About where I live- first, I have three roommates. One has his own room with a double bed. Two share a room and a big closet, and have the AC unit in the wall above their door (they like their AC units high up here- makes sense, anyway) and I drew a straw to get the other room to myself. I do still have another bed there, like I mentioned. Since its been warm I've left my door open and exterior window shade, that closes all the way down, partly open, for ventilation. Meaning its loud and bright in my room in the mornings. When it gets cooler, I'll sleep better. I have an odd collection of roommates I'd say- one who I really hoped to live with, Dave. The way the apartment ended up was a result of lots of different people wanting (or not wanting) to live together in different groups, and our professor basically saying "I have two 5-beds, one 6-bed, one 3-bed, one 2-bed, ready set go you have ten minutes to decide where everyone is living so I can take you all to your places". That worked out pretty well, even given the drawing of straws, until the next hour when a few of us hashed and rehashed who wanted to live where and why and how people could convince others to go along with the master plan that didn't happen.
The cats outside my window- there's a restaurant down below so I think they get lots of scraps.
My bedroom, with extra bed, and nice big window that unfortunately for the warm weather, faces Southwest and gets sun all day. So opening it for ventilation does no good. That storm blind is OUTside the window, which is apparently normal here... I like the little ledge where I can put all my stuff.
Our family room, and my roommate Dave checking out a map. Those are the huge doors that are wide open ALWAYS.
Dave again, sitting on our balcony, ruling over his kingdom. And the little door to the restaurant down below. Most of the seating for it is outside on the street actually.
We have giant French doors though that let onto a very shallow balcony, just wide enough for a chair sideways, but long enough against the building for three people to sit out there. Its our favorite place to sit and eat or work, and watch the street life. We live on a completely pedestrian (besides the bikes and occasional scooter) street, with sidewalks down both sides, bike lines inside that, and a giant pedestrian boulevard down the middle where restaurants also have seats and tables with umbrellas. Pretty nice, always active, great people watching.
People of all ages live in the neighborhood. Old people use the benches down along the side of the boulevard to either people watch, hang out, take a break between walking somewhere far, or have dangerous liasons. Or all of the above. Kids being pushed by in strollers are the only ones observant enough and not absorbed in other stuff so much, that they notice us sitting up in the balcony, and watch us. I wave. They wave back and point and say stuff to their parents, and crane their neck all the way the street to keep watching as I wave. Pretty funny :)
The street is great for parties, as we found out a couple weeks ago- as they here, the Catalans, were celebrating (curiously) their historic loss for control of the city to the Castellans, who are basically the Spanish. Days of parties and festivals in blocked off side streets. We attended one. It had a Country-Western theme, a guy and girl on stage playing cheesy tunes and dancing to them, and directing the many kids in the audience (at 2AM) to dance along, while we had some drinks at the outdoor bar, like a Chupito, which we found out was a 1 euro double shot of whiskey. A cheap night, is what I call that (if I were to buy double shots of whiskey).
(I may hafta break this blog into two parts). By the way, there's a drunk guy who lives near us. Every day he's outside nearish to our apartment, walking around, carrying a bottle, usually shirt off (giant winged tattoo on his back) with long stringy greasy hair, yelling things that I don't think I'd understand even if my Spanish were better. He occasionally spills his beer on purpose and then throws a chair to rant about it, and I've seen him yelling at people walking by, a lady working in a clothing store, and also had the pleasure of trying to walk around him only to have him immediately step directly in front of me, twice in a row. So me and my headphones stopped and stood and stared at him in curious amusement for a sec wondering what was gonna happen next. The answer was nothing.
Another thing I should mention of course, is we've gone to the beach a few times. Some more than others. (Some go almost every day, sun or clouds, out of principle, though of course some are drinking sangria for the same reason- which by the way is VERY cheap!) The two times I've gone to the beach and actually sat, the first time I was amazed how many women (young and old) were topless like it was no big deal. Which obviously, it wasn't. Weird how it quickly ends up NOT being a big deal (sort of, anyway). The second time I went to the beach, I had the uh, unique experience of having to walk past the gay dudes part of the beach, so denoted by rainbow flags, that was protected from the boardwalk behind by a nice hill with big bushes on it. I'm avoiding the urge to make an innuendo reference here. Anyway, that part of the beach was almost all naked men, also young and old, and very, uh, proud. Not just lying down but walking, swimming, using the nearby fresh-water shower, right alongside the fully naked women that I guess feel more comfortable being that way on the gay guys beach. I will say I felt conspicuously clothed there. But that of course didn't change anything about the state of my clothed-ness.
And fortunately or unfortunately, I have no pictures of that part of my experience here.
