Fraz Needs a Hug

Ok, I’m prefacing this by saying that, on the whole, I love it here, and I do not regret coming. That being said, this is not Disney World, and my stay has been less than perfect. This post will be dedicated, then, to everything bad that has happened to me thusfar.
Now, thanks to Miles, you all know about Saturday. and I’m more or less OK with it. I was so completely blackout that it’s difficult to feel that embarrassed, since I have absolutely no recollection of doing anything, and, let’s be honest, I’ve drunkenly hit on girls a lot uglier than Miles.
What I did not like about Saturday was the monster hangover I had on Sunday. Actually, no, I take that back, the hangover wasn’t even that bad. It’s only distinguishing feature was that it strangely continued into Monday. I had to get up early on Monday to talk with Teruca (our coordinator) and attributed it to this. Still, it was a strangely persistent hangover, and I was getting these weird pangs in my stomach.
Come noon, I was still feeling kinda blugh, so I decided to go for a run, since normally a little bit of exercise does a lot to cure a hangover. The run was impossible, I felt terrible through the whole thing, even afterwards, when you usually get that satisfied feeling, I just felt gross. I also cramped up all over my body, like, every muscle that I have wanted to be stretched. I attributed this to the cold, and after I took a shower, I seemed OK.
The rest of the day was pretty uneventful, except for the fact that I kept getting these stomach pains, and they kept getting more intense. They weren’t unbearable, though, and I had an interview for an internship at five, so I sucked it up and went. The interview went pretty well, except for the last five minutes when I started swooning, and when the guy asked if I was OK, I couldn’t say anything except “No, not at all…” He basically had to push me to the nurse’s office (this is at a high school) because I can’t see anything and I’m dizzy, so I lay down there for a bit, we joke about how this is only supposed to happen in movies, and I walk home.
Home isn’t that far away, like ten minutes, but like twice on the way home I have to actually stop and sit down because when the stomach pains come, I can’t do anything but wait them out. I finally make it home, explain to the two ladies I live with that I’m actually sick, and ask if they have any pepto bismol. Now, I would expect Pepto Bismol to be a pretty much universal thing, but they just stare at me blankly, so I try and describe it, and they both start nodding and go “Ooh, manzanilla!” Ok, I think. Manzanilla = Pepto Bismol. Not so. Manzanilla is tea. Fucking tea. What the hell? I’m in a major city, not Siberia, I will have none of your folk cures!
I try again, trying to cognate my way through it. “Antacida?” I meekly try. Blank stares. They thankfully decide to take me to a pharmacist, and I try and describe what I want, and the pharmacist goes “Oh, antacido,” and I’m like “yes!” and the women are both like “Oooh, antacido.” Really? Is gender that important to you? You couldn’t bridge the gap there? Well, if nothing else, a good grammar lesson. I get some pepcid, and while the next two days are still pretty unbearable, I’m at least not in unbearable pain, and my ladies totally made up for their earlier ignorance of Pepto Bismol by pampering me very nicely during my convalescence.

But that’s not all! Last night, I was out with Miles and Jer and the Lizzes, and we had a good time, didn’t even get that drunk, but when I’m walking home (ironically because I didn’t wanna pay the eight euro cover charge to get into some salsa club) some “drunk guy” bumps into me for two seconds, and afterwards I have no cell phone. What the fuck? What really pisses me off about the whole situation is that it’s not like I’m some ignorant country bumpkin who got taken advantage of, I’m super paranoid about pickpockets, and I’m almost always on guard. I even saw this guy and braced myself, but his fake drunk fall concealed what was a pretty aggressive move on his part; he basically grabbed me and shoved his hand into my pocket. He left my keys, though, so I appreciate that courtesy.
This little incident let me finally understand white flight. Before last night, the city was all sunshine and butterflies and I was like “who wouldn’t wanna live downtown, where you’re close to the Opera and the nightlife and everything is beautiful,” but now my Texanness has kicked in, and I actually caught myself this morning thinking “Dallas really is the perfect plan for a city, because you can live far away from all the fucking thieving gypsies, and just drive in whenever you wanna go somewhere.” I’m kind of ashamed but not really. I know I’m really lucky since this is such a minor incidence, but it just kind of makes you bitter about humanity in general.
What really pisses me off is that he stole a shitty prepaid cell phone with no minutes left on it, so he basically inconvenienced me without really gaining anything for himself. It’s like a net loss for the world. It only costs like thirty euro to get a new one, but I’ll have to put my numbers back in, tell everyone my new number, etc.
Which allows me to segue pretty smoothly to my last point: yeah, it’s thirty euro, but that’s actually a ton to me right now. I know everyone makes fun of me for bitching about how “poor” I am, but I really do have almost no disposable income, which is hardly a big deal at Middlebury, but here you can’t do anything without spending some kind of money, and it’s really killing me, no matter how stingy I’m trying to be. This cell phone? That’s almost like, two weeks worth of spending, and I honestly need every penny I have. Part of me almost hopes that second semester I don’t make any friends, because I probably won’t be able to go out at all anyways.
Bleh.

And again, to clarify, this is just kind of all my concentrated Madrid beef. I’m really not this pissed off, but I needed to vent, and it came out in kind of this distilled bitterness.