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Hello Reader.
I overslept. It was fruit salad Wednesday and I slept through it. I rushed to the hostel to see if everyone was still there, but they had already headed to the beach. I called Mike then headed off, sporting my Amstel cowboy hat that they were giving away for free during Las Fallas. They had saved me some fruit salad, which I later ate, and we laid in the sun for hours. For about forty-five minutes or so, Harri laid her head on my stomach. It was only afterward at New Orleans that we realized that I had a large white patch of skin (surrounded by sunburnt skin) in the shape of a head Harri's had been. A good laugh all around... not sure if it was a laugh with me or at me. Oh, well, we were laughing all the same.
After New O's, it was home for a shower, some internet time, then drinks at Cafe Lisboa. It was Dave's last night in town. It was a hard goodbye for all of us. He seemed to effortlessly slip right into our group like he had been there for weeks. We had a good hug and
went our separate ways. He caught the one pm train the next day.
Within an hour of Dave leaving, Mike greeted his new couchsurfers. We had been excited about their arrival for the preceding days. I mean, how often do you get to meet shiny ginger Belgian twins?
Annalies and Liesbeth are indeed from Belgium. They were on a holiday for about a week in Valencia and had contacted Mike and Chrysa to stay with them. Annalies, studying near her hometown in Belgium, is a little more relaxed while Liesbeth, a fashion student living in Antwerp, is always energetic. After introducing them to Jorge and Fina, we (Ali, Mike, Sue, Annalies and Lisbeth) went to the park to throw around the frisbee for a while. We later made sandwiches and headed to Picapiedra.
On Thursday a surprise. I like surprises. Ali had been in covert contact with Laurent, Harri's boyfriend. He was on his way into town, unbeknownst to Harri. Ali and I picked him up from the train station and he bought a rose from a bearded woman before heading to Cafe Lisboa. We told Harri that we would be sitting under the tree outside, but
we were inside watching Laurent wait for her there. She walked right by him not even noticing him. Laurent came in and tapped her on the shoulder and, thinking he was trying to sell her something, she politely and compulsively said 'no, gracias' and went back to talking to us. A confused smile showed just how she felt as she then turned to give him a huge hug. Her hands were still shaking an hour afterward.
Laurent is definitely a cool guy. A printmaker by trade and a snappy dresser for sure. I'm glad they're together because Harri is a good girl, and I believe that good people deserve each other. We went out with Laurent and the twins to Pinball. Luckily no beer bottles were broken this go-round, (there were two last time - not to mention the loss of precious beer). Laurent bought me a whisky, and I downed it along with my other drinks. I left early before things got, um, complicated.
That Saturday was a day of ups and downs for me. A really full day, come to think of it. Firstly, It was the first of April and I was moving out. I
The Twins in Front of the Towers
Liesbeth on the left with Annalies in front of the Torres de Serranos.packed my bag and swept my room. I gave a firm handshake and a hug to my roommates, Carlos and Roberto, before leaving with a feeling of melancholy. I walked through the streets to deposit my bag at the hostel. As I walked, feeling the weight of my pack, I remembered how it was when I first arrived in this city as a mere traveler. But after four months, I felt very different, even unnatural, carrying all my Europely (as opposed to worldly) possessions with me. This wasn't just another city on a list on some unwritten itinerary, this was my home. I could feel my fellow locals looking at me as I passed by the terraced restaurants. I know they saw me as an outsider. I didn't like it one bit.
I stayed with Chrysa and Mike over the following weeks. They're good peeps like that. Both of them said that I didn't even have to ask, that I should have known that I was welcome. My humble Southern upbringing disallows me to presume that any intrusion is a welcome one, even if it's into my best friends' house that I spent more time in than my own.
After dropping off my bags, I hung around with Ali for the day doing less than nothing in the hostel. I worked later that night and everybody came in for drinks, coffee, and sandwiches. It always made me feel really good that they would come in when I was working. Jorge let me sit with them for a while late in the night when there weren't many people there.
As I was sitting and chatting, he came to me at the table and said that he wanted to talk to me about something very serious. He said that he had been counting the money drawer and that he found a lot of money missing. He said that he knew that I was the one that took it. I had a look of pure shock and confusion on my face. I told him that I would never, never do anything like that. He told me to bring him my bag. I ran to the closet to get it and while I was gone, all my friends at the table were confusedly pleading 'it can't be' and 'he would never...'
I got back to the table and unzipped my
bag in front of everyone only to find a handful of twenty Euro notes inside. My mouth dropped, as did those of the others, when I pulled out that money. I started to explain, then stopped - looking at the ground. I stuttered and looked at the faces of disbelief of my friends, and that of disappointment on Jorge's, before turning and running out in to the street.
...where I waited...
Ali, Chrysa, and the others came bolting out after me. Jorge had let them in on our little joke... after all it was April Fools Day.
They were gotten. Every one of them. But they didn't think that I was in on it, that Jorge had just fired me and I thought he was serious. They thought that I might be running to throw myself off a bridge into Garden Turia or something. Oh, we got them good. If that wasn't enough, I called a friend and my parents back home telling them that I was being deported back to the states and I needed them to pick me up at the airport the following day. They were all HAD, but my Mom figured it out...
she's a clever one.
Chrysa also had her fun by telling her boss, Ben, and others that she was leaving in a matter of weeks to be drafted into the Greek army. It was hard to keep a straight face as she told Ali. In the same vein, Ali and Sue convinced me that they don't have the X-Files in England among other blatant lies that I innocently believe due to my trusting, non-gullible mindset.
On Sunday, after another picnic at the beach, we went out for dinner at a place near New Orleans Cafe. We all shared tapas and I made a sarcastic remark about how much ice was in the jug of Agua de Valencia (a local drink that's like Mimosa) that they served us. Before and after dinner we took turns picking up the twins like rag dolls and generally being rowdy in the streets. Ali, after getting a team of people to gang up on me, succeeded in blowing up my nose - a tradition started by Dave before he left (as opposed to AFTER he left). It was gross, but I got her back by dipping her toothbrush in the toilet when she
wasn't looking.
(internal voice: please let them realize that I would never actually do that...)
It was a full house at Mikes, as I was there and the twins and Ali. Also Sue had moved in. It was the logical thing to do. She was there pretty much every night anyway. I didn't mind so much saying goodbye to the twins (no, not cause I'm a jerk), because I would be traveling to Belgium at some point and would hopefully be meeting up with them then. They left early the next morning; and Laurent and Harri's family over the next couple of days.
The feel after Las Fallas among our group was one of avoidance of saddness. Our thoughts turned to all of our inevitable separation. We replaced 'leaving' with either 'the L word' or 'Letting the Cat Out' (I'm not sure where that last one came from). But you get the idea - we didn't want to talk about. Mike was to be getting a month off from work around the time that I would be leaving, just a couple of weeks before Ali and Harri departed. We all wanted to plan a last trip together.
We were discussing Granada or Sevilla as destinations, but nothing was definite. We could have probably been more organized about the journey if we could talk about it without getting upset about leaving.
For our last remaining week we (Chrysa, Mike, Sue, Ali, Harri, and myself) did our best to see each other as often as possible.
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Butterfly
non-member comment
Hmmm...
1st: I like the pic with your nose, looks like an abyse!!! 2nd:Laurent and Olivia have two pictures together, Harri's gonna get mad!!! 3d: Great times, great times... Take care of yourself mate. Loves and hugs