4th of July

Although I am one of the most american people you have ever met your life, I do not really go crazy on the 4th. Also I feel like I should say that 95% of the awesome people in my heritage are on my dad’s side, but on the 4th I should celebrate the one on my mom’s side, Josiah Bartlett, signer of the declaration of independence. Anyways it has come to my attention that because I have been at summer national for fencing the previous 7 years, I have now spent NINE 4th of Julys in 9 different cities. Well actually that’s mildly incorrect because 2 nationals were in Atlanta. The point is, I’m always fencing or am going to fence soon on the 4th. All my friend in high school spend the 4th together at each others beach houses. I have always missed out.

I actually forgot that I would have friends with me in Madrid on the 4th. My plan was to make an american flag cake and share it/joke about it with my Colombian and Indian flatmates. However my friend Kerry (year below me at OES) and her friend Maura from college were staying with me on the night of the 3rd and 4th. And thus bloomed my plan for a crazy 4th. It turns out Prada also had 2 boys staying with him the 3rd-5th.

During our 2 hour lunch break on Monday Prada and I planned the night. He bought burger and hot dog makings. I bought cake and cocktail makings.

After work (haha no day off!) I headed home. The Reina Sofia museum was free in the late afternoons on Mondays so the girls and I had planned to go before festivities. We had barely talked to the two boys at all but I offered them to come with us. Prada didn’t want to come, so the 5 of us headed out. The boys names are Lolo and Yiannis and it gets quite complicated when we all try to communicate. Lolo speaks french the best and then can carry on in spanish but not at high speeds. Yiannis conveniently speaks spanish, french and english. Kerry and I speak spanish and english (and I mean my french is in really great shape). And poor Maura only speaks English. So on the 40 minute walk over it was mostly the 3 of us in english and the 2 of them in french.

It got a little better when we got to the museum. Like everyone else, we spent a good 20 minutes staring at this:

Picasso's Guernica

And I particularly liked this exhibit:

Us in the crazy room.

Sadly we only got like 50 minutes in the museum because it took a while to walk there, but we hurried home because we had a lot to look forward too.

As soon as we got home we followed good stereotypes – the boys cooked the meat and we worked on finishing the cake and the cocktails.

So, so, delicious.

HELL YEAH

Red, White and Blue Cocktails! With blue pop rock rims!

The idea was actually to have red pop rocks on the blue drink, but the “red” pop rocks, or Peta Zetas as they are known here, I bought were actually yellow. Also, I used Bitter Kas as my mixer for the red cocktails. OMG. ew. never have it. But the other two drinks were good, and we also had coke and some Tinto de Verano in the fridge. We filled up on burgers (and the boys had hot dogs too) and I kept mixing drinks for people. After dinner we did some cleaning up and busted out the cards.

We somehow decided Kings would be an appropriate game. The whole not-every-one-being-able-to-communicate thing got complicated fast. But luckily Yiannis was quick to translate for Lolo and Maura got good at telling me off whenever I diverted to spanish. It was ridiculous and probably one of the best games of Kings I have ever played. Lolo lost all four of the seven heaven. And three of the  8s turned up really early in the game so Prada, Maura, Yiannis and I were stuck drinking together for almost the whole game. Yiannis got question master for most of the game and I was just not on top of my game. He EASILY got me to answer his STUPID STUPID unimportant questions more than 30 times. But that also meant he made himself drink every time. Lolo instated the drink-with-your-non-dominant-hand rule which got him more times than anyone else. After we were sufficiently drunk we decided it was cake time. Nitish wanted some too so we all gathered in the kitchen. I made everyone stand around and say something they love about America before we could eat it. I really only remember that Yiannis thanked america for the hamburger. Regardless the cake turned out really well (I mean who doesn’t like cream cheese frosting).

After some cake spilling and attempted cleaning up, we headed out. I had made quite the plan for us (which ended up being completely pointless). First stop was Callejon de Serrano, a classy club popular among the IE crowd. We arrived, and as expected it was open, but there was NO ONE (like actually no one) in there. I was disappointed but said we should move on to club number two. However Yiannis wanted to stay, so we wandered in. The disco lights and music were going strong, with just the bartender there. Yiannis decided to look extremely cool and ordered 5 coke and rums. However, I don’t think (even though I tried to tell him) he realized how expensive drinks can get at clubs (even if no one is there). So the nice 45€ the bartender asked for kinda freaked him out. We all chipped in and then huddled around the cool comfy chairs in the back. We then stayed like an hour and played thumper (I was going to link to a youtube but they’re all really lame). Our bear, bunny and moose quickly got confused for each other, as did snake and electric eel.

Eventually we decided to leave, and walked to our next destination – Gabana. Nitish said it should be poppin and it was definitely supposed to be open. It was a nice half hour walk – we all split up into pairs and chatted along the way. But once we arrived, Gabana was actually closed! There were also 3 cabs that pulled up full of people who also wanted to party there. I knew some americans were going to be partying near Sol, the area where I was my first week in Madrid, so we took cabs there.

The girls and Lolo at the most famous statue in Puerta del Sol

This is a cool plaza and at night there are always people out advertising their clubs. One man told us to go to the Dubliners, an irish place I had actually been too before. The atmosphere was cool and drinks were cheap so we headed there. There were lots of americans there, who we didn’t really talk to much just yelled out GO AMERICA a lot.

We found a nice plastic flag in the bathroom, which then became a straw…

America doing what america does best.

The bar actually closed at 3 (LAME) so we wandered around for a while. Made friends in another little plaza. The finally around 4 decided to take cabs back home. It was another one of those great go-with-the-flow nights.

The boys actually live in Sevilla, and the girls are in Portugal at the moment but are headed to Sevilla for the weekend. And so I am also going down to join them. The dream team will be united again! Minus Prada haha. But yeah should be fun.

P.S. No, I did not just learn how to use links for the first time in this post.