El Apartamento

For those of you who know the fridge-less, dog filled experience I had in Mexico, I am glad to tell you that Europe is kicking trash right now in the housing department. It is pretty stinking awesome! I found this little apartment that is super adorable from the outside. I LOVE the architecture of Europe. It is amazing. I love the stone buildings and the narrow streets and the tall buildings. I love the archways and the old rickety circling stairwells and everything. It makes me feel like I am living it up in an old Sherlock Holmes movie. It brings me joy. Also, I LOVE that the streets aren’t littered with super flashy, ugly franchise signs for grocery stores and fast food. Half the time you can’t even find the signs to tell you what street you are on! Anyways, yes. Love, love, love the architecture.

So, I am living in this tiny little two bedroom apartment. We have a fridge that works!! AND in suite laundry! Woot! It is fantastic. It is a nice enough little student apartment and it is cute and quaint and I feel right at home here. Especially because there is no central heating and all the windows are single paned so I am constantly cold, just like I am back home in Canada! Hahaha! I am surviving though. After sitting with fingers that were ice cold for a couple days I went out and bought THE warmest sweater I could find. It is huge and thick and warm. I also got thick tights to wear under my pants and warmer slippers than the ones I brought. Now I am all set and ready to face this ridiculously cold apartment. BUT the upside is that when it gets ridiculously warm towards the end of my trip, I will totally be ready for it! Bring it warm weather! I shall find relief in my apartment and there is nothing you can do about it. They have this saying in Madrid that is “nueve meses de invierno, tres meses de infierno” which translated means 9 months of winter, 3 months of hell.  I am ready for the hell part. I like warm much more than cold.

One of the great upsides of this apartment is that I have the most fantabulous roommate I could ask for. She is ridiculously wonderful. She is from France and is here doing the practicum portion of her degree. She is super bubbly and outgoing and doesn’t take any crap from anyone. If she has something on her mind, you are going to hear about it. It is super awesome. She understands English but prefers to speak Spanish so in the end ALL of our conversations are in Spanish. It has been excellent. I don’t even have the option of another language. It is going to really help me with the language.

Yup, so that’s the house. I think I am going to break blogs up into a couple entries as I recap what has happened since I got here so this isn’t ridiculously long. Yup. That’s the plan!