even still have hooks in their mouths.


ok, and now i am done with my ranting...some more interesting things i learned that weekend

1)whiskey can actually be involved in an amazingly girly
2)you can never have enough goat cheese in your life (i think i already knew that, but i just keep being reminded of it)

vocab lesson: nata= whipped cream, ron=rum, espuma=amazing (well, actually it means foam, but whatever)
speaking of espuma, tessa, emma, and i went to the amazing restaurant down the street that is only open on the weekends and i got mousse de chocolate con espuma de ron (chocolate moose with rum flavoured whipped cream!). it was so amazingly perfect. we also got a pitcher of sangria de cava, and then emma and tessa decided they werent going to drink. since when did i become the big drinker of the group? i mean, i am the one that plays pong and gives my partner all of my beer. it was a bad situation.

the next morning

when i got home from st. patricks night with tessa and emily, i was tired and went straight to my room (aka, bed) as quickly as possible.

it turns out that this was probably the best move i could have made on my part. the next morning i woke up relatively early (it is a rare weekend morning in the apartment when anyone is awake before 11am) and went to the kitchen to get some cereal. and what did i see in the living room? wrinkled in the corner of the couch? and scattered about the room, under the table, in the corner? man clothes!! and juaq clothes!! the "mood setting" light that creates fake fog (yes, juaq is incredibly cheesy) was even left on.

emma was not awake, but i just had to tell her and knew that by the time she would be awake all the evidence would be gone. so i took pictures. i know, kind of creepy and crazy. but i just had to.