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 38: La Nudista

Well well done me and my linguistic skills. I was talking to one of the girls at work today about my dad and describing to her the term 'dadd'y's girl'. In this explanation what I meant to say was 'I suck up to my dad so that he think's I'm a little princess'....what it came out as was ' I suck off my dad so that he thinks I'm a little princess.' F.M.L. The horror on this girl's face was followed by 'QUE?!' especially with the fact that I said it so casually. At first I thought, alright calm down love, I suck up to my dad yeah to fool him a bit what's the big deal, I don't like him knowing and I smoke, get drunk...and other things...(even though I'm fooling myself that he doesn't already know these things)...and then she told me what I said, forever scarring me with that image in my mind. Good one Sarah! Ew.

ANYWAY, apart from that work has been pretty busy this week with lot's of events. This means a lot of setting up tables and greeting people but it also means a lot of free food and wine. I got to go to an international event is this very fancy casino on Tuesday night and have lovely champagne and dinner. Actually, the dinner wasn't that great, it was fish (gag) - never give me fish - but it was still fancy. Today's event was a breakfast meeting called 'Fashion Lab' and so there were people coming from Luis Vuitton, Hermes, Cortefiel etc, and as you would suspect, a lot of very camp men! I tried to dress appropriately, you know business chic 'with a twist' but pretty sure my style didn't quite suffice. However, it was fun to see all these people none-the-less even though all I did was go up and down an elevator all morning bringing each person to the conference room. That's 50 floors by the way, up and down 50 levels every 5 minutes! There was a man and woman who came in and I just assumed they were business partners as they seemed to know each other reasonably well. Maybe they were, but they also seemed to have quite an 'initimate' relationship. As we went up the tower, he kept his hand on her ass whilst they kissed and stroked each other....not really something you would expect to see in an office for a global audits company..especially in a lift full of staff...but the Spanish are pretty fond of their PDA. Gag. Seriously, they are kissing everywhere you go, and in the park they practically have sex. So grim. Not a fan of a pda...

So I get the metro every morning to work and as you do on the London tube, I people watch. It's quite good because what I've come to realise is that Spain (I guess like London as well) really has a lot of weirdos. I've seen transvestites, more people practically having sex and women breast feeding with their full on boobs out, no kidding, I've seen their nipples and everything....and they call the English girls slags....:P It also gets so hot on the metro and as a fake tan user, this does not bode well, with brown beads of sweat dripping down my neck....lovely. Sometimes it should just be acceptable to walk around naked...although I guess that contradicts what I just said about the breast feeding mothers!

Apart from all that I have had a pretty quiet week chilling by myself, which has actually been quite nice. I can laze about and catch up on series, walk round naked, have time to cook nice food and skype my friends back home. Tonight, however, I am out for another 'despedida' (farewell party) so the free drinks will be flowing. Tomorrow then I off to Alcala (again)...it has become my second home! Here's to it being Friday! 

DAY 5: La Fashionista

Spanish exchanges who came to our school were always memorable for dressing poorly. They would arrive with their polo-necks, baggy jeans and rucksacks, whilst us girls, at the age of 14, would be wearing uggs, skinny jeans and a tighter-fitting top to highlight our then AA-cup breasts. I guess I assumed that the exchanges just hadn’t grown into what we saw as ‘fashion’, however, seeing the women in the office on my first day of work, I think maybe poor dress sense is a Spanish thing. Middle-aged women dressed in floral dresses that were all too short for their older bodies to pull off, combining that with make-up that looked like they hadn’t taken off since the 80’s. I arrived, business chic, being the ‘sexy businesswomen’ I had always wanted to be. There I was in my tight black pencil skirt, peplum top (highlighting my now D-cup breasts) and ‘office’ stilettos, looking more like I was going out for drinks than a day in the office. Maybe acceptable in London, but here, I stuck out like a sore thumb.

If I’m honest, my first day at work was crap. That’s the only way to put it. My boss, Raquel, looked at me like a piece of shit and told me to unpack her boxes into her new desk. As I stumbled around in my heels and tight skirt unloading these many crates, I thought to myself ‘Is this really a marketing internship? No’. So after my first day, I am referring to her as the ‘office bitch’, but hopefully this will change over time.