rent a cops that pack guns, missing the ocean, falling in love with a french girl, and the homeless guy who sleeps in front of my house

i think i finally got a little rest from the weekend. haven't been doing much and have just been going to class and working and having chill nights with friends.

we went out to my friends boris' apartment the other night which is probably about an hour north of my neighborhood walking and it's kind of in the ghetto. but it has a rooftop terrace where we sat and talked and drank and hung out for while looking over some of the skyline of madrid and the sky was dark but the clouds were still pink and light and moving fast. it was a nice night, caught the last metro home and ended up talking to a crazy lady in spanglish about ocean beach where she had incidentally spent two years of her life as a troll right outside of south coast. small world.

i was walking to work today and noticed i was hungry, probably because i hadn't eaten anything in a while and popped into a supermarket to grab some bread and noticed that there was a security guard just kind of wandering aimlessly through the store with a horrifyingly bored look on his face. i suppose i would be bored too if i were protecting apples and cans of pringles. but that wasn't the most interesting thing, he was packing a gun. like a real cop.. it was the strangest thing to think that a rent a cop working inside of a grocery store had a gun. kind of scared me when i realized i was wearing a backpack and he was eying me suspiciously. i grabbed my bread, paid, and got the hell out of there. maybe next time i'll leave the backpack at home and try not to look like i just woke up.

i've never really lived in a city that's far away from the ocean. i don't like it. it's i imagine it's like living in nebraska. nicer. but kind of like that. maybe. there's just no water around here. it doesn't rain and there's no ocean for 7 hours in every direction. there aren't even large lakes. it's weird because i'm not a huge fan of the beach, i actually really dislike the beach but i do enjoy the ocean, just having it around. i remember in seattle going to alki beach and having bonfires and the water being freezing and sky gray and cloudy and the air cold, the smell of the ocean drifting up and down the street and just sitting on the sand next to the cold water listening to the little waves on the shore. i miss it.

last night i went to my friend lyndsey's house who is here from new york doing school at a place that teaches you how to teach english and hooks you up with a job after. pretty cool thing.. she lives in sol which is more or less the center of nightlife in madrid and she also lives with 8 other girls, 4 italian and 4 french. they were making pasta and she had invited me over and i got to sit in the kitchen watching all these girls make pasta and yell at each in italian and spanish and french and trying to figure it all out, the craziest scene imaginable, languages flying and people packed into a tiny kitchen, drinking wine and laughing at the stupidest things in other languages that i only half understood. it all culminated with a plate of steaming pasta in front of me that tasted like pasta that i can only imagine yeshua could have topped. i don't know what was in it and i don't care. i volunteered to wash dishes and i think it went over well. i am such a gentleman.

afterwards my american friend lyndsey said there was a birthday party she was going to and i didn't have class until 11 this morning so i said i would go and so did a french girl named louise. i have in the past had a very poor view of french people and i would like to take every bad word i said about them in generalization back. well not all of them, but most. lyndsey ended up getting wasted and dancing and i sat on a couch lining the wall of the back of this bar with this girl and made faces and stamped around awkwardly laughing and speaking spanish and her speaking french and only half understanding each other the entire night. she learned how to say smack a ho and super duper. it was magic. i think i'm in love.

this morning i left for school and passed the homeless man who sleeps on the bench on the street in front of my house. not an unusual scene, except this time i noticed he had peed his pants. i felt bad and put two euros in his pocket. he didn't move. after seeing the 3 boxes of don simon sangria under the bench, i can only imagine why. he may have just had a better night than i.

miss you all. if you've been calling my cell phone i'm sorry. i've gotten the missed calls but every time you've called i've been in class. and i'm a bad person.

love.