im finally satiated.

crashed 2nd level spanish today and i felt like i was learning what i wanted to learn. ie. all the verbs, vocab n confusing spanish stuff tt i wanted to clarify. so woohoo to that. however. it was going a little fast considering its like their god knows which lesson already.. i could still manage to understand the teacher so kudos to me i say.. haha although my mind was seriously CRAWLING trying to remember the different permutations of words.. i kept mixing up ver with ir vengo with vamos.. vas with veces... AAAHH!! stressed esp when the teacher came up and we were supposed to practice conversations on adverbs of frequencies.. i was taking forever to string a sentence. i know how to do it. it just takes me a gazillion years to do it.! rar.. need more practice.. and im quite happy that i spent almost the whole time speaking to a classmate in only spanish. it was only when we didnt know the spanish word to it, did we resort to english. YAY!

n i went grocery shopping.. so im veryyy full!! as they say.. a hungry man is an angry man. likewise, a full ili is a happy ili. :)

gripes



so i know all this europe isnt just fun n games.. the money factor just sank into my brain today. sigh. i shd just occupy myself with things so i will stop spending on food.

i think im antisocial by nature. with the added extra bitchiness today.

VOILA! i have a new best friend.

I have FINALLY found someone to watch all my football matches with.. he might not be an arsenal fan but at least he makes an effort to watch when there is a game on! you would think it would be easy to find such people here.. guess again! we were in the students lounge when i tried to load sopcast so i cud watch the arsenal match but after 20mins of the game.. a POLISH advert suddenly popped up and interrupted the transmission.. and school wireless is really bad so i couldnt resuscitate it.. the funny part was.. i was watching it with 2 other polish students.. so they were like. wth! how did a polish advert popup all of a sudden! well i guess it was to good effect because the arsenal game ended up a goalless draw.. we went to a nice cafe, ordered patatas brava and watched the barca game which was tonnes more exciting! ANNNDD *crosses fingers* tt andrzei pulls through with his connections to get the valencia - barca tickets! wooots!

oh yes.. the bike has survived 2 days so far.. it almost didnt on the first day. the chain CAME OFF so it wudnt pedal halfway to school. i got stopped in the lift twice because the bike didnt fit. the roads were so filled with pple and the stupid bike lane only applies to roads that run perpendicular to where i go. murphy liked me a little too much that day! on a better note, the sky has finally cleared. maybe ill do some recreational cycling later today!

im awake! at 3pm singapore time = 8am spain time on a sunday
why is this of significance? because i was awake since 430am.
just came back from buying a bike! shhhh...
im having buyers remorse though. gah. i hope it survives the time here.

oh my achy legs

no matter which way i take,

no matter how many shortcuts i try to make it takes me 40mins to walk to school.

and take into consideration i go to sch twice on wednesdays because i have a lousy class tt we do nothing in 4hrs later. i know i can stay in school but i HAD to go home to boil the potatoes and make begedils out of them for singapore night!

so that was the outcome! pple trying to eat with their hands. the spicy yummylicious black pepper chicken which i think theres some leftover in the fridge and the sweet n sour fish and stir fried veg n begedil cum aperitif + the pretty spicy nasi goreng. culminated to a rather succesful night. even though we took a grand total of 3.5hrs not taking into consideration the afternoon i took to make the begedils! and all for a grand total of..... 17euros! for 16 pple. ok well we used some food bought last week and some stuff left by the boys before but still.. thats pretty decent! and yes.. it truly was 14 pple. 1 dutch. 2 north belgians. 4 south belgians. 1 french. 2 lithuanian. 2 finlandians. 1 polish. 1 mexican. holy crap i thot it was 14 including us.. wow.. i think its going to be some time before we make another gathering like tt again! i thot the funnest part was supper though.. when i whipped up some nachos but decided we needed some salsa to go with it! home made salsa y-all! tasted just as good as the real thing! oh im so happy just to be rotting at home today! the weather has been rather dreary the past week too.. booo..

Tapas anyone?

Pasi our new friend from Finland says they eat alot of raw fish (salmon) in Finland.. at that point, i started drooling haha.. if not already from the awesome smoked salmon I had in my tapas. yums! Ana, the spanish local who was a friend of our belgian friends brought us out to play tourist except it was in French (because that is what belgians speak) so I needed some translations here n there.. and pretended to understand her half the time lol. I feel so sad sometimes that I don't know another beneficial language here in Europe. I really oughta kick myself in the ass for not taking at least German as my 3rd lang. well. in any case, I started thinking in Spanish more for some reason, to cover the fact that I only understand english. Well, this was at the end of the day where we had tapas for dinner. It was sufficiently filling.. I had the Tortilla patata con salsa bravia, Salmon ahumado con pimiento sthsth and the quieso brie con nuece (nuts) yums! not to mention the many manyyy chips and vinigeared aperitifs. *Top pic with Ana & Lieselot who shared the same order form... the whole process of ordering was a fun experience by itself! you have to take an order form n pickout the items u want. then write yr name on the top and go to the cashier with it. after a while.. they will announce over the counter 'Por favor Lieselot sthsthsth..' ie go pick up yr order! Couldn't help think of potential prank calls to make on that haha..

To more yummy tapas in the future & meeting new interesting pple!
Salud!

gah! i just remembered.. i was pissed at myself for not waking up to go to the black market to get a bike! (it was at 530am) well if not for a bike which i think i can prob live without mebbe just for the experience.. the worst part was.. i was AWAKE at 5am! i set an alarm.. its just tt i didnt hear anyone stirring.. so i didnt.. get out of bed.. phooey..

geepers creepers

we've had to fend for ourselves this week. no big strong men to save the day.. ingenuity is really all it takes :)

Incident 1) Soo... we were cooking dinner.. and found out that our can of sardines had no easy peel open fxn AND we had no can opener.. or we might have had one but had no clue how it worked.. we searched the entire kitchen trying to find one but ended up with a hammer and chisel instead.. my guess is, the person before us must have done the same thing haha. so we chiselled our way thru the can.. but it was SUPER loud n we didnt want our neighbors to kill us. so we only opened a tenth way.. n used a bottle opener to force our a small hole.. enough to get the little fishies out. tadaaa..(see video)

Incident 2) The toilet latch was broken but we cud still use it cos the hook cud still carry up the weight of the thinggyy tt causes the flushing haha. see my total no plumbering knowledge. until 1 day it got quite bad but i didnt have time to fix it in the morning cos I was going to school. so i thought id fix it when i'd get back.. ie just taping the 2 ends tog for the hook but when i got back home tt evening, one of the broken sides was COMPLETELY broken off.. i was mildly pissed off but yet again we had to come up with an ingenius plan! Took a chopstick-like thingy which im not sure why there are so many of in the living room, my rubber band and sya's duct tape and we made a mini contraption as shown above tt WORKS! :D

oh look at us growww while we live by ourselves.. our mummies will be soooo proud hahhahaa

speaking of growth. in class today, i just realised how much i really like economics. international economics for that matter. i am really such a silly girl who took the wrong degree. well at least I might pursue economics in the future. we learnt about the spanish economic history (& completely grateful right now tt im taking this in lieu of EDA) and am surprised really how long they took.. and in contrast, i feel our economic growth is just as long as theirs as aptly put by the prof, Spain is a story of wasted opportunities. We often learn of our own progress and think anyone cud have done the same.. but i think its a good change to learn of a history that has faults rather than one simply of success. what fun is there? when u cud have learnt funny facts like the national wheat service and the reason behind the unevenness of train gauges.. n scoff at influences politics make in economics. Its things like these that make me wanna be a geek again. seriously, just not a fan of clubbing esp among throngs of pple with BAD music. i just wanna move to the part where i get to know more people here.. and hear all kinds of interesting titbits like... how finland n germany have woman no. 1s and we had no clue.

what was i thinking???

taking french (2nd level french mind u) in spanish??? well tt was a joke haha lasted me 15mins.. the bigger joke is that I couldn´t bring myself to walk out of the class cos we already introduced ourselves so i leftmy stuff in class n hope to get them out during the break haha ayee..

This is Phillip.. The picture is just too funny not to put up.. he is more than 2m tall and the first ever person I know who im only ARMPIT HIGH to.. gross.. poor sya.. i wonder how she must feel.. n this is in a country where im taller than half the men..!

oh crap.. i forgot what i wantedto blog abt. went castle hunting today. I want to be a princess!

Our roomies went home today. :( I'm missing them already! Who else will I learn stupid songs from, watch & argue football with, watch them play the football league, meet new pple and teach us everything we need to know to survive here? To Matze & Tobi! Salud! Hope you guys don't freeze to death back home and return to valencia quickly!