I´ve been up to the same old tricks. I lost a class last week, a private class with the boyfriend of a friend of mine, but it´s not really that bad of a thing because it was kind of a huge pain in my ass anyway. And I´m starting two new classes next week which are more convenient. I´m up to a livable wage now, not too bad by Spanish standards, though kind of low by American standards. But whatever, it´s fine. And a whole lot better than last year, that´s for sure. My schedule now is pretty full, but I´d like maybe one more class. As it is I still don´t have to work on Fridays, which is awesome.

So I have recently discovered the joy of the intercambio. The intercambio is this weird sort of social institution that exists in Spain, and probably other countries too, though not in the US. What it is is, there are lots of Spanish people that want to practice their English. And there are lots of Americans/British people who want to practice their Spanish. But sometimes it can be difficult for Spanish people to meet English speakers, and English speakers to meet Spanish speakers. Hence, the intercambio was born. If you want to meet a Spanish person to practice your Spanish, there are lots of places where you can write your name and information, and then people who are interested in meeting and having and intercambio (intercambio = exchange) call you and you meet. It´s a great idea I think. A great way to meet new people. Because often times when you are foreign in a country, you have lots of friends who are foreign, but it is hard to meet people from the actual area. And for Spanish people, the opposite. True I speak Spanish at home, but most of the time people don´t correct me when I say something wrong, and I actually don´t see my roommates that often because they all work late. So I´ve been feeling like I need to expand my boundaries.

My American roommate David wrote a card at this English bookstore near my house, and since then he´s had lots of intercambios. So he suggested that I do the same thing, and last week I finally got off my ass and did it. I was a little nervous about it. An intercambio is a lot like a blind date if you think about it. Nobody would ever call it a blind date because it´s not a ¨date¨ date, but for all intents and purposes, it is. It´s like a blind date for friends. And if you have one with someone of the opposite sex, of course it´s not a DATE date, but, come on, of course if I´m going to meet some Spanish dude I hope he´s cool and nice and hot, and of course he hopes the same thing about me, so pretty much, it´s a date.

So the first dude called me last Friday and we made plans to meet on Saturday afternoon. I was super nervous about it of course, since it was my first intercambio, and it was with a boy, and, you know. I was like, oh man, I hope he likes me, I hope he´s cool and nice, etc. Normal Chloe neurosis at work. But, my friends, nothing could have prepared me for what was to come...
So the guy comes to my door. I open it, breath held. And who stands before me but Mr. Random Spanish Dude incarnate. No, you guys, seriously. He was old. Bald. Harelip. Now, okay, all of this I could of course look past. I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. So we left and went to a cafe for a coffee.

¨Sooooooo.....what do you do?¨ I ask.
¨Nothing,¨ he replies.

¨Nothing?¨ I ask.

¨Yes, nothing,¨ he replies. ¨I am taking advantage of my free time.¨

Oooooo-kay. ¨So what are you doing during your free time?¨ I ask.

¨Nothing,¨ he replies.

The conversation pretty much continued on like that. Totally unresponsive. I basically talked the whole time because he refused to. He also really didn´t speak English very well at all, so we mostly spoke Spanish. He was basically like one of my typical English students who can´t speak English and who I pretend to like because that´s my job, only I was hanging out with this dude on the weekend. What the fuck and I doing here? I thought. But I mean..aaaaaugh...so uncomfortable. Like the worst blind date you could imagine. The whole time I was there I was just thinking to myself oh god oh god oh god oh god get me out of here pleeeease. But eventually after like an hour and a half I was like, gee, um, I´m really tired...I think I need to go take a nap..yea. And thus I made my escape. I live in fear that he will try to call me again, but thanks to the wonders of modern technology, my phone is equipped with caller ID, and thus I can ignore his entreaties completely.

So you could say my first intercambio experience was a dud. But it did kind of get rid of my nervousness. The whole time I was worrying if I were going to be cool enough for this guy, but no, I was WAY cooler than he was.

So I had another intercambio on Wednesday evening, this time with a girl, Laura. I wasn´t really nervous about it because it was with a girl so how bad could it be, and I figured it couldn´t really be worse than the first one. And this time, the girl turned out to be awesome. Totally a potential homie. We met up near my house, went out to a bar in Malasaña, chit chatted away. We ended up hanging out for like three hours and went to two different bars. We basically talked half in Spanish and half in English, which I think is pretty much standard for an intercambio. She speaks English really well because she studied in Ireland and England. It´s kind of funny though because she talks with this blend of Irish/English accent, and sometimes she would pronounce something weird and I had to think, now, is that because she is pronouncing it wrong, or because of her accent? I think most of the time it was because of her accent. But anyway, yea she´s super-cool. I´m definitely going to hang out with her again.

Then, yesterday I had ANOTHER intercambio, one with a girl again, Mariajo. I was meeting her in La Puerta del Sol by this statue, but there´s always a thousand people around there, so I wasn´t exactly sure who she was. I was standing waiting...and I thought, I wonder if she´s here..maybe I should call her and watch to see who answers the phone... And just then, my phone rang and it was her. I went into my purse to answer and the girl standing right next to me was like, ¨Ah, I thought it might be you!¨ And it was Mariajo, who had just done the exact thing I was thinking about doing.

Once again, this girl is definitely a potential friend. We met up with another friend of hers, and the three of us had a coffee. We hung out for like two and a half hours, speaking Spanish the whole time. I was like, ¨so do you guys want to speak in English some...?¨ But they said no. Oh well, better for me. We talked about all sorts of stuff. Mariajo is studying Audovisual Communications and she´s doing a research project on Blacksploitation films. How cool is that? She has Count Blackula on the computer and she said I could borrow it sometime. I MUST see it. Her friend, Zaira (or something like that, a really weird name) is also studying and on the weekends she´s a clown for little kids´ birthday parties. Both super-cool girls.

So this is good. I expect in the following few weeks that I will have even more intercambios, hopefully some of which will be cool. It´s a strange sort of institution. I don´t know... It´s like for some people, they are willing to accept new friends. They have a group already, but the more the merrier. But with other people..it´s like they already have their friends, they aren´t looking for any more. Even if you meet them some where and they are cool, you exchange numbers whatever, this doesn´t mean you will ever hang out with them again because they already have their crew all set. But other people are more open. And I figure that the people who answer intercambio advertisements, or who write them, are the type that are more open. It´s really great. Because in general I´m pretty shy with strangers, and this is a great way to meet people, both girls and guys.

So that´s been the most exciting thing to happen to me recently. I´ve decided not to go home for Christmas. I really want to, but I just don´t have the money. Well, technically I DO have the money, since I have savings from the summer, but I just can´t justify spending 800 euros on a plane ticket. So that kind of sucks, but I have found something else to do for Christmas instead. I am still in contact with this host familiy I staid with when I visited Wales ten years ago. I only stayed with them for like three days, but they were super-cool and nice. And for Christmas, I´m going to go stay with them for a week. But, can you imagine! I was fourteen! I think it´s going to be fun. They are so sweet, they are asking me if I want any special food for Christmas, buying stuff for my Christmas stocking, how precious is that? I´m looking forward to it. And this ticket only cost me about 100 euros, as opposed to 800. I´ll be back in Madrid for New Years, and I´m not sure exactly what I´m going to do, but I´m sure I´ll do something fun.

Things are going pretty well. No new work I don´t think since the last time I wrote, but eh, whatever. I´m doing alright. I still think I will get more in the new future anyway. My Spanish is coming along nicely. Some days I feel like, ¨Yea! I can do this!¨ And then other days, I´m like..what? It just depends. Depends a lot on who I´m talking to and what we´re talking about, how hard I´m trying to understand, where that person is from, lots of things. My Spanish class is going well, and I´m practicing swearing in Spanish, because I never do. I always feel so awkward and silly. Saying, ¨goddamn it!¨ just comes so much more easily to me than, ¨¡joder! ¡me cago en la leche!¨ But I´m learning. And I´m trying to learn the subjunctive too, that blasted bloody tense.

Roommate ´sitch is still good. My French Lesbian roommate Helena has cut her hair into a mullet. She looks like a bigger dyke than ever now. She can pull it off though. I never thought I´d say that, but it´s true. I never thought I´d be living with someone with a mullet either. But here, the mullet is punk. You know? It conveys a completely different message than the garden variety American mullet. I think the two hairstyles evolved completely separately from each other. Here, they are cool. Helena´s hair is especially cool because not only does she have a mullet, but she has a cresta too. A cresta is what we would call a ¨faux-hawk.¨ For those of you not familiar with the term, a faux-hawk is like a mohawk, but the sides aren´t shaved, they´re just shorter than the hair in the middle. Ah, cultural differences.

So my birthday was last Tuesday. The big two-four. Yowsa. I don´t really care, actually. I think I am glad to like, officially be an adult now. I mean, 21, 22...that´s still a fuzzy area..are you a young adult or an adult? But now I´m like, a grown-up fer sher. My roommates bought me a lava lamp for my birthday. I do not think the phallic nature of the gift was lost on them. In fact, I´m pretty sure that´s what inspired them to purchase it. It´s pretty bitchin´. Tuesday night some of us went out for un ratito..just for a little while, as it was Tuesday, and I had to get up at 7 the next day. But it was fun. We really get along well. Weekend after this one, we are going to have a fiesta (well, fiestón, really) to celebrate my birthday, and also the birthday of my roommate David. It´s will be la puta madre, seguro.

So last weekend I had my first official Spanish cita. This is a really weird story: Okay, so last year, in January or something, one weekend I went to this club with some friends, and I met this random dude there, and we talked for a while and stuff, and I gave him my phone number and email, and he said he´d call me. I really wanted him to call, and I waited and waited, but he didn´t. Then, like two months after the fact, he randomly calls me some Sunday morning at like 10:30 and wakes me up. We talk, and decide to maybe try to do something the next weekend. Well, it never happened, and he told me he´d call me the NEXT weekend, but the next weekend was the 11-M terrorist attacks in Madrid so, yea..he never called, and I wasn´t sure if I should call him or whatever, so, to make a long story short we never hung out. But then, weekend before last, he randomly calls me on Saturday night. I didn´t have my phone with me so I didn´t get the call, but when I got home I saw his name on my caller ID. So..next day I texted him, we talked a bit, and decided to hang out the next weekend. So last Sunday we finally met. And it was..well, it was okay, but it was.. Keep in mind that we met in a discoteca almost a year ago when I was rather borracha. And well, he was a little older than I had remembered. I mean, not like creepy-old or anything, but he´s like, thirty. And he´s you know, attractive and everything, but the whole time we were hanging out I was just thinking, dude, this guy is old! So it was kinda weird. But he was nice and stuff, I met a few of his friends..I wouldn´t be surprised if we hang out again. But..eh...no me apetece mucho. But still, it was kinda fun.

I haven´t made too many new friends yet this year, but I think I have a few in the works. For example, my roommate Nacho (yes, Nacho) has this friend Marta who is basically cuteness incarnate. She is the sweetest little thing and totally funny and nice. I´ve been hanging out with her a bit. And the cool thing is, she usually brings friends, and all of her friends so far that I´ve met are totally nice, and all the guys have also been totally guapo. Last weekend we went out to see this movie, I think it´s from Argentina..it´s called El Diaro de Motocicleta or something like that, and it has the dude from Y Tu Mama También, the hot one. It´s about Che Guevarra when he was young and went on this massive road trip across South America. It was cool to watch a Spanish movie without subtitles. Anyway I went with Marta and some other people, including her friend Miguel, who has a mullet. I think I have to say Miguel pulls off the mullet better than anyone I´ve ever seen. He managed to make it look good. I don´t know, something about the way the sides are layered. He was actually pretty cute, and I really wanted to make out with him, not only because he has a mullet, but because he is nice and stuff too. I tried to impress him with my Spanish swearing techniques... Here at times I have an advantage because I have an exotic American accent, but that only works if I can actually communicate and get my point across. Which usually I can do. But it´s always especially funny and/or endearing when someone tries to swear in a foreign language. Swearing is no big deal anyway. My six year olds swear in class. ¡Ostea!

So that´s about it really. Things are alright, though I still have too much free time. Sometimes I get lonely. But whatever. Hopefully things will get better soon.