Welcome back to The Lost Stories of Spain!

Cool intro.

STORIES!

Shenanigans in expresion oral

I had three classes at La Casa de las Lenguas, but the one I enjoyed the most was expresion oral. This is not necessarily because I was a good student, but because of all the shenanigans, as well as the fact that Eduardo, our instructor, was a pretty cool dude.

There were several bouts of shenanigans, most due to my less-than-stellar Spanish.

Shenanigans with Ally

I mentioned my friend Ally from Boston last set of stories. Well, we met through expresion oral.

We were doing an introduction exercise, for which I was partnered with Ally. We were just asking each other estar questions, questions about our current state. I meant to ask Ally, “¿Estás cansado?” (Are you tired?) Instead, I had a slip of the tongue and asked, “¿Estás casado?” (Are you married?) I backpedaled hard when Eduardo called me on my mistake.

But hey, I made a friend out of it.

Shenanigans with Tristan

Another exercise, this time one where I was a waiter and my partner, a guy from Oregon named Tristan, was my customer. Tristan had written out a fake menu, which I was supposed to read from. He sat down at his fake table, I walked over and introduced myself, and then I held up the menu to read from it.

And that’s when I found out that Tristan has really messy handwriting. Like, messy to the point I couldn’t read it.

My likely sleep-deprived mind found this incredibly amusing, and I was probably wheeze-giggling for a solid 45 seconds before regaining my composure and continuing with the skit.

All was fine and dandy until I reached the dessert menu. One of the items was apple pie. I had a brain fart and forgot the Spanish word for pie. (Tarta, if anyone is wondering.) I improvised and asked if he wanted “una pie de manzana.”

Eduardo said from the back of the room that pie (pee-ay) is the Spanish word for foot. I then asked Tristan in English, “Apple feet. You want an apple foot?” and burst out laughing again.

Shenanigans With Oliver (and David, too)

Dialogue assignment. I picked the first person I saw as a partner. In this case, it was David, a super-cool dude from England in the process of moving to Spain to live with his girlfriend.

Well, our day to present came, and David was nowhere to be found. Well, Eduardo insisted I go, so I presented with Oliver, a dude from Ireland who was absent the day we picked partners.

Oliver’s Spanish wasn’t too hot, so you can imagine how good our dialogue was.

The next time I saw David, I asked him what had happened. And…he had a pretty good excuse. He had given his furniture from his flat back in England to some shipping company. Well, said company closed, leaving his furniture floating in the aether. He had spent the last few days kicking down doors, trying to get his stuff back.

Sorry, Dave. Hope things worked out.

Mary, Queen of Scots

In my first volume, I mentioned I had three different professors. On this particular day, our instructor was Carla, and the topic was Scottish literature. She wanted someone to read an excerpt from a Scottish play called Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off. She looked back to our row and said, “Perhaps one of the American students?”

Now, if there’s one thing I love doing, it’s making voices. And I had a point of inspiration. Benji had this joke where he’d put on a Scottish accent and act like he was from the old country. Let’s call Scottish Benji Old Benji McTavish. So I channeled Old Benji McTavish and raised my hand.

Old Benji McTavish was the right way to go. The excerpt was written in phonetic Scottish English. To give you an idea, here are the first few lines:

Country: Scotland. Whit like is it? It’s a peatbog, it’s a daurk forest. It’s a cauldron o’ lye, a saltpan or a coal mine. If you’re gey lucky it’s a bricht bere meadow or a park o’ kye. Or mibbe…it’s a field o’ stanes. It’s a tenement or a merchant’s ha’. It’s a hure hoose or a humble cot. Princes Street or Paddy’s Merkit. It’s a fistful o’ fish or a pickle o’ oatmeal. It’s a queen’s banquet o’ roast meats and junkets.

I had started out at a normal tone of voice, but I was yelling by the time I was a few lines in. I could hear people giggling at my impression, and I had to stop myself from laughing a few times, but I plowed on. I got an ovation when I reached the last lines. Carla said something about how native speakers could bring more context to the text, and I had to clarify that that was not English I would use on a daily basis.

As we were walking out of class, Tanner said he had been watching the rest of the class as I read. By the way the girls in the class had been looking at me as I was reading, he said, I could have asked any one of them out and gotten a guaranteed yes.

The Rainy Night

It was one of those nights I suspect every college student has had: you desperately want something to happen, but all of your friends are busy. So you take yourself out on a date and just let it be.

Such was this night. I had been checking and rechecking WhatsApp, hoping that someone would drop some plans for the night in the chat. I had even thrown a few offers out, something I didn’t usually do. I was that gassed up to do something.

It was probably about 9:30 or 10 when I decided to fly solo. I walked out the door and then walked back inside when I realized I was still wearing my house shoes. I walked out the door and then walked back inside to grab an umbrella, due to there being a drizzle outside.

Once I had started walking, I realized why there were no plans that night: it was POURING. I think there was a lip over the exit to the Villas’ apartment building, which made me seriously underestimate how much rain was coming down. However, I was going to get wet no matter if I kept walking or turned back, and I was hungry for McDonald’s.

I made it to McDonald’s with soaked pant legs. I ordered some food, sent out a message asking if anyone wanted to join me, and then lingered around after I ate. I wanted to stay out of that rain as long as I could.

I should also add that I did not see Jeremy Renner butchering Japanese gangsters with a katana on my way to my apartment or on the way back.

Endgame jokes…

Asturias Day

My host parents looked at me like I was crazy when I told them we were having an Asturias Day celebration at school. They told me that Asturias Day was long since happened–as in, “I came to Spain during it” long since happened.

I was confused, but it was something to break from the monotony of classes.

On the Not-Asturias Day, I was assigned to read an excerpt from the poetry of Ángel González. Aside from some mic troubles, it went off without a hitch.

And that’s it.

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…

…

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Just kidding.

Once I was back home, Matt invited me to hang out at a sidreria. He said he was “with some people”, which as I was to find out, was like saying Bruce Lee was sort of good at martial arts.

I walked over to Cider Hill and walked into a mob. There were so many people I have to categorize.

From Calvin: Myself, Matt, Jamie, Amy, Noah Shin, Kassidy and Kennedy.

From VTech: Maddie and Meghan.

From Boston: Ally and Madison.

Newcomers:

Alex–one of Matt’s classmates. Every time I saw him, he was wearing a scarf. I introduced him to Ronald Reagan’s jelly bean addiction.

Sara–a girl of confusing national origin. The best I could tell was that she was a native Italian abroad in Spain, who could speak Italian and Spanish, and could understand English but not speak it. Also had one of the most distinctive laughs I had ever heard: combine Spongebob’s squeaky boots with Jamie Foxx imitating a creaking door, and you have Sara’s laugh.

When I first sat down, it was me, Matt, Sara, and Alex. Then MaMeKaKe (Maddie, Meghan, Kassidy and Kennedy) joined us. Then we ran into Ally and Madison, and Jamie and Amy passed by and decided to join in. I felt so bad for the waiter, partially because our group was going through a few dozen bottles of cider and partially because I was on a second bill due to drinking Coke instead of cider.

Much to my relief, we did ask for the check and got out of the waiters’ way. We walked to Mas y Mas so boxed wine could be picked up. After enough cheap alcohol to stock a bar was in our bags/hands/whatever, we walked over to San Fran Park. And we just talked.

This might sound boring, but it was actually a really fun night. It kind of reminded me of that scene in every war movie or team movie where the ensemble sits around a campfire and opens up to one another. Only instead of fighting Nazis or ISIS or aliens, we (with the exception of me) would be fighting hangovers, and instead of sitting around a campfire, we sat around what looked like the foundation of a torn-up fountain.

Either way, great night.

A Night at Bible Study

I don’t talk a ton about the GBU Bible study, but I should.

It was a night close to American Thanksgiving, which Spanish people are aware of, but don’t celebrate. On this particular night, Marita, Jasmin’s roommate, went all out. She had cut pieces of paper into squares and added some VSCO aesthetic by burning the edges with a lighter. We wrote out lists of things we were thankful for. Then, we went around and said something good about someone else in the room.

I got pleasantly surprised. Liz, of all people, said my name and praised the blog. (Which gives me something of a timeline as to when this was: I had published “Humble Idiocy”, but had yet to write “The Hill Point”, so this story takes place sometime between those two posts.

I still have that list. I should probably pull it out and hang it somewhere I can see it.

Always remember to be grateful, people.

Claudia

Speaking of hanging out with Matt…

Wait. That was two stories back.

Eh, who cares?

Matt invited me to a coffee shop called Dos de Azúcar to study. I said “sure!” Spanish coffee shops are cool.

When you can find them.

I looked up the place, and maps.me said it was a few blocks away from the evangelical church. So I walked my route to there…and got lost. I walked around, I asked people, I looked and re-looked at the maps.me route. Thankfully, this was not another Fireworks Fiasco. I found it by coincidence and walked in, now regretful we weren’t meeting at a sidrería. Elise and Elizabeth were sipping tea in a step down area, and Matt and Noah Shin had a table saved. They were sitting with two people I didn’t know.

And that’s how I met Claudia.

Claudia was the daughter of a friend of Matt’s host mother. She was a stunner, and I was considering pulling out my best impression of Joey Tribbiani’s “how you doin’?” until she introduced her boyfriend, Leo. (I’m pretty sure that’s his name.)

Anyway, we just hung out.

End of story. Claudia’s a cool cat.

KKK (Keene, Ken, Kass)

Admittedly, this is a story with a downbeat undertone. Juan, a classmate of ours from Iowa, had been mugged a few nights earlier, and it had kind of poked a hole in our bubble.

Well anyway, I had been talking to Kassidy and Kennedy about studying together. They bounced back and forth as to where we would be studying, before saying “screw it” and asking if I wanted to hang out that night.

I walked to the bottom of Cider Hill and ran into Ally, Madison and Ally’s visiting boyfriend Trevor. In the two minutes I met him, I immediately saw why he and Ally were together: 1. The dude’s an Adonis, and an African-American one at that. 2. He positively identified my T-shirt as a Punisher shirt. Ally, if you’re reading this, marry that man.

Ahem.

I invited them to join my group, but they said they were gunning for the clubs, so I wished them luck (a good time? many free drinks? what do you wish for people trying to club?) and kept walking.

I found Kass and Ken in a restaurant near the bottom of Cider Hill. Once I sat down, I learned something very quickly: if you want free stuff, go abroad and make your travel companions are attractive white women.

The two staffers were both men, and we were their only customers sitting inside. At semi-regular intervals, they’d bring us platters of tapas, and they were chatting with all three of us, but Kassidy and Kennedy in particular. They might have had a chance with Kennedy, who was (is?) single, but Kassidy had earlier said she was essentially waiting on her boyfriend of several years to propose. This may make them sound like scumbags, but despite laying it on a little thick, they seemed like cool dudes.

It was while sitting together that I learned of another unfortunate occurrence: Kassidy had been followed. I didn’t learn all the details, but the skinny was: she was walking in the city by herself, and some dude in a turban had followed her. She pulled some evasive maneuvers and lost the guy. It was yet another needle in our idyllic bubble, a reminder that as much fun as we were having in Spain, creeps who want to get their rocks off by any means possible know no borders.

We eventually decided to pack it up. We said goodbye to Miguel and Antonio, the two waiters, and paid our bill. Kennedy lived pretty close, so she went off on her own. I told Kassidy I’d walk her home. She said it wasn’t necessary and that her place was out of the way of mine. I in turn told her she could either slightly inconvenience me by making me walk out of my way or she could deal with Turban Man again. We compromised: I walked her halfway and then went on my way.

Stay safe, ladies.

Anywho, that’ll do it for now. Two more volumes to go. For now, may your fake menus be legible, your walks to McDonald’s be without a cloud in the sky, and your travels be in the companionship of attractive white women.

Welcome back to The Lost Stories of Spain! If you’re getting sick of those, invent a time machine, go back in time, and twist Past Me’s arm into being more active on the blog.

Anywho, let’s get right into the stories!

Monte Naranco

When I first moved to Grand Rapids, one of the biggest differences was the terrain. Most of Detroit, and especially the area I live in, is as flat as a board, so seeing these weird rises in the ground the locals called “hills” was something to get used to.

Oviedo not only had lots of hills, but the town was something like a bowl. Anywhere in the city, I could look off into the horizon and see houses up in the mountains, as well as a statue of Jesus.

The statue was on top of the Monte Naranco. Benji and Tanner had climbed it, and wanted to make a second trip. I went with the two of them, along with Elizabeth. The walk up was steep, but mostly uneventful…unfortunately? Tanner and Benji had said they’d seen some wild stuff on their first trek. A wild boar had come out of the woods while they were on a footpath, and at somewhere close to the top, they found some kind of a cave that looked like it had been (or was still) occupied. The most eventful thing that happened on the way up was us finding some kind of slug on one of the paths:

Once we got to the top, we took it all in. I snapped the infamous selfie with Jesus

And that’s about it. Anticlimactic, innit? I did whip and nae-nae to the sound of a sheep bleating on the way down, so that’s something.

Iratxe’s Birthday Video

I don’t think I’ve talked about Spanish Netflix yet. It is great. I watched Avatar: The Last Airbender all the way through in Spain. There was a lot of other stuff not available in America, but I didn’t get around to them.

I [might have] been bathing in the glory of Spanish Netflix and looked up from my iPad. José was standing in the doorway of his bedroom, wearing a big New Year’s hat.

This was in October, mind you, two weeks before Halloween and two months before New Year’s. I decided Spanish Netflix (or YouTube; it could have been either) could wait and walked to the living room. I found Elisa and Hugo, their grandson, similarly dressed up. I asked what was going on. Iratxe (e-RA-chay), Hugo’s mother, was celebrating her birthday, and they wanted to send a video.

Being a good host son, I volunteered to be a cameraman. We got it after a few takes, and it was sent to Iratxe.

You ever had one of those moments where you see something so bizarre that your first impulse is to wonder whether you might have unknowingly huffed something? I used to call them “Art Teacher Pushing Himself to the Lunchroom on a Rolling Chair with a Hockey Stick” moments. (Don’t ask.) Now I call it “Host Dad Walking by My Room Wearing a New Year’s Hat in the Middle of October” moments.

Little less of a mouthful.

The Great Blunder

There had been a buzz for a few days prior to this story. King Felipe and Queen Letizia were going to be visiting Oviedo’s Teatro Campoamor. I had been talking with some people about going to see them arrive.

Well, on October 19, the day of, I got a message from Cameron saying he was with a group and that they were waiting on the King and Queen’s arrival.

I was up, explaining what was going on to José and Elisa, and sprinting for the place in about two minutes. This was an instance of God’s good will; I had no red lights on the way, and I managed to keep a good pace, despite a good chunk of the run being uphill. I ended up on the wrong side of the street, but got to where I wanted to be without getting jumped by Spanish police.

I found Tanner, Elizabeth, Elise and Benji waiting for the King and Queen’s arrival. I also bumped into Ivana, one of my classmates who was from South Korea, as well as Ally and Madison, two of my classmates who were from Boston.

Tanner had found some kind of program for the event, which he eventually passed to me. I opened it and was immediately drawn to one name: Martin Scorsese.

That’s right, Martin Scorsese was going to be attending this event.

My mind immediately went to Max. While trying to get a picture with Martin Scorsese was out of the question, getting a picture of Martin Scorsese to send Max was a done deal.

Or that’s what I was thinking until I looked up from the brochure. As if on cue, a car rolled up, and Martin Scorsese stepped from the car.

And me without my camera cued up.

Things to know about Martin Scorsese: 1. The man is a cinematic genius. We’re talking about the guy behind masterpieces like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, and The Departed. 2. The guy has as much reverence for the big screen as he has garnered behind the camera. He’s big into film preservation and old movies, hence the presumable reason he was going out for a night at the theater in Spain. 3. The guy is super-short. Like, I’d be surprised if he broke 5’4″. That last fact came back to bite me; a short Italian-American man among the beefcakes the King and Queen had for security meant he got out of his car and disappeared into the crowd by the time I had my camera out.

There is something of a happy ending to this story. After the crowd started to disperse, I ran into Cameron chatting with Ally and Madison. He had been telling them about Guinness, and they were down for some Irish ale. So the four of us hung out at Guinness for a bit.

Sorry, Max. I’ll get around to watching Goodfellas someday.

The Logic Look-Alike

While we were riding back from the Picos de Europas, Kassidy, Kennedy, Maddie and Meghan were talking about going out that night. I already mentioned this, but the four of them were hardcore travel buddies. The four of them (or three of them, occasionally) hit Paris, Dublin, the Basque city of Bilbao, and Portugal, and that’s just the places I can remember off the top of my head. Seeing as this was a chance to hang out with them that didn’t involve paying for a plane ticket or a hotel, I texted Kassidy when I got home asking if I could join them. I got the yes from her and a time and place to meet them. At 11, I put on my best night wear (read: a Punisher graphic tee and a hoodie) bid an “hasta luego” to my host parents, and walked over to Jamón y Jamón, the restaurant I was supposed to meet the girls at.

I found them, and also found out that Spanish people really like eating ham dishes at midnight. The place was packed, and after a few drinks, we decided to peace out. We walked downhill and found ourselves in a bar. I went inside with the girls, then walked back outside when they started ordering drinks. As I stood outside waiting for them to come out with their drinks, I noticed a guy sitting by one of the bar’s windows. Wow, I thought. That dude looks exactly like Logic.

Kassidy was the first one out of the bar, and when she joined me, I pointed the guy out and said, “That dude looks exactly like Logic.” She told me not to point, but the guy noticed us and waved.

When Kennedy, Maddie and Meghan joined us, we found a place to sit. I saw the Logic lookalike walk out of the bar. To my surprise, he walked over to us and struck up conversation. His name was Jake, and he was a British student abroad in Spain.

You may have heard of Erasmus. It’s an EU-sponsored exchange program that lets European college students study abroad in other European countries. There was a sizable Erasmus group at La Universidad de Oviedo, and they had a giant group chat that the Calvin group had been added to. Jake recognized me from there.

We started talking comic books and the bit of British TV I had seen. Jake’s girlfriend Aimee joined us and really hit it off with the girls. Then Vasco, Jake’s flatmate, joined our conversation. We really hit it off, and the three of them invited us to their table inside.

We were introduced to more Erasmus students when we sat down: there was Rebecca, an Irish girl, and Dimitra, a girl from Greece; Joe, Rebecca’s boyfriend; Nick, another guy from the UK, and Alex, Jake and Vasco’s flatmate who had yet to follow Vasco on Instagram. I spent the next few hours socializing with the other people and talking rap music with Vasco.

Around 3 AM, talk turned to the clubs, and the consensus was eventually reached that the club district was our new destination. May I remind you of my feeling about the clubs:

I told the group I was good for the night. I got Jake and Vasco’s numbers before I left.

Super good night, with an opportunity to meet some new people. Would do again.

A Story with a Lot of Background

Background piece #1: Early in October, Prof. Pyper asked to speak with me. I went to her office to see what was up. She asked about my experience with José and Elisa. She told me that the two of them were concerned I was unhappy living with them.

My response was bewilderment, followed by comprehension. This was back in the struggle stage, where I only knew bits and pieces of Spanish. I’ve been told I’m pretty quiet in my native language, so I was on a speak when spoken to basis with my host parents due to a lack of language knowledge.

There were several words that could have described my time with José and Elisa. Confusing? Often. Frustrating? Occasionally. But they were good host parents, who were making efforts to breach the language barrier. You should also know I got the long end of the stick when it came to host parents. Elizabeth’s host mom had shipped off to Russia for a month-long vacation, and left Elizabeth alone in the apartment with only one of her host mom’s friends to come cook for her. Benji was living with an elderly, very sick host father, and most of his host mom’s time was spent taking care of him. (Benji eventually changed families, and his first host dad died not too long after.) Jessica’s host mom was trying to enforce a curfew, in spite of Jessica being a grown woman, and Tanner was paired up with a very abrasive host mom. Communicating with the Villas may have been difficult, but they were kind people who put me on a pretty long leash and told me when they were going to be out of the apartment.

Background piece #2: My mom has been long warning me about combining dairy and fish. Allegedly, the two don’t sit together well in Keene stomachs.

Background piece #3: One of the things my host mom frequently made as a meal was a type of sandwich. It was a double-decker, with ham, cheese and tuna fish. It was delicious, and since I felt fine after each time eating one, I had forgotten about my mom’s warning.

OK, all background established. Story now.

Dinner one Saturday night was fish along with personal cheese pizza. Not thinking it through, I ate my fish and helped myself to a few pieces of pizza. I finished dinner and headed back to my room to get ready for bed.

By the time I was out of the shower, my stomach was feeling peculiar. I sat on the toilet, wondering if I just needed to go to the bathroom, but nothing happened. I eventually hitched back up and went to bed. The night consisted of lying, staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep due to feeling like his stomach was going to rupture at any second. Every so often, I got up to try going to the bathroom, but nothing came of it. I saw a Hap commercial a while ago that started by saying, “One of your worst fears as a parent is for your kid to be halfway across the world and email you saying, ‘Mom, I’m sick.'” I can confirm, being the sender of that email is pretty scary as well.

The next morning, the feeling hadn’t gone away. I can’t remember if I told José and Elisa I wasn’t feeling 100% or if they figured it out on their own, but Elisa made me some tea and gave me medicine. I spent most of the day sitting around my bedroom, praying that I would be able to move without feeling like my stomach would drop out of me.

More than anything, I felt tense. Elisa was a great cook, and I was worried trying to tell her fish and dairy mixed poorly in my stomach would come out as an insult rather than an explanation.

José broke the tension. I was fiddling with my iPad when he popped his head into my room. “Noah,” he said sheepishly. He paused, whipped out his translator, and then handed his phone to me. I read the translation: ¿Tienes diarrea? (Do you have diarrhea?)

I almost busted out laughing, and assured him that was not the problem.

I ended up skipping the night service at the evangelical church that night, but I felt good enough to tell Elisa about the volatile cocktail fish and dairy made in my stomach.

Of the four months living with José and Elisa, this was the moment they became like real parents to me. I was a stranger who was still learning to speak their language, and who they were uncertain was happy living with them, and yet they cared for me as if I was their flesh and blood.

Well, that’s it for now. Thank you all for reading. May your hikes be wild boar-free, your encounters with rapper lookalikes result in you meeting some great dudes, and your host parents be understanding when you forget about your dietary no-nos. Adios.

Author’s note: WordPress, I love ya until I don’t. My final draft of this post didn’t save, which left story #4 unfinished and story #5 unwritten. My apologies; it looked finished.

Welcome back to The Lost Stories of Spain! We’re starting off a little before the youth camp and moving into October. Without further ado…

1. The Fireworks Fiasco

I don’t know a lot of things that push my buttons. It’s one of those things that I only know in the moment. One thing I do know of that drives me crazy: bad instructions. The people who constantly revise how they want me to do a task are the people who make me want to jump off a bridge.

Enter maps.me, the reason I ended up angrily eating chicken nuggets in a Spanish McDonald’s at 1 in the morning.

There was going to be some sort of fireworks show in a park. My group was talking in our group chat, giving directions. I bid my host parents hasta luego and started the trek down to San Fran Park, which is where I thought it was going to be.

It wasn’t.

Puzzled, I went back to the group chat. I got an address, Invierno Park. I typed it into maps.me.

Now to explain how this night ended with me eating in angry, I need to explain what maps.me is.

Maps.me is an app that allows for navigation without wifi. The problem with maps.me is its lack of precision. For example, it has a hard time comprehending addresses. Most of the places I found with maps.me I found by following directions to the destination street and then looking around until I found where I wanted to be.

This occasion was not one of those times.

Unbeknownst to me, I passed several future story locales as I wandered in confusion. I walked through the park next to the cachopo restaurant (see story #4) and past the club district (see story #3). The fireworks started as I was en route to wherever I was going. When I made it to a bridge going over the freeway, maps.me went kaput when I was in a roadside tunnel. As I stood in the tunnel, my confusion building into frustration, I got a text from Tanner saying the fireworks were over and they were heading to a McDonald’s down the street from San Fran Park, where I had thought we were originally going to meet.

At around 1, I walked into the McDonald’s, two hours of frustration at my wild goose chase making me look like Frank Castle about to sucker-punch his higher-up.

https://youtu.be/V8EGNISJLq0?t=16

I reached the table, slammed my hands down on it, and let out my frustrations with maps.me in a noise of frustration vaguely resembling English. Then I turned around and ordered chicken nuggets, which I then proceeded to eat while mean-mugging.

Following that night, my ire with maps.me would become something of a running joke with our group, prominent enough that Matt’s girlfriend (and former resident of my sister floor) Kali would bring it up when I asked her how things were going back at Calvin.

I miss a lot of things from Spain.

Getting around with maps.me isn’t one of them.

2. ¿Amigas?

You know that scene in every horror movie trailer? The main character looks around a corner, and nothing’s there. They relax, turn back around and get attacked.

I think a version of that happened to me, though it resulted in our group making friends and influencing people instead of dying.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned Cider Hill yet. Cider Hill was just what the name says: a hill occupied from top to bottom by sidrerías, restaurants whose selling point was alcoholic cider. We were at the top of the hill, getting ready to go our separate ways. I think I looked down to mess around with my phone. I looked up and jumped. Two girls had joined our group and were chatting away.

I got over my shock as I listened in. The girls’ names were Maddie and Meghan. They were from Virginia Tech and enrolled at La Casa de las Lenguas like we were. They had been walking around and heard our group speaking English, and had run up to us in sheer joy at there being no language barrier. (I don’t know anything about that. I totally didn’t write a blog post about how much the language barrier sucks or anything.)

Maddie and Meghan would end up being the sixth rangers of the Calvin group. They really buddied up with Kassidy and Kennedy and traveled with them a lot. They joined our Bible study, went with us to the Picos de Europas, and Meghan even photo-bombed me in the mountains.

Concluding sentence, followed by a group photo.

3. Exit Max, Enter the Clubs

Max left with a bang.

The weekend that Max was on his way back home, Kennedy’s parents were also in town, and some friends of theirs had come along for the ride. All of our groups–Max and his parents, the Genzinks and their friends, and our group–met at the top of Cider Hill.

Max and his parents turned in early in anticipation of their flight home. Our mega-group headed down to the Guinness, which, were our experience in Spain to be made into a sitcom, would be like the Central Perk in Friends or MacLaren’s Pub in How I Met Your Mother. In the hour or so that we were in Guinness, I learned several things.

First off, I learned that Kennedy has super-cool parents. I won’t legally be able to bar-hop for another year, but I would so hit a few pubs if I could get Kennedy and her parents to accompany me.

Second, there are stages to Cameron getting drunk. First comes the tipsy stage. That’s the easy part. Then comes talking about politics. Before he was a linguistics major, Cam was in the poly-sci department and is still pretty politically aware. Once he starts talking about going to CPAC or whatever, you know he’s good and drunk.Then there’s the slapping the table story time stage. This is interchangeable with stage four, talking about his family. He would start telling stories, oftentimes involving his family. Keyword being start: the alcohol in his system usually makes the story go unfinished as he messily segues into the next story. All of this while slapping the table at random intervals.

Anyhow, after some drinks and us assuring them we would see each other home safely, the Genzinks also turned in for the night. So we went clubbing.

A visual representation on how I feel about going to the club:

We bounced from club to club, waiting on the Funky Room (which was like the club) to open. I wallflowered, drinking nothing stronger than Coke and looking for a good time to make an exit.

That opportunity came as we exited the Joker a few minutes before Funky Room’s opening time. I was flipping through my ebook, contemplating whether or not I should leave. Then I looked at the gates of hell–I mean, the entrance to Funky Room–and I made my decision.

I told everybody I was done for the night, and told everyone to get home safe and unroofied, and then went home.

I think I should start making a checklist of things I don’t miss:

__ The university

__maps.me

__Clubs

3.5. __The Steakhouse Pizza

I don’t have a clue when this happened, but it’s relevant to story #4.

One night, I went to Telepizza. It’s a middle-of-the-road pizza chain–think the Spanish equivalent to Little Caesar’s.

I was there with Tanner, Elizabeth, Elise and Cameron. I ordered the Steakhouse Pizza, which was something like a meat lover’s.

The comparison I made after eating the Steakhouse was like rekindling a relationship with your ex: good for a brief moment, and then all at once, you realize how bad of an idea it was.

The first two pieces were OK. The third piece wasn’t that great. The fourth piece was terrible.

“Steakhouse pizza” is now in my personal dictionary, to define foods that are good for the first few bites, and then just become horrible.

4. The Birthday Cachopo

“What’s the significance?” you may ask.

Matt’s birthday is on October 8. I was going to Bible study that night, but Cam texted me asking if I wanted to go to a cachopo joint for Matt’s birthday. I didn’t know what a cachopo was (and in fact, I had to Google it just now), but hey, time with friends. So I agreed.

I went to Bible study, which was at Marisol’s apartment; coincidentally, on the night of the Fireworks Fiasco, had I crossed the bridge and kept walking, I would have ended up at Marisol’s apartment building. See what I mean about walking by future story locations? After Bible study, I walked straight to the cachopo restaurant.

It was Cam, Matt, myself and Jamie at the restaurant. Jamie wasn’t hungry, I ordered some dish I don’t remember, and Cam and Matt decided to split a cachopo. Whatever I ordered wasn’t a cachopo, and I dodged a bullet.

According to Wikipedia, cachopo is an Asturian dish. It’s two veal filets with cuts of ham and cheese; the whole concoction is breaded in eggs and bread crumbs, and then deep fried. On paper, it sounds amazing.

Well, remember my reaction to the steakhouse pizza? Cam and Matt gave me an idea of what I looked like as I ate the Steakhouse.

When their food arrived, they dug in. Though I don’t remember what I ordered, it was great. I finished before them, and then looked up to see their progress.

You know that look of slow realization people get on their faces when they realize they ordered something bad? Both Matt and Cam were wearing that look on their faces. Their cachopo had been made with blue cheese, which did not make for a good flavor blend. They passed it off to Jamie, who gave up the ghost after a few bites.

After paying, we walked over to Guinness, where we met up with Amy and Noah Shin. They ordered Irish car bombs, and I snapped this picture with Matt:

We ended up burning those birthday hats, because why not?

Hope you had a good birthday, Matt. Crapchopo aside.

5. ¡El osoperro!

This might have happened the same night as Matt’s birthday, or it might have been a different night, one where we had the same group minus Cam. You wait six months to write down your experiences, you pay the price.

Anyway, we walked into Guinness and then did a double take. Lounging on the floor of the joint, in between the bar and the step up to the window seats, was this absolute unit of a Golden Retriever. This yeti of a canine was flopped on the floor like a good boy version of a bear rug. While Amy and Noah Shin took pictures with it, I settled for feeding it steakhouse pizza chips we were given with our drinks. (You ate one, and it left a terrible aftertaste, so you ate more to delay the oncoming of the aftertaste.)

We saw the dog a few more times, and it was always when a particular bartender was working, so I presume the Barky Gold Giant was his.

And that will be it for today. May your cachopos not be made with blue cheese, your pizzas not be steakhouse, and your good boys be furry mountains of love. Bai.