Nit Bus

I know that Neighborsman has been regaling you with nightbus adventures and I hate to say this but, I can top that shit. We went out Monday night for dinner and drinks to celebrate a birthday for one of the exchange students. Dinner was good but the drinks portion of the evening got off to a rocky start when one of the guys pissed off a bouncer. Unfortunately, everyone else had already gotten into the bar so we had to down as much as we could of 3 pitchers worth of sangria (no complaints from me) in 15 minutes while he waited. The mission was impossible so we made friends by giving away what we couldn't drink before going to another bar.

By the time we wanted to go home, the metro had stopped running so I took the nightbus with one of the girls who lives in my neighborhood. Now, this is what we get for being cheap since the cabs aren't really that expensive. We apparently took the nightbus in the wrong direction but unfortunately didn't figure this out until an hour later after passing through the sketchiest part of town (muy industrial) and having some creepy guy stare at us the whole time. Want to know how we figured this out? We ended up at the top of some mountain outside of Barcelona at 3:30 in the morning in a neighborhood that we didn't know even existed. MBAs is smart people.

A common misconception is that Spanish people are nice. This is true, yes, unless they are working in a service-related field and I know that I am not being unreasonable because even the French students complain about how horrible the service is here. We asked the bus driver if he could talk to a cab company for us since we didn't: A) know where we were, B) know how to pronounce where we didn't know we were, and C) want to wait the hour and half he said it would take to get home. He reluctantly agreed and, as soon as he hung up, was like "Hello, girls, are you getting on the bus or what?" before he sped away. He said the cab would take 15 minutes but when we called 20 minutes later, the woman informed us that there were no cabs available right then and that it would take 30 minutes, mas o menos.

Mas o menos (more or less) is our absolute favorite phrase in my Spanish class and basically meant that we were fucked if we thought a cab was going to show up. So we got on the next bus and, ironically, saw a gazillion cabs on the way home. But everytime we saw a cab, the bus would immediately turn in the opposite direction. There is nothing like sharing a horrendous night in a foreign country to immediately bond with another person. I went to bed by 6 and woke up at 8 since I have a 2-week retail marketing class that starts at 9. Ugh.

Tuesday night I did a language exchange with a Catalan because 8 hours of Spanish class a week is clearly not cutting it. Unfortunately, his English is way better than my Spanish so we talked in English about science, American politics (eg, why I don't think that Hilary will be our next president), and Halloween. We actually get All Saints Day off here but I had to enlighten him about American Halloween because he's going to visit his girlfriend in DC and was like "Why the hell should I give spoiled children candy for knocking on my door?" I couldn't explain it properly but managed to communicate that you can't not give out candy on Halloween and I think he was a little horrified when I told him that we used to get so much candy that it could last for months (theoretically, at least, if you didn't gorge yourself like my siblings and I used to).

I am all caught up so far on Lost, The Office, Project Runway, and Season 6 of Gilmore Girls. Suffice it to say that all those books I bought in London are gettin' a little dusty now. This girl brought up Chipotle in the retail class today and now I am dying for a steak burrito bol with rice, pico de gallo, corn, and lettuce. I went out for dinner at a Mexican place my roommate raved about and it was good, if not exactly authentically executed , but ohmygod I want Chipotle.

Is there anything I can do about looking so innocent and nice? We were talking about traveling in Spanish class today and the Italian guy told us to go to Marrakesh when we're in Morocco since he had been a few times. The teacher was shocked when I asked if you could smoke weed there since I was under the impression that Marrakesh is a weed haven. She actually said that she was shocked to hear me ask that but, to be fair, the last question I asked in class was "Where can I see modern ballet in Barcelona?" By the way, the answer is that it's technically illegal but you can find it easily and most likely won't get in trouble for smoking it.

Although I'm no longer home/Mark-sick, it'll be good to see him this weekend in Vienna (the last before December) and I can't wait to go on the Kirath diet (wine, pasta, gelato) in Rome this weekend too. Okay, enough random thoughts from me and here's a pre-nightbus picture from Monday night for making it all the way to the end.