Welp, it’s that time of the month again. The time when I set aside a wee bit of my precious free time and fill ya’ll in on the happenings around here. I would first like to let everyone know that I am almost completely healed from the injuries sustained in the previous blog. Thank goodness. I’d love to report that things have been nice and quiet in these parts but truth be told, that will never be a reality. Callie and I spent our long weekend at the end of October (seriously, we get so many catholic holidays around here it’s absolutely criminal) on a lovely honeymoon style trip to the south of Spain in a beautiful city called Sevilla. This, being our favorite part of Spain that we have visited thus far, was something we were very much looking forward to. We had Monday and Tuesday off school and decided to head out Friday night and stay until Tuesday night. I, being a real master of time, decided to get a sinus infection and a double ear infection (yes, my right ear, my sinuses, and my left ear all acquired an infection at the same time, it IS possible) two days before the scheduled departure. I went to the doctor and they gave me a one time look over and told me, basically, that i was in some real shit. You know in so many words. They gave me some antibiotics and pain killers and sent me on my way. Friday I went to school with toilet paper in both my ears to stop the leak and a whole roll of toilet paper in my bag for blowing my nose. And yes, to answer your question, I did use it all. At one point my paper must have fallen from my ears. I only know this because a student was looking in his english-spanish dictionary feverishly and then timidly raised his hand to tell me I was leaking from my ear. Leaking! Fantastic. After my evening classes I went home, wandered around the apartment aimlessly trying to occupy my time so I wouldn’t fall asleep or take my medication until we got on the bus and finally packed my bag with about 5 minutes to spare. We hopped the train to the bus station and I decided I couldn’t take it anymore so I popped my pills and within minutes (literally) I was set. Im not really sure what kind of pain killers they gave me but the label should just read “take these if you want to die for 4-8 hours” because as soon as we boarded the bus I was out like a light. Gone to the living world and having dreams that can only be compared to a clock work orange. We arrived to our hostel at 7AM exhausted and ready for bed. We checked in, went to our room and low and behold someone was sleeping in one of our beds. We managed to get things taken care of and tucked in for 3 hours to rest up for the day ahead of us. If you haven’t been there before, Andalucia (a southern province in Spain) is absolutely breath taking. It’s where the Alhombra is. It’s were citrus trees grow free in the streets. It’s where the backwoods accent is so think you think they are speaking Greek. It’s laid back, sunny, lazy, and perfect for a long weekend. We roamed the streets and went to open air markets and naturally took pictures with everything we saw.
We took romantic strolls around the town and took tours of the largest gothic style cathedral in the world (IN THE WORLD!!) and the city in general.
We ate some amazing food and drank even better wine. We decided that we wanted to take a day trip to the beach and chose to take a 1.5 hour bus ride to Cadiz. The bus was at 7AM so we had literally ALL day there. We laid around lazy on the beach, walked around the old city, and ate what I can only describe as the best thing we have eaten thus far in Spain. It was fried fish and it was heaven in a light brown crispy shell. We went to the top of the highest tour and got to see a panoramic view of the city and ocean. We were thinking ahead and brought a bottle of wine with us so we strolled back down to the beach, popped the cork and were ready to watch the sun go down on a picturesque view of the sea. We put on some music and were pleasantly disturbed by a nice young gentleman asking us if we had any paper to roll a cigarette. We did not and he walked back to his friend who was strumming a guitar. About 10 minutes go by and the gentleman came back to us. This time, in ENGLISH, he asked if we cared to join him and his friend to “make a party and watch the sunset”. uuummmm, okay :) We picked up our things and walked over to the guitar. They then proceeded to serenade us as the sun set on the ocean. They even sang blues music and made songs up on the spot about Callie and I. Life win. We slowly stumbled back across the town to the bus station, boarded our bus and went to sleep. We were abruptly awoken by a crash. Literally. Our bus driver must have hit a car or a bike or a pedestrian...AND THEN KEPT GOING!! I looked back to see the man in the back completely under the seat in front of him. Apparently his seat was broken and acted like a projectile device when we crashed and his seat was across the bus and he was piled up in a ball under the chairs in front of him. All I could do was laugh. I couldn’t even help. Let me back up for a minute and tell you why...
The day before Callie and I were hanging out on the steps near the bus station planning our relaxing day at the spa. The steps were in front of the river and next to us (about 5 meters) there was a bridge that takes you over the river. Many people ride their bikes in Sevilla so it wasn’t a huge surprise to us that we heard the swishing of a very fast bike rider behind us. I started to get suspicious when I didn’t hear him slowing so I looked back. Oddly enough, the man looked as though he was headed straight for the area of steps in between myself and the bridge. Well that couldn’t be right. There were about 20 steps down to the sidewalk next to the river and he was on a bike. How was that going to work? On and on he rode, faster and faster as he approached and still was not changing his course. And then it happened. About 2 feet away from me the man started down the stairs on his bike at a lightening flash speed. First 4 steps down were perfect. The fifth changed his fate forever. He must have hit the step sideways on his bike and started a spiral fall. He fell for about 15 steps and smashed like a cartoon character on the pavement below. I’m half surprised the pavement didn’t crack like when an acme anvil is thrown off a cliff and hits the pavement directly behind the roadrunner. The only movement was the bike wheel still attached to the bike spinning crooked. The other when was jammed firmly into the man’s groin. My first reaction, thinking the man was absolutely dead (no one could survive a death fall like that) was to look at Callie to make sure she had witnessed it too. Not because I thought it was funny, but because I don’t have the Spanish vocabulary to write a police report of this nature. To our surprise, the man survived. His pride, however, did not. I was opening my mouth to call out “Are you okay?” when he looked back in the most spiteful of ways and flipped me off. Yep, sour puss face and middle finger raised right at me. Like I had a hand in him speeding down 20 concrete stairs on a bike and made him crash. Slowly he scraped himself off the ground as gingerly as could be and molded his bike back into form like tin foil. He twisted his seat back around in the forward facing position and tried to raise his leg over the bar to get back on his bike. Nope, bad idea. That wasn’t an option so he slowly walked away. Things had to have been broken. Internal bleeding of sorts must have been involved and I’m more positive that he can never have children again than I am that the sky is blue. Anyway, my point is that I was being very serious and concerned about this falling man’s health and he flipped me off. I wasted my serious on that fall and every other fall is minor in comparison. So when I saw this helpless man crammed under the seat because he was thrown from his own...I laughed. Luckily I had previously made friends with him when the route was first getting underway and he looked at me, realized I was paralyzed with the giggles and started to laugh right back. pheewwwww, crisis avoided. On our final day in Sevilla we went to an ancient arabic bath house and spent the morning relaxing in different whirlpools and steam rooms and baths. We also got massages there which were just the gummy bears (I would say cherries but I don’t like those) on top. We then sat to test some wine and olive oils only to realize that we missed our bus back. Well, nothing we could do then so we decided to relax, drink in the scenery and vino and casually catch the evening bus back to Madrid. Perfect weekend!
