Friday July 2, 2010
Some people just never learn. Exhibit A: when IES kids still refused to make definite plans in person and opted to make general ones that would later be “discussed” on Facebook when half the people in the program didn’t have Spanish mobiles/never check Facebook/don’t want to use their Spanish mobiles because they’re out of saldo (credit) even when we’ve been through the same act four million times up to our last IES-organized group lunch out (where Patrick proceeded to have a minor freak out over a “matter of principle” that IES was limiting each student to one glass of wine, even though we all could legally drink on the continent) on our final day after our Spanish grammar final. My efforts of making a concrete plan were not considered as people insisted on being vague. And so of course, in the span of two or three hours of Facebook message discussion, the entire group that was supposed to hit the streets together in a last hurrah ended up splitting into multiple small ones, each had formed their own plan because it was easier to keep in contact that way. Many of us wanted to have a final Spanish experience by botelloning up by the beautifully lit Templo de Deblod while enjoying the great view of Madrid from the hilltop. It’s too bad we couldn’t do it as a group, because only (Harvard) Alex, Valentina, and I went before going out to the bars. Did people not understand that the whole point of botelloning was to pregame the bar and club experience? You really can’t politely bring bottles of liquor/mixers and cups into bars… We really didn’t understand what some of those kids were thinking…
The Gay Pride celebration for that weekend was in full stride that night. It was not concentrated in one area, like say, on the boardwalk or something, but rather, it was huge and all over the big streets of the city. After I walked to Plaza de España (damn my abono for being expired at the turn of the month, but I got in about 140 uses for the thing in one month, hot damn!), I came upon a stage with full-blown lights/sound and a crowd standing in front in the Plaza, surrounded by more people and stands selling food, drinks and other merch. On top of the stage, a funny middle-aged lady wearing neon eighties clothes with a stage full of backup dancers was teaching a workout dance, and the crowd in front was following along. It was the cutest and most bizarre thing ever.
Alex and Valentina had already finished their peach liquor on their way over, so we didn’t have any to botellon with at the Templo. We walked to the nearest Chino (wow, I’m surprised I haven’t described Chinos, yet… They’re basically the [typical] racist Spanish nickname for small corner stores [always] owned by Asians [usually Chinese] where you can buy bread, snacks, drinks, and sometimes alcohol, and so on...) only to find that they didn’t have any hard a on their shelves. We approached the guy working the register and asked him if they sold alcohol. He quietly slipped into the backroom and brought out a bottle of hard a. He was going to charge us €20, so we asked him for some apple liquor (that was warm, yelch), which he also wanted to charge us €20 for it. Pissant. Alex wouldn’t stand having the guy rip us off for alcohol that he was selling to us illegally. So we bargained until we got it down to €15. Afterwards, Alex claimed that we were probably the first people in our program to have negotiated our purchase of illegal alcohol at a Chino. Jaja.
As we sipped the liquor that was just lightly mixed with Sprite that I brought from home sitting by the reflection pool of the Templo, we made a new discovery: campesino Lay’s® potato chips (my absolute favourite junkie food discovery in Spain, there’s nothing like the campesino flavour in the US of A, it’s like a sweeter mix of buffalo and barbeque… but better) make wonderful chasers. Thank god I had forgotten I didn’t eat dinner when I headed out of my host family’s house, and ended up buying some chips to stave the hunger until we started drinking. We def know how to keep it classy up on sacred grounds.
Shit show once again when we went to El Tigre in the Chueca area to meet up with the big group that decided to botellon in reverse. That group had also split up, meaning that everyone was scattered throughout the city, with indefinite meeting times. HaHA! I would have taunted them with an “I told you so,” but that wouldn’t have helped seeing that there really wouldn’t be another time for the kids to apply their newly learned knowledge of the importance of making definite plans. Well, at least we had a good time hanging outside of El Tigre with some of the IES girls, which was crazy crowded since everyone was flooding in from the full streets of Chueca, as we waited for some kids to show up from their different plans.
After some dramatic moments, such as Alex dramatically storming off to go to a free gay party in the depths of Chueca alone and without a word to us, because he was frustrated at everyone waiting and no one taking action and thus, wasting more time by having us wait for him to meet up again a bit after, it was already late, so we decided to spend our last hours enjoying the next best thing (actually, probably best, at the moment), the gay pride celebration on Gran Villa.
Of all the people we could have ran into in those thousands upon thousands of people who were out in the streets of Madrid, who did we run into but Joe Jonas himself? Okay, I have to admit, we used the nickname Nick Jonas last time, when we met him and his posse during the beginning of our program… but Google-imaging the Jonas brothers brings me to the conclusion that Joe Jonas is actually better doppelgänger. Seeing that familiar group and snapping a picture with Joe Jonas on our last night together cheered us all up. It was the last puzzle piece to complete our Spanish cycle.
Oh, and speaking of keeping it classy, I think one of the classiest things I definitely could have done was getting sick into that random small black plastic bag Alex sweetly found on the side of the street for me before I got on the night bus to go home. Splitting a whole handle of apple liquor in one pregame by the Templo just didn’t sit well with my stomach. ¡Que elegante!
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