A Simple Smorgasbord

These two weeks kick themselves off with an uneventful couple of days of lectures, also an Irish girl’s birthday; which comprised lots of Irish girls (friends from home) all giggling and passing around presents and revelling in their mutual friendship, whilst we four English people sat there like a bunch of historically guilty lemons. There was also Halloween. The Spanish don’t actually celebrate Halloween, as it is the commercial by-product of some American company/has links to Irish pagan past, but I think most places theme up their venue in order to entice the local foreigners primed to dress up and make remarkable fools of themselves. We didn’t dress up. Not because we are ‘above it’, but because we had a belated Halloween party on Saturday at Nicky’s house, complete with two varieties of pumpkin soup and bobbing for apples. I had black makeup daubed around my eyes and was dubbed ‘King of the Emos’. There was also rival royalties in the form of ‘King of the Pirates’ and ‘King of the Retards’, safe to say they are both either sleeping with the fishes, or doing something that a pc society says ‘shush’ to.

I was also blessed with the presence of my parents for a couple of days. We ate well (an appealing blend of Spanish tapas and national dishes, Italian finery and Argentinean steak; consumed whilst visiting family friends – friends that own an impossibly lavish house, which even has it’s own external cinema), rented a car over the phone (to visit said friends in Denia), and visited the Alicante castle (plump with rustic charm and had more sandy walls than you could shake a Moorish stick at).

It was actually quite a shame having the parents leave. It was nice to have them visit and filled any holes created by homesickness and yadda yadda, blah blah, teary mess, blubbing, heartache, longing and all that, but it was also nice to have all my food bought for me for a week. No sooner had my parents left than Hollie’s had arrived. I, using my agile and deft diplomatic skills along with a silver tongue, managed to scab myself a couple of free meals. Bearing in mind that these people had a week’s forewarning of my intentions, one of the attempts was decidedly weaker than other meals I have had. My friend Christian, bless him, has a heart of gold, and offered to cook for me one night. The actual day of our meal I reminded him and he said we were having chicken and veg, so nothing fancy but tasty and hearty nonetheless. I get to his house and we find out he hasn’t enough chicken for the two of us, or much veg to speak of. In brief, we dined on fried eggs, spinach and peas. The eggs were spiced up with curry powder, the peas were invigorated with a splodge of mayonnaise and the spinach aroused with a healthy lacing of garlic. It was a veritable banquet. Don’t take this to mean I wasn’t grateful though…I was…and I love spinach.

Other bits and bobs; I made friends with Alex, the ever vigilant (even while having whisky and sprites with us) Chief of the Alicante Police force, kept up with my constant stream of homework (Spanish grammar excercises, such fun; Spanish creative writing, actually quite fun; etc, etc), watched a couple of films that my parents brought me (along with other luxury items including four boxes of marmite crackers, two jars of marmite and four bottles of Reggae Reggae Sauce – excessive? Maybe, but shut up I didn’t ask you and you didn’t bring me anything). We also celebrated Hollie’s 21st birthday by dressing up with the theme of ‘indie-rave’ to guide. We looked like a mix between failures from the ‘Fame’ auditions line-up, gay superheroes and 80s electro (the look seems to work better for the females and seems to constantly land them with free drinks and lecherous men…so there’s a trick ladies). It was quite alarming to witness the brightly clad, colourful, tights-sporting legion flock through the streets without a care in the world. I’m just surprised no one wanted to fight us or rob us. Well maybe they did, but were disorientated by clashing colours and perturbed by fluorescent wristbands.

Well, that’s about it for these two weeks. Rodrigo has gone to Germany with his girlfriend for a few days, so there is a distinct lack of Spanish in our flat at the moment. I oft spend wadge of my evening chatting to them. In fact one of the meals I had last week was a combined, culinary effort with Rodrigo. All in Spanish he said ‘have you perchance eaten yet my liege?’, I said ‘why no my dear fellow, I have not’, ‘crikey, neither have I, but alas, I am no longer in the possession of any vittles’, ‘by jove young whippersnapper, neither am I!’. This rowdy intercourse lasted a few minutes and afterwards we decided to plunge the murky depths of the fridge. I had some chips left. He had some pizza bases. Snap, crackle and pop! We had two cheese and tomato pizzas (with chorizo and mince to top), with sweet pepper chips (served with ajonesa – a garlic mayonnaise – and lashings of Reggae Reggae, whose pronunciation in Jamaican I have taught unto Rodrigo). What was my point? Ah yes! Talking to my Spanish housemate. If you are blessed with a Spanish housemate, use him/her! I can’t vouch for all of them, but mine is a hero and I now love to blab away in Spanish. And I think I may even be developing my own natural style of speech.

Oh, I also had a prehistory practical where a wonderful Neanderthal like man called Paco came in and made prehistoric tools for us, right in front of our faces…brilliant! There has been nothing unpleasant or blood-boiling about the Spanish recently. In fact they’ve been lovely these past two weeks.

Until next time…hasta pronto!