University Life

hey di ho

Started uni sometime in the last week or so. The lectures are an hour and a half long and I have found it very difficult to keep awake to the point that I have to bang my head against the wall to try and stop myself falling out of my chair with fatigue. Since discovering this is a rather painful way of keeping awake I have since developed a coca cola habit (I was gonna write coke there but I thought better of it) .. I find that I need at least a can and a half to get me through each lecture, it’s getting bad!!!

Anyway so after 4 and a half hours every Monday and Tuesday I make my way to the canteen for lunch. It’s a delightful place, to sit in there is sort of like sitting in a cloud of smog but you can enjoy delightful “meat” sandwiches with some warm wine, lurvely.

Usually after this we sit in the corridor for a bit, observing the rat tails and mullet boys go by and picking up ideas about the latest fashions. I saw some beautiful lovely crushed velvet purple leggings today, just my cup of tea.

The thing that makes me laugh the most about dying from passive smoking is that the people are smoking joints… yes, INSIDE the uni, along the corridors. But not only this, the thing that gets me is that no one at all, whatsoever, bats an eyelid, as if this a perfectly legal activity that should be occurring inside an institute of learning. Somehow I can’t ever imagine this happening in my own faculty back in blighto.

And so on to Wednesday, when I have a day off, whereby I sleep for a while and ponder the illogicness of the Spanish. Nothing is done for your convenience, if you’re lucky. If you’re unlucky things are done for your absolute inconvenience.

For example, I wished to purchase a monthly ticket for the metro.. “Where do I buy one?” I wonder to myself, “Surely in the metro
station”

but NO.

To buy a METRO ticket you have to go to the tobacconist--- WHY??

So I went along to the tobacconist who then told me it would take 8 days... EIGHT days to fill out a little card (quite similar to
a young persons rail card.. does that even take more than 8 minutes in
England to fill out?)

Another good example of this illogical Spanish way:
My flat mate went to buy envelopes, from the post office surely, but NO!
The post office had, get this, run out of envelopes! It beggars belief.

And don’t even get me started on the bogan shop assistants and bartenders who are sooooo rude its unreal.

Thursday, Friday and Saturday have to be my favourite days,(apart from the small inconvenience of lectures on thurs and fri) on Thursday there is a really, really good night at this old converted palace which is so cool.. it is just like a palace complete with silk wallpaper and tapestries on the wall, and crazy dancing transvestites. but all in all its a crazy funhouse full of guiri’s of course but you can wear a sticker with your nationality and I have had fun being various nationalities so far.

Have also been to another wicked club recently which is an old converted theatre with 7 floors- it’s the biggest in Madrid but if you want a drink you have to go to a little ticket booth and buy a ticket which you trade in at the bar for a drink.

Sundays - day of rest - there’s always a great film on, the porn channel is just the best!? (Why we have porn?? We don’t even have sky… who knows).

That’s all I can be bothered to write for now have to be up at 8 and I’m still in this stupid internet cafe at 3am.

Once again in an internet cafe in the middle of the night. First news - D and I have broken up for good.

And so to Madrid, the city that just gets weirder by the second. This week we have made another selection of crazy friends. All of which are men but they are highly entertaining. The girls still don’t wanna speak to us. sigh. This week we went to our usual Tuesday night hang out ´La Notte´ and I was more than alarmed to see some guy from halls there - that little guy Robin who used to hang out in Bonny’s room all the time from floor 7. I never really quite worked out why he was there - this was due to the fact that we had been bought a lot of alcohol by the manager of the club who then offered us a ‘publicity’ job which my flat mate readily accepted on our behalves. That’s where we should be tonight but here we are instead. We thought we had better have a night off as we’re going on a trip this weekend with all our new found friends to the mountains.. Should be joyous.

We have resumed flat hunting this week, today we visited a flat on ‘penguin’ street. I kid you not. The name kept me amused for hours, quite disturbingly so. It was gorgeous but a little too far out. Penguin! I ask you. Anyway today we also got gas! At last I hear you all cry, but no, turns out we can’t use it because it leaks.

The neighbours have also started singing, badly. And it’s so loud. The saga continues.

Better go for now as running out of minutes


jesusa (my new Spanish name)

An Open Email

Madrid is good. Really hot. Got stupidly sunburnt on my first day and have
been in agony ever since.

Found an apartment yesterday, moved in today and have decided that is positively the worst apartment EVER! its just awful, we have spent all day trying to clean it and make it look nicer but to no avail. We don't even dare go into the kitchen just yet. I have a feeling that we will be moving very very soon.

The best bit is the bathroom with supposedly new taps that are coming away from the wall. You can also lock yourself in but then someone has to let you out from the outside.

I also like the fact that the oven has been taped up with brown sellotape no less
so we can't use it but there appears to be an old crusty baking tray inside. yum yum.
No spiders tho, we're on the ninth floor! agh!
Other than that I do like Madrid.

I have put the photos up in my room to make it more homely. I got the double bed but there are loadsa of rank stains all over the matress. Lurvely.

My flatmate H thinks that a family of 10 South American immigrants lived in the flat before us - there are so many random shelves and draws in all the wardrobes that we think that is where all the children slept.
So there's plenty of spare beds in the cupboards for when you come and visit -
if you still want to!!! Hopefully we will have moved by then anyway.

Ten Days in Madrid

Just in an internet cafe at 2am, on our way to a party, it's surprisingly busy considering how late it is.

Have been in Madrid for about 10 days now and it is just the crazyiest place in the world. I always thought that it was just my mum who was a bit mad ..but I was wrong ...it's the whole population. Several people have come up to me on the street and stroked me ..no joke...hmm. Very random.
At the moment I am living in am immigrant neighbourhood. I don´t think any Spanish people live there at all. The flat was clearly used by a large South American family before we moved in. You can fit about 10 people in just the wardrobes alone. Plenty of spare beds in there if anyone wants to visit. If I don´t laugh about the place I think I would cry. It's like living in third world. I tried to plug something in the other day and I cut the power in the whole flat!! It was so dirty when we moved in that the landlord said he would give us a TV if we cleaned it. That was last Wednesday and it still isn't finished. Oh well.

We also managed to make it to the uni. Unfortunately it's very organised and they know who we are so I suppose I will have to go. The uni is absolutely huge, you have to get the bus or metro to go from one side to the other. Our faculty is .. errm.. interesting. There is loads of graffitti all over it by the communist and fascist societies. I'm thinking of joining the communists, painting all over the walls looks quite fun.

We also went and joined up with the Erasmus society. We are pretty much the only English people in it tho, the majority are German. They don´t talk to us, it doesn't bother me though because it's very entertaining just watching them dance. We did make friends with a very camp little Italian who invited us round to dinner the next night which we promptly accepted as we hadn't had a cooked meal in days..we don´t have gas to cook on in our flat.. (like I said, its like living in the third world) Anyway since then he's fallen out with us as we refused to take all our clothes off during a game of strip poker. And I thought he was gay! He did get out his guitar and sing us a few songs. I have never ever ever seen anything funnier than an Italian singing elvis. He really got into it, had to use every little ounce of self control not to roll about on the floor laughing. The best bit was when he sang his own composition .. in English... called ´little gypsy´, I think it went something like.. "hey little gypsy ,your scent is so bad, you move with the shadows, everyone thinks you are little shit (pronounced shette)."

Seem to have rambled on a little and I didn't even get to tell you about the date playing dice games with two guys who have the worst mullets I have ever seen. You thought they went out with the eighties, huh? nope.. in Madrid they live on.

An update

hi di hi campers

Just a quick hello. Haven't really been up to much as scary exams in Spanish are looming. agh! Not sure quite how i am going to get through those but miracles do happen so I'm told.
On Sunday I went iceskating as part of a series of Sunday Funday's. On Monday I was unable to get out of bed I ached so much. I don´t think that is an activity that I'll be repeating again in a while. Also went to the ballet on Saturday night... how cultured is that!!

Anyway. That amounts to about absolutely everything I've done in the last two weeks, oh apart from hanging out with Madrid´s rich and famous but that seems to have become the norm around these parts, maybe I'll be able to bag myself one of them.

Better go do some more work, though i´m clearly going to fail so i don´t know why i bother.....