i love americaaaaa

announcement: due to the lack of control over my diet, partly due to cruella's cooking and partly due to my unwillingness, i have decided to give up swearing for lent instead of my usual chocolate/soda/junk food/etc. consequently, there may be some interesting substitutes in my writing. fell free to insert word of choice instead. also- if you have any creative or more appropriate words you can suggest to me, i encourage you to not hesitate in doing so. the more the better, as this will probably be a challenge for me.

next day. sunday. superbowl sunday that is.

diana and i go to church at Almudena again. to my surprise, it's not hard to find motivation to go to church here. for one, there's a church every 12 feet. and secondly, it's like stepping inside a museum every time. i may not understand anything being said, but my eyes never get bored.

that night i have to go to a jazz concert for my music class. it starts at 9:30, but we are supposed to get there to get tickets by 9. or so we think. well, i don't know, the rest of the class went the night before... hey, real madrid takes priority. but can't forget. superbowl. kickoff is at 12:22am. can't be late. we usually eat dinner at 8:30ish, so i tell cruella i have to leave early for the concert. she tells me she'll have dinner ready early. i thought this meant for everyone. at 8:15 cruella knocks on my door for dinner. i head into the kitchen to find only my place set at the table. .....shucks.... i sit down and cruella feeds me as we try to talk spanglish at eachother. luckily when i'm only halfway done she goes and gets the other girls for their first course. i finish up and head out.

the concert is at sala clamores. i can't remember what my teacher said about the venue, but i hope that it's a bar or at least a more relaxed environment than a theatre. contrary to what you all are thinking, i hope it's a bar so that i can still talk to my friends during the show and leave early for superbowl if necessary without causing disruption -- NOT for the drinks. ...well, maybe 28% for the drinks. i mean, come on, you get to drink and do homework at the same time. and it's superbowl sunday. and i'm american.

sala clamores is a bar. we use our school ids to get student pricing on our tickets. which student seating is at the bar. ...my teacher made me. mike, hannah, and i sit down and ask what the cheapest drink is. a glass of wine or a beer for 4 euro, which... is not good. we decide to just get one drink while we're here (i mean, it's weird sitting at the bar when you're not planning on drinking or ordering anything. i don't even know if that's legal). mike, who had just come back from valencia (literally, he came straight to sala clamores after his bus got into madrid, just stopping at home to drop his bag off), only had 3 euro. he had been pickpocketed and his roommate had given him 10 euro, 7 of which he used on his student priced ticket. "anything i can get for 3 euro?" he asks the bartender, who snuffs him off. "did you really think that was going to work?" hannah asks him. i lend his sorry self a euro.

on the bar, there are bowls of popcorn. which we continue to munch on for the entire time we're there. i'm pretty sure we were the only people eating it. eventually we just move the bowl in front of us. for mike, who hadn't eaten, this was dinner. i had no excuse.

9:30 rolls by. 10. 10:15. we're getting antsy. dubliners, the irish pub in sol we want to watch superbowl at, will be getting pretty packed with slu kids soon. where the heck is the band? finally the band gets on stage: a pianist, guitarist, violinist, double bassist, and drummer. you expect jazz to be soothing and mellow. this was not what i was expecting. the violinist starts with a crazy fast riff, head banging with his long curls in his face. [i wrote about this in my reflection, which my teacher responded to via email telling me "good job." i mean.. sure i wrote about the music too, but this was more significant to me. ol' crazy head shakin' his long locks to the beat of his own bow.]

at 10:45 it was intermission. concluding after little debate that we had enough material to write 2 pages on, we decide to ditch to get to dubliners. we got a game to watch.

when we get to dubliners, we can't take a step in the door without finding friends. there's no seats left and it's already elbow to elbow, but there's some strong slu representin' here- at least half the crowd i recognize. i go over the the big screen and find a place to stand and end up talking baseball with eric. hey, i may be here for football, but baseball is where my heart is. the boys are all amped up, shouting "i love americaaaaa!" when the national anthem starts, the whole crowd sings along, belting out each out of tune note (sorry carrie underwood, but to me, our voices sounded so much sweeter than yours that night - no, it wasn't the alcohol, it was pure patriotism!!). since most people standing next to me are rooting for the colts, i opt for cheering on the saints. might as well make it interesting right? i walked in neutral and now i'm a die hard saints fan! LET'S DO THIS.

when i first got there i had 10 euro left. this is good - i think to myself - i won't be hung over tomorrow and i won't spend too much on drinks.... a large beer is 4 euro. ok... 2 big beers should do it.... i'm done with both before half time. screw this. it's superbowl. i'm american. i'm at least going to follow one tradition. ....i think. it's cheaper to buy in bulk. meaning a bucket. who can i split this with who doesn't already have a drink? who in their right mind does not already have a drink?! someone who doesn't have money... mike. i grab him and tell him i'll split a bucket with him if he pays me for half when he gets money. without any hesitation he obliges, and i pull out the debit card.

i don't know why, but every male who sees a girl with a credit card is programmed to think that their father is paying for it. because every time i pull out my card, a guy goes "ohhh daddy's credit card! daddy's paying!!!" "....um, no. this is my name on the card. i pay for this, thank you." and if you know what's good for you you'll shut your mouth before i keep all these beers for myself.

for some reason (and thinking back, this makes no sense to me now), i think that lady gaga is performing at half time. someone asks me who is performing at half time. i say lady gaga. girls start screaming and spreading the news. ...is she performing?....oh crap... i totally just started the wrong rumor... i'm sure hearts broke when The Who came on. i relocate myself to the bar during halftime so i wouldn't get punched by one of those girls tearing up when the words "lady gaga" exited my mouth 40 minutes earlier.

although this superbowl was completley unsimilar to any other superbowl i've experienced [for the following reasons: -1. first superbowl in a foreign country (especially one where no one gives a shiz about the superbowl) -2. first superbowl in a bar (or somewhere besides my house) -3. first superbowl without the commercials (yeah... french broadcasting...) -4. no chili cheese dip ...or any junk food... which leads to -5. first superbowl consuming only 1/16 of the calories i would have otherwise consumed if i was in the US (some might be ok with this, even prefer it. i was not. where the frick are my chicken wings and little smokies??)], it was one of the best superbowls ever.

i leave superbowl early (as in, before the game was over. the time was 3:30am) and head on home. the next morning i panic as i look at my "dialed calls" on my phone to find that i (as in, me, myself, and my pocket) had called cruella twice the night before. ....crud, crap, shiz, double shiz! i go to diana for guidance and we find that the calls had not gone through. thank. god.