DAY 213: Me meaban los perros

The past couple of weeks have been fairly "normal" ones in Madrid. We had a bank holiday, yet again, on Thursday, so I was out for drinks on Wednesday night with a few friends....aiming to get the last metro home at 1.30am but instead arriving home 4.30am....my bank holiday was spent in bed watching Harry Potter. Last Friday it was Emma´s birthday, a big flat party eventually shut down after a neighbour called the police followed by a night out at Ocho y Medio Club...which if I´m honest is all a bit of blur, but apparently I was being very "loving" which I guess is better than my classic angry Sarah drunkeness. This most recent friday we went to Shoko but bailed quite early due to the lack of good music. When I say early, I mean 4.30am....this is Spain after all. On Saturday I went to Alcala and watched "Tangled" with Liz and Leo for I think the third time this month....such a loser....but such a great film...and then yesterday I met up with my friend, Emily, from Germany, who has just arrived in Madrid for univeristy after doing her Erasmus year in Paris. We drank A LOT of sangria...the jug seemed to be bottomless...and then chilled in the Retiro park with Liz and Lorena, where I happily indulged in an afternoon tipsy siesta on the grass in the sunshine. That was soon followed by yet more booze with a couple of beers with some good old chat about babies, Spanish tendencies, food, men and my now favourite Spanish phrase "me meaban los perros"......"I was so drunk, dogs were pissing on me"....aka "I passed out". 

Work has been fairly busy and I think I will be really sad when I leave it....depite some things driving me crazy, Mabel, as always, is such a sweetie, firstly organising a going away dinner for me, and secondly, after just spending the weekend in Ireland this weekend, where she met up with Niall Horan´s parents (family friends yanno...), asking them to get Niall to send me some One Direction stuff....hahaha, such a babe. I must also note that now into her summer wardrobe she is looking even more stunning. She walked in last week in this outfit that someone like Nicole Scherzinger would wear, hair done perfectly wavy, pretty make-up and killer heels....she looked like a blooming supermodel. No surprises when later that week, she told me that I was looking really nice and I blushed bright red thinking "omg the supermodel is saying that!" I actually feel as though I´m becoming more arrogant with my looks whilst I´m here though what with men always shouting "guapa" at me down the street. Not that I approve of this, and knowing that the men here only do it because of my pale skin and light hair and the fact that all Spanish men are complete sleazes....but still....when I walk down the road or into a club in Newcastle, lets be honest...I am not going to get that sort of attention!

Liz was asking me the other day if I am going to miss my wee apartment here. I guess there are kind of mixed feelings in regards to that. There are downsides to living alone definitely, you do get loney and you really always have to make an effort with people to keep your social life up. I´m also just a massive mahoosive over-thinker, so spending all that time alone can make your mind go a bit mad and fill up the ash tray with hundreds of cigarette butts! On the plus side, there is so much freedom, when I´m hungover I don´t have to talk to anyone (not the most sociable hungover person here....in fact...I generally just dislike people when I´m hungover...), I can eat when I want, sleep when I want, ignore tidying up for a while and of course the best part...NAKED TIME! I would say I spend 90% of the time in my flat naked....I´m even sleeping naked now, which before I ALWAYS had to have my jammies on lol. The only downside to being naked is the cooking part....oil splutters are not the funnest on bare skin!

Finally, although I´ve never been the biggest football fan ever.....of course the excitement of Atletico winning this weekend was great fun....town was filled with people in their Atletico strips all weekend and every single madrileño was in a good mood. ¡Viva Madrid!

DAY 61: La Puta de la Oficina

Still at work! My first "full" Spanish working day. They work until 7pm waaah. (However, did get a nice big lunch in the cafe followed by some sunbathing outside the office with a few of the girls...so so Spanish!). It has been so busy up until now and I am pretty damn proud of myself. I was given a task on Friday to be completed today and it was quite technical and important because the big bosses would be reading it. Anyway I got it all done and Mabel checked it over and apparently I did a "fantastic job" #gome. The new girl didn´t help though. I´m becoming such a wee office bitch. We were initially meant to split the task but then she did it all wrong and I had to go over and correct it all...I mean geeeesss....it´s almost as if I have never been in that position.....

I can´t believe I´ve been here two months now! Cray cray. Time is flying by. And to think when I first came I literally hated this job and couldn´t do anything right....things have changed so much. I´ve also now been able to extend my job until June next year! So so so sooooo happy! Initially, I only had it until February and then I had to go and find another job elsewhere, which is pretty tricky in the current Spanish economy, especially without "Daddy" as a contact...

So the weekend was fun, and for once I wasn´t out getting shitfaced. I´ve been quite embarrassed lately as two people over the past week have both said that I am "like a child". So there´s my friend from uni who said I always just talk about "embarrassing myself when drunk" (which is true...) and then my friend here who said that I sing and get hyper too much. After years of thinking I was "older than my years", I´ve discovered that I really am just an immature 20-year-old...I have two months until I should probably start "growing up". ANYWAY, Liz and  I went shopping on Friday evening (that´s right, after complaining for two months about how I am so broke and going to be homeless soon, MY ERASMUS GRANT CAME THROUGH and I actually just feel so bloody rich!.....Bets on how long it lasts...2 weeks?) So yeah we went shopping and I bought a jacket, a t-shirt (in the sale at least) and lots of jewellery (and only cheap crap that makes my fingers green...would you really trust me with an 100 pound necklace...err no. (There are no pound signs available on a Spanish keyboard btw fyi). We then had a gorgeous dinner in a nice wee Spanish restaurant where I took my parents when they came. After finishing our meal and asking for our bill though, the charming waiter did not want us to leave, so invited us to a free glass of wine (I´m just irresistible, I know). After thaaaat, we then asked for the bill again when we were then offered a free shot. We gracefully declined (see, that´s me, growing up...). It was pretty evident they were trying to get us drunk.

In hysterics, Liz and I got the metro back to my flat where I just "tipsy-ly" sang and danced for her. She is a lucky girl eh? But the wine had kicked in making us sleepy by this point and so bed it was. I have a bit of a problem with wine. If I drink too much of it, I just don´t sleep well. So I slept for about 3 hours before waking up at 3am, amusing myself with Liz´s sleep-talking. It was this at this point, I decided to put on ma pod and have a wee boogie in the bed, waking Liz up with all my bootaaay-shaking. It was very strange, I literally felt like I was high or something. SO WIDE AWAKE. So this continued until 7am - not all "dance-floor fillers", I also went through an emotional I HATE MY LOVE LIFE phase with Adele and (this is cringe but, Demi Lovato)...and then through my "chill" playlist until I could finally feel myself getting tired. 

We went to Toledo the next day which is the old capital of Spain and it was really beautiful. There were cathedrals and a mosque and we even got to see the start of a Spanish wedding, which was pretty cool - not sure the bride was too happy with us gate-crashing though! By the end of the afternoon, however, we had gotten pretty bored, that was enough culture (and walking for the day). It was then back to Alcala for a night of X Factor viewing and movies.

Cristina made me YET ANOTHER fabulous lunch yesterday. I´m not really sure what it was but there was a meat in it that tasted a little bit like black pudding....nom..

I don´t have any plans this week :( However, I guess that is very Spanish and so I´m hoping something "spontaneous" will come up. Apart from that, might be planning a wee flat party. Show everyone my "pad". Or as my friends here call it, my "lad pad" because you know....just bring back sooooo many men don´t I.....naaaat. As I said to my brother drunkenly on Facebook about two weeks ago "I am not a slut Pat! Don´t worry your little sister is not a slut!"....rambling on....I don´t know why....about some "goings-on" in first year....oh dear Sarah, oh dear.

DAY 57: La Prostituta

Sometimes I feel like I´m a prostitute. Not because I ask people to pay me for sex (although that would come in handy given my current financial situation) but because when I go out for drinks I literally just stand around the streets waiting for someone to proposition me with flyers for free drinks. It sounds sad, and of course when I say this I´m not implying I do this alone, but it does actually work. So take last night for example, Andrew and I went out for some vino and got some free shots, some free drinks and a free shisha. We did, however,  have to pay for some of our drinks....what a pain :P. There´s this wine bar near Sol which gives you large glasses of wine for 1 euro a glass....so of course we ordered 2 each at the same time and poured one into another...we know how to play this game. Andrew and I also really know how to lower the class in any situation. There was a cute wee old British couple sitting in front of us who were obviously out to have a nice wee evening together. Without realising at first that they were in fact English, I started telling Andrew about a story I heard from Castle Leazes when I first arrived in Newcastle....I may as well repeat the story now for those of you who don´t know it:

"There once was a girl who went back with a guy after a night out to have a bit of fun. In the morning, she snibbed the door and went to the loo where she took a massive shit. Blocking the toilet, she (strangely) decided to fish out the poo with a plastic bag (I really don´t understand this...I personally would have just run...). She then proceeded to carry the poo in the bag to find a bin. On her way to the bin she went back into the guy´s room to pick up her things and leave and also wrote him a wee note saying something like ´Thanks for last night. I had fun. Here´s my number´(this a very polite girl)! She left the note beside his bed whilst he was sleeping and left, unsnibbing the door. Now of course us ex-leazes folk will remember the big drama of locking yourself out your room if the door is left unsnibbed. (Too many funny images of students having to go down to reception in their towels after forgetting their keys). So anyway, as she left, she suddenly realised she had left her bag of shit beside the note! What a lovely ´reward´ for the ´lucky´guy to wake up to after a night of drunken sex."

SO, yes I told Andrew this (far too strange and unrealistic to be true) story or "myth" in the bar and the old couple literally looked at me like a piece of filth. As I said, I really know how to bring down the class in any situation. Andrew and I downed our drinks and left.

Woke up this morning feeling a little bit ropey, but thats nothing some Irn Bru imported from Edinburgh Airport at the weekend can´t solve! I bought two bottles at W H Smith...you know...the little 2 for such a price offer that you get there....and drank one on my flight and "saved" the other one for Liz, who is also Scottish and who I´m sure also misses the bru (who wouldn´t?!). However, when I´m hungover, my thoughts for others just fly completely out the window, so sorry Liz, you can wait another month until the beautiful bright orange soda hits your lips again!

I was on Skype to my friend Felicity yesterday who asked me a very important question. "Sarah, do you actually do anything cultural, you know, besides going to work and drinking?" So this is embarrassing, no I don´t Felicity. No I don´t. What is my life? Uni sends you to a foreign country to learn a language and some culture....I´m really failing at life right now. It also makes me laugh how uni gives you money to go (not that I have received it yet). Surely they must know what most of that money is spent on? a...l...c...o...h...o...l. Saying that, my friend Rosie made a very important purchase with her grant...a wee designer handbag! Seriously, only Rosie would do this...bloody model. Andrew was also telling me last night about someone he knows who literally got a nose job with hers! When in Rome right?

DAY 34: La Patata

I mentioned in a previous blog that when the other girls were dancing on the bar, I refrained, as to save people´s eyes. However, things change. On Friday night Rosie and I found ourselves up on the air above everyone, acting as though we fucking ruled the club. We also hopped on a podium thing and no one would dare even ask us to come down because yeah, we were fucking awesome ;) All in all it was a very good night, drinking almost an entire bottle of vodka between us, stealing shots at the bar and dancing away until it was time for a much deserved pizza slice! We arrived back at the flat (with Andrew) at about 3.30am (far too early for España) so continued to drink until we decided Mean Girls was all of a sudden a good idea :/ Munching away on doritos and salsa and a pizza I tried cooking in the microwave that literally turned black and tasted vile, we all lay in bed, laptop in front of us and loaded Mean Girls. Rosie and I woke up about 11am - Andrew was gone, the bed covered in crumbs and the titles of Mean Girls playing on my laptop...neither of us remembered watching any of it...pretty sure we all just passed out, oops. 

So you would think that as I had a friend to stay we would be proactive in doing touristy things, sight-seeing, walking, exploring the city...ok we did go and get some tapas (being all ´cultural´ and all) but really we spent most of the next day watching episodes and episodes of Breaking Bad. Yes, I am only JUST getting into it...so please stay hush! Saturday night involved slobbing in front of the tv even more, watching The X Factor and gorging on cheese. Sunday was shopping day! I say shopping day when in actual fact we only went to one shop, Sephora, spending so much time painting lipsticks and eyeliners on our hands and buying much more than we should have. For some reason I bought this sparkly fake tan that you can also put in your hair to make it ´sparkle´. Not such a great idea, my hair is not sparkly but instead a greasy, sticky mess...good thinking Sarah! We had a pizza for lunch and then decided to fat ourselves up even more by ordering a chinese for dinner. Seriously, I feel like I need to get liposuction! Diet starts today! 

So all in all it was a pretty fun weekend. Great chat and gossip (what else would you expect from two girls who haven´t seen each other for a few months), lots of wine, a lot of dancing (we were still complaining about our aching legs yesterday....we just worked our bootays so hard) and a lot A LOT of food. I am officially a potato.