BIRTHDAY WEEK...and the quest for calvin harris

As many of you know, my birthday is not just one day, but usually an entire month. This year i decided to minimize it to one week. My birthday was technically on monday, but you all know I've been celebrating for the past week.

Tuesday: Hannah, Hannah, Sara, Lindsay, Kate, Maggie and I hopped on a bus to Sitges, a small beach town 30 KM away from Barcelona to celebrate Carnival. We had no idea what we were in store for. It was a night of cross-dressers, mini pachas, german boyfriends, ruined shoes and dancing on the beach to some great house music. Sara and i spent most of the night dancing on the beach (for any of you that understand my love for music, that's no surprise). We watched people spin fire sticks and made friends with people dressed in some of the most elaborate costumes i have ever seen. It was basically Halloween in Santa Barbara on crack plus a parade and minus any inhibitions. We got free drinks all night at this place called pachita (aka mini pacha) because we made "friends" with one of the bar tenders, David. He even saved sara's life when she was choking on her gelato cone! Our night in Sitges was arguably a top 4 of our time in Barca so far.

Wednesday:
I made it to my class at noon (barely). No one was in class because everyone was dead from the night before. We went on a field trip to this huge market and I got the best smoothie ever from this little vendor. I went over to Sara and Ellen's apartment and recapped on our amazing night, came home and was only up for a few more hours before i needed to get some sleep.

Thursday:
prepared for friday, got tickets in hand and all the necessary supplies for Calvin Harris

Friday:
We woke up around 11 am and lindsay, hannah and i decided we were going to have a day to work on our fitness. We started off the day with a walk to our new favorite spot, suhara, they have the BEST salad in town. Then, ran to montijuic and ran the stairs. After that we met up with andrew and joe and explored the fields and stadium where the 1992 olympics were held (only 4 blocks from our apartment). We split from andrew and joe and lindsay, hannah and i whipped up our specialty...pasta. As we were getting ready for the night to begin we heard a knock at our door. It was our neghibors. They invited us over for homeade sushi later that night. We said we might stop by and continued to prepare for the evening. Around 11pm people started arriving to our apartment. now let me tell you, we've had some pretty big pre games at our place, but NOTHING of this caliber. As the pregame started to get kind of big i remembered that we had been invited over for sushi! so i grabbed kayla and we went over and had some of the best homemade sushi i have ever had. We then invited our neighbors and all of their friends over to our apt. for the pregame....this is where things got bad. They brought over a bunch of friends and things got crazy. Everyone was pretty drunk so no one noticed how big this was getting until kevin heard someone fiercely ringing our doorbell...it was the building owner. SCREAMING in spanish. So we tried to send our neghibors to talk to him, but they were too scared because they got in trouble previously with this guy so we all just left the apartment. At this point it is only 1am and we knew we were going to be early at razzmatazz but we had no choice with such a big group so we all just went to raz. We got there and found out that calvin harris wasnt coming on until 4:30. We weren't even upset that we needed to wait 3 hours to see him. We jumped around all of the different floors of razzmatazz each with their own type of music. we spent most of our time leading up to calvin in the loft listening to some sickkkk house music. So 430 comes around and Hannah, andrew, joe, green and i were the only ones that made it. Calvin opened with "i put on my shoes and im readyyyy for the weekend" so sick, everyone went nuts. He played a great set until 630 in the morning lucky for us this meant the metro was open. At this point mine and hannah's feet were killing us...we contemplated offering joe money for his shoes, but then remembered that this hadn't worked in the past. Hannah, myself and the boys painfully trecked to the L1 (of course stopping to get some french fries on the way) and made our way home. We got home and passed out at around 8:30am.

Saturday:
noon: after only 3 hours of sleep I am woken up to a woman yelling at our front door. Lindsay runs in to my room, rips off my eye mask and tells me that Christina (the land lord) is here. I had no idea what she was talking about and tried to fall back asleep until she basically dragged me out of bed into the living room. Christina is visibly furious. She rips my underwear that was hanging on the lamp (we dont have a dryer) down and starts throwing it around saying "THIS IS NOT NORMAL!!!" i think she thought we had some type of orgy/ out of control party. The 6 of us (a random girl was sleeping on our couch 5+1=6) could not help but laugh...this did NOT make christina happy. With roughly 20 bottles of liquor sitting out from the night before she looked around and appeared as though she was about to blow a fuse. We apologized, but she didn't seem to care much. she left and we cleaned...some were more able than others. I neeeeeeeeeeeeeded sleep, but still did my share. I spent the rest of the day laughing about christina throwing my underwear around and talking about how epic the night before was.

Sunday:
recovery in the AM and then it was time to get ready to bring in the new year! We found a great irish pub to celebrate the beginning of the 22nd year of my life!! That night is pretty hazy, but we definitely had a great time ;) shout out to my best irish friend maggie for finding the perfect Irish pUb to celebrate at. it was a night filled of tequilla shots and singing. The perfect balance of people and finally some new men in our lives.

Monday:
BIRTHDAY HAS ARRIVED!!!!
So im going to keep this day short (even though it is the most important one) because im exhausted and have a marketing test tomorrow. Monday I went to class like usual. Afterward, lindsay, sara and i went out for all you can eat sushi..THE BEST! Later, Lindsay and hannah gave me my presents scarfs, bracelets and the BESTTT part BUENOS (my favorite chocolate). I took a little nap and watched the parent trap. We got ready for dinner and went to this amazing spot called princessa 23. After dinner we walked around las ramblas and my favorite little irish lady found us a pub to begin our night. We started out there and then made our way over to Otto Zut. Lunes was about to get LOCO. we had a table up in the VIP area and bottles (which we definitely did NOT need). We all danced the night away. I was assisted home by kevin and Kate and we all had a slumber party. Kate is my new favorite person to wake up next to hahah.

so now that i am older and wiser (like hannah staenberg) let me leave you with a few words of wisdom or things i have learned:

1. Do not hang your underwear from lamps...landlords find this VERY offensive
2. DO NOT wear heels to calvin harris shows. dancing for 5 hours and heels DO NOT MIX
3. when lunes gets loco make sure you always have kate and kevin to take you to the cab

im sure there are many more lessons i have to share, but i am WAYYYY too tired for this

buenos noches

besos

I'm terrible with updating this blog. I have about 5 half written posts because i get distracted and never finish them (no surprise there). I just got back from Madrid a few hours ago. We took the renfe ave (high speed train) to and from. The train was a nice change from the Barcelona air port that I have been frequenting for the past few weeks. Hannah, Kate, Maggie and I arrived in Madrid on Friday around 2pm and went out to get some lunch. We stumbled upon a place called el tigre. The place smelled great, but we could tell it was not a traditional sit down restaurant. We tried for about ten minutes to figure out how to order until we finally gave up and attempted to ask a local how this whole process worked. He explained that all we had to do was order a beer for 2 euro and we got a plate of tapas. We each ordered 2 beers and had a huge lunch for only 4 euro. One big difference between Barcelona and Madrid is that people in Madrid do not usually sit to eat tapas. They stand by counters, throw their trash on the ground, and are on their way within 30-45 minutes, whereas in Barca, people will sit and have tapas for hours at a time with no intention of ever leaving. After a big lunch we went shopping and finalized our costumes for Carnaval. We went back to the hotel and got ready to go see john digweed at Macumba. We met up with the guys and headed to the club. I think we can all agree it was one of the best nights of our lives. We danced and fist pumped all night (some harder than others). Specifically, Hannah danced so much that she tried to buy joe's shoes off of him for 50 euro so she didn't have to wear her heels any more. Digweed's set ended at about 7am and we left the club and entered what felt like the artic. We later learned that it was -2 Celsius that night(we did not bring coats out). We hoped on the metro with all of the normal looking people attempting to start their day and got back to the hotel at 8am. After a few hours of sleep, we went on a tour of Madrid. Unfortunately most of us fell asleep on the bus part of the tour and had to leave the walking portion early in order to get some food. The food in Madrid was so good! That night, we went to a restaurant called Lateral. They had the best Tapas and salad (yes i found salad in Spain) that I have had the entire time I've been here. I would recommend it to anyone visiting Madrid. After dinner we found a small wine bar and met some locals. One claimed Kate as his fiance and Hannah as his sister. We ventured through the streets of Madrid with them and talked about the differences between Barcelona and Madrid and about the college system in the US. They were very surprised and intrigued with the way that the greek system works within universities. It was funny to explain it to someone that had only really heard about it from movies. All in all Madrid was one of my favorite trips so far. I will be spending the next 2 weekends in Barcelona (finally) and I have my birthday a week from tomorrow! The 22nd will definitely be a loco lunes to remember. I just booked my flight to Rome for spring break. As i start to book up all of my weekends while I'm here it's starting to feel like I wont have enough time. I never want to leave this place...

besos

clogging around

I made it back from amsterdam! It was quite the trip. We got in on thursday and tried to sneak in to the hotel room with hannah, maggie and kate. This was a huge failure and we ended up having to get our own room which only ran us 70 euro per person for 3 nights. In retrospect it was very nice to have our own beds to sleep in each night. After we put our bags down we made our way to the first coffee shop (bull dog). There was a very friendly man here that helped us pick out the best stuff. After, we went to get italian food. This was the best meal I've had since arriving in europe. The food in amsterdam is to die for (compared to Barcelona at least). The next day we started off with some more italian food (mushroom pizza). Hannah, maggie and I went off on our own through von del park. We deemed ourselves a ship of 3 and had a trusty glass bottle to guide us through the day. We were amazed by the beauty and the colors of vondel park. I could not think of a better place to spend my friday exploring and pondering life. After our adventure we met with the rest of the crew at dampkring, our favorite coffee shop. This place has the best milkshakes and hot chocolate. To make hot chocolate they put a cube of chocolate on a stick, put that in a glass cup, and then fill the cup with warm milk. It's to die for (or TDF as kate would say). Saturday we woke up about 30 minutes too late for the hotel breakfast. We went to a delicious bagel shop where we learned that Amsterdam was not exactly like Barca, and tipping about 5 to 10 percent was customary. We were so embarrassed that we had not been tipping the first few days of our trip, so we left our waitress a little extra. After a hardy breakfast we went to the heineken museum. This was a self guided tour that walked us through the history of the brand, showed how to drink a beer, and even let us experience what it would feel like to be beer going through the entire process of fermentation to bottling. We drank a few brews and joined in on a bachelor party that a group of men from madrid were having. We left the museum and walked off our buzz before going to the anne frank annex. We waited in line for about 40 minutes, but it was well worth it (plus we had french fries to hold us over). The museum was very moving. I am so glad that things such as anne frank's house, yad vashem, and other holocaust museums exist to remind people of the genocide that was world war 2. People need to be reminded of the tragedies of our past as not to repeat them in the future. Later that night it snowed. Although I was very cold, it was a beautiful sight to see. I watched a few bikers fall due to the ice on the ground. Everyone in amsterdam rides bikes. I'm pretty sure the kids learn how to pedal before they can walk.
Overall, Amsterdam was a great trip and a nice break from the huge city of Barcelona. It was nice to be able to walk anywhere we wanted to go and hear people speaking english everywhere we went. We spent most of our money on food because we could not get over how delicious the chocolate covered waffles, french fries and coffee was. I will definitely have to go back some day, maybe I'll wait a couple of years though. I have a few days in Barcelona of classes, parties and attempted cooking until I leave for Interlaken (the swiss alps) on friday! Let's just say...life is good...