Note to a Neighbor (who'll never get it)

All I wanted tonight was for you to come over and be polite and social. For 5 minutes. True, part of the reason I texted these 3 (French) (boy) friends (who I just met in the bar last week) earlier this evening was because I was with you and your friend at his house and I (just a teensy weensy bit) wanted to make you jealous. I don't know why you didn't come over tonight (because you were busy 'composing' or 'mixing' or whatever, so you said), but I hope (is it sick and wrong for me to hope this?) that you were just a teensy weensy bit jealous. Good. Welcome to my life the last few nights over the last week or so that I've felt obligated to hang out at yours with you and yours and felt like I was fighting back tears the whole time. I am SO over you, but it took last weekend with an opera, cheap Chinese, and really, really good friends to make me 100% all-the-way-over-you-FOR-SURE sure about that. So I don't understand why you couldn't come over for all of 5 minutes tonight like a friendly neighborly neighbor-friend should have. And would have. I'm not angry, or sad, just...you should have come over. I went to your friend's tonight. It's only fair. Anyways, these new friends were only just short of fabulous. I'm hoping that some good times are ahead. A new group of friends (almost my age, in this tiny, full-of-old-people little town) would be refreshing and healthy and help me to mix things up a bit. You're not my life, and never were, as ego-stroking as that would be for you. I just got back from HOURS of hanging out with other friends than you. Playing petanque in the dark, and the rain, and drinking wine, and moving on, WITHOUT YOU! I wish that you felt a teensy weensy bit of what I do, (DID! that's all over now!), but I know you (most likely) don't. But maybe I"ll just pretend that you do. That could work. Asshole. I even taught you that word, 'asshole,' in English. I wonder if you realize how applicable it is to YOU! I hope so, for mine and all your future girls' sake. Asshole. I feel better after this, which is the only goal. See you soon.

Current Favorites

• Book - Naomi and Ely's No-Kiss List. At times a little too consciously hip New York trend-tastic, but at times just what I'm needing right now: people making too big of a deal about middle-school-esque drama. Delicious.
• Music - Deezer.com, where I nerdily made a playlist modeled after a mixed CD one of the characters in aforementioned book made for another one. This is what happens on a 12 hr/week work schedule. Also listening to the Deezer radio stations exposes me to new French and other music. Current faves are the Pep's and Kelly Clarkson's new song.
• Inanimate object in my apartment - my new yoga mat! 3.50 euro at Decathlon outside of Avignon. It's not of the highest quality, but it is of higher quality than my bare dirty floor, so I'm working it out. On the mat.
• Animate object in and around my apartment building - the funky-colored pigeon, who seems to be well socially-adjusted and in with the other pigeons, despite his black and white spotted head, blue and green chest, and normal-pigeon-colored body. Go him.
• Job - mine. The kids are so friendly and amazing (no less than TWO kids picked spinach as their favorite food yesterday...freaks...). My kids are doing a carnaval throughout the town this afternoon, and I kind of want to install myself along the route to watch the parade and wave at them. All the teachers are worried about losing kids to strangers, shiny objects, or a precarious moment when two groups will cross paths in the Place de l'Eglise.
• Beverage - wine. Duh. Even I'm beginning to be convinced of the fact that I'm an alcoholic (drinking almost every night, even when alone, even when others around me aren't drinking, referring to alcohol as my "medication," and polishing off a half liter of the stuff by myself at the cheap Chinese place Sunday night in Avignon, while watching an old man sitting by himself doing the same thing...vision of the future). Second fave boisson: coffee. The only way I can show up to work.
• News outlet - Slate.com. I get all my real news, fake news, and opinions on current and past goings-about in the world here. Approximately half of my conversations begin with the phrase: "I was reading an article on slate.com about..." Hey, anything that makes me a more interesting person...
• TV (er, online) Show - Weeds. I want that to be my life. Sort of. Yes to the California, no to the kids, yes to all the cocktails those ladies drink, no to the scary housing development and bitchy housewives, yes to the sensamilla, no to the run-ins with rival dealers, police-like figures, and bullets. It sounds like I want to go back to Santa Cruz...I found a job announcement on Craigslist Santa Cruz the other day to which I'll be sending in my resume and letter of motivation...hey, why not? Keeping my options open.
• News outlet/TV Show - The Daily Show. I can't not give it its' props, though I don't bother watching it all that much.
• Reason for living - seeing my mom at the end of April, tooling around Provence drinking wine, seeing sites, drinking wine, eating the fine cuisine. Second fave reason for living: the prospect of a cross-country (the USA) roadtrip with the brother come autumn. We shall see...

Condiments

I have recently been having a love affair with condiments, putting them on just plain bread or disgusting sandy cookies or pasta or just my fingers and calling it good. I never gave condiments much cred, but as it turns out, they are the glue of our lives, pulling dishes together, making them better and special, turning blah to delicious, and breaking up the mundanity of it all, (and when I don't have an oven or even a toaster, I need to take advantage of any way I can be creative with the food I eat, or else it will all end up tasting the same).

Favorites include raspberry jam (a.k.a. crack), Dijon mustard, forte (strong, which is more similar to Wasabi than bright yellow American mustard), Tabasco (I think the general lack of spiciness in France has driven me to finally try and fall in love with it...I put it in soup last night), a sweet Mustard with sugar from Germany that I tried yesterday at "German breakfast," where a German and an Austrian cooked sausage and potatoes, and, of course, the king-daddy of all sauces: brava sauce!

It comes from a tapas that I discovered and fell in love with in Barcelona. It's basically a combination of everything good and delicious: ketchup, mayonnaise, tabasco, paprika, thyme, and sauteed onions. So far I've put it on fried potatoes (patatas bravas, the original dish from Barcelona), pasta, ble (wheat stuff), canned corn, bread, my fingers...

Cooking. As long as I'm only working 12 hours a week, I figure a sizable amount of my time can be devoted to learning how and trying new things.

Credit Crisis

I went over the limit on one of my credit cards. They charged me a huge fee, but a few weeks later, (today) I noticed that they had significantly raised my limit. Woo hoo! Travels in Europe!

Another credit card felt my "total bankcard balances are too high compared to credit limits" and therefore decreased my credit line. Hmm...which credit company is being more responsible, and which one is perhaps playing a significant role in this credit disaster? The one putting limits on their clients, or the one giving more and more credit to people the least likely to pay it back?

I don't care. Mama's getting a new pair of shoes!

Zandra Annette Barcelona

Scene 1. Fenouil a vapeur, (a hippy "association," not a restaurant, that serves organic foods and is only open Wednesday and Sunday nights) the night before the trip. Zandra and I are eating, drinking wine (at least I am), hanging with friends and listening to great music.

Scene 2. The bus, Day 1 of the Barcelona adventure. Our bus driver, a long-haired, earringed Spanish Jesus figure drives us through pretty towns like Beziers and Girona, when he's not taking a 40 minute lunch break. That shit would NEVER happen in Chile. There's always 2-3 drivers who take turns driving and sleeping in the creepy little bed underneath.

Scene 3. The bus, at the Spanish/French border. Stupid Annette, thinking the EU was now a borderless zone, forgetting her passport! The French police scare her at first, threatening that she may have to stay there. In the end, the American card worked for her, and she was allowed into Spain for a weekend of debauchery. Correction, it's not just the American card, it's the white-American-girl card. If I had been black or middle eastern, I would probably have been kicked to the curb at that point. It's not fair, but I'm going to keep using that card as long as I can. One of these days it's not going to work, and as in Russian Roulette, I'm going to be shit out of luck. Thankfully, that day was not Thursday.

Scene 4. Super swanky hostel, Barcelona (except our room smells like vomit, thanks to a 16-yr-old Belgian the night before, we learned...I will forever after have a prejudice against Belgians who brag that they can hold their beer, but can't). Enter old friend Simon-from-Wales, and his friend, Allye-from-England. Enter Tim-the-Australian, and 2 Italians (though they really come into the picture the next day). Five of us (Zandra, me, Simon, Allye, Tim) and 2 bottles of wine, meet Paul from San Diego, a 21-yr-old pub crawler (well, I guess his official title is "Tour Guide"). We decide to go on his pub crawl, which involved one cool bar, (called Nevermind, with skateboards on the wall, chalk writing on the ceiling, flaming shots called jagstangs, and empanadas), 3 dead ones, and a "club" (Paul's definition of a club does not coincide with my own. In his definition, a "club" = a bar + really loud music + huge area for dancing + 4-5 other patrons, most over the age of 50). Also, somewhere in there I bought some street beers, and felt good for getting a deal (3 for 2 euro). The guys who sell street beers will also sell you other things (hash, coke), if you have the money. I MEAN, if you're into that kind of thing. Sheesh! At some point I also smoked a whole cigarette by myself. Which is not normal, or good. Oh well, when in Barcelona! We all get very drunk, and then proceed to take pictures of ourselves on a "roundabout" (Australian speak for merry-go-round). No kebabs were to be found at 6am, so we had to settle for gas station "food." On the way to the gas station, Zandra got in a fight with a tranny, and has a shiner and a bruise on her chin to show for it. Spanish trannies!!! (accompanied by an angry-old-man-fist-shake)

Scene 5. The next day (Friday). Eau-de-puke scented hostel room. The day consisted of sleeping, Zandra being sick, and chatting with Tim. We didn't leave the room until 7pm. (I didn't see Barcelona in the daylight until the third day I was there. Living it up Spanish-style. Or vampire-style). We head to a tapas restaurant for typical tapas, and plenty of sangria. The 2 Italians in our room come and join us. Simone and Matteo, bio-medical engineering students, or some such nonsense. Then we meet up with Pedro, a Portuguese dude who couldn't couchsurf host Zandra and I, but could take us to a few cool bars, including one where I had my first pisco sour in years. In Chile we would pay $2 for a pisco sour. Here I paid 6 euro. It was nostalgic. Then we went back to Nevermind, for flaming shots, and two French bitches were bitches. I wanted to punch them, but I didn't. We called it an early night, catching the last metro home at 2am-ish.

Scene 6. Saturday. Zandra and I wander around the neighborhood around our hostel. We eat some tapas on the street (and I have some sangria, of course). We see La Sagrada Familia, but hell no was I going to pay 11 euro to go inside it. Then we catch a train to Salou, where Simon and Allye got a sweet off-season deal on a resort. We drink sangria on the beach, then make a dent in a 5-liter jug of wine, as we watched the Spanish competition to determine who would be Spain's entry in Eurovision (read: completely and utterly ridiculous)! The next morning we sleep for awhile, wander around the town, then eat paella and baby octopuses. Then Zandra and I catch the train back to Barcelona, and in true stupid American girl fashion, get the train ride for free, because we couldn't buy the tickets beforehand and the conductor would only take cash, and the woman in the station pretty much just let us go. 11 euro saved! We found the Magic Fountain that Simon had told us about, but in the winter it doesn't do its magic on Sunday nights. Bastards. Zandra and I wander around the city for awhile, then eat more tapas, where exactly half the bill were our overpriced sangrias. Then we wander into our hostel at midnight, because we're cool like that. Then the French skaters return to the room at 2am (SO not as hardcore as us), and start kicking the lights (which automatically turn off at 10:30pm, and since they had been there all weekend, they should have figured this out).

Scene 7. Monday. The bus. Again. So uncool it's hardly worth mentioning, as it took a few hours more than it was supposed to. And this busdriver was a major chode.

So there we go. Barcelona. Didn't see much, but I had a great time!