The kitchen saga ends

So- I ended up cleaning everything. One of the rubbish bags was leaking and stank and dripped as I removed it from our domicile. Also, there were empty milk cartons that smelt like off-milk and there's nothing I hate more than the smell of milk, especially off-milk. Except maybe rotting garbage and faecal matter. I took out nine bags of rubbish plus numerous recycling items. And then I mopped our floors and disinfected them with bleach, and cleaned the bathroom and washed the dishcloths. I found a colony of pink mould on the taps in the bathroom (and I'd thought it was some fancy pink steel the Spaniards liked using) and what I'd thought was mottled enamel on our basin was actually grime. For once our kitchen and bathroom sparkled. Wonder how long it will last.

Cayley said she'd thought the 5L pot was Laure's which was why she didn't wash it up because she's so sick of cleaning up after her. I can't be too angry at Laure though because even though it is frustrating to live with someone who would let 9 bags of rubbish pile up over a week (because everything she eats comes out of a packet), her boyfriend did fix my socket for me. The power socket in my room was always falling out of the wall so you could see the cords, but today one of the cords came undone and I had my computer plugged in, so when I tried to remove it, it kept going 'SPOFF, SPOFF' and blue sparks would fly out. I didn't know what to do except not touch it, so I asked him and he turned off the electricity, fiddled with it for 10 minutes and it was back to normal. It's still coming out of the wall but he said he has something in his house that he'll bring over tomorrow to secure it. I now have around seven books propping it up.

When I went to the gym yesterday, these crazy beautiful weeds had sprouted all around the building so it looked like a yellow field out of a Miyazaki film. They must have appeared in less than a week because I'd been to the gym last Friday and it was all still barren and foreboding. Some of them are taller than I am. Mutant weeds.

I created a new recipe yesterday as I thought about what I could cook to use up the almost-expired eggs and tomatos in my fridge. It's called Catherine's Secret Omelette Recipe. But it's not very secret. You fry up some garlic, chop as much spinach as you need to get rid of, chop as many tomatos as you need to get rid of, whisk as many eggs as you need to get rid of, chop up as much ham as you want, throw it all into the saucepan together and cook until it looks done. Our fridge is strange. When I tried to crack two of the eggs, they wouldn't crack. I thought maybe I'd boiled them and forgot about it, so I peeled them and they had frozen solid. Quite gross. The other eggs were fine though. I wasn't sure if you could defrost frozen eggs and use them again so I chucked them out. My dad thinks I'm getting sick because I keep eating almost-expired food to save money.

My Kitchen- the Hellish Hole of Doom

Our kitchen is a petri dish of disease. As I type, new colonies are being created. Before I left for Madrid, I neglected to wash the pot that contained my 5 kg of curry. It was my fault- I should have washed it- but in my defense, I was soaking it and I was already feeling a bit unwell the night before leaving so it wasn't on the forefront of my mind. Anyway, I come back, and what do I find? The same pot with the same water inside it, plus numerous other dishes and cutlery, plus around five bags of garbage lying on the floor.

Normally if I'm doing my own washing up and there are extra dishes in the sink, I'll wash them up too but it infuriated me that even after all the extra dishes I've done, no one bothered to wash one measly pot. If they had done any washing up at all in the last week, which is questionable. So I left everything else I hadn't used in the sink and the pots and pans caked with pasta and pasta sauce on the stove.

But I'm in agony. The floor of the kitchen, especially under the table, is packed full of rubbish bags. None of it is mine because I took out all the rubbish before leaving for Madrid, so I shouldn't have to take it out but UGH!!!!! UGH!!!! How can someone live like that? When I came in this afternoon, the kitchen smelt like bad food. I actually had to air it out.

So- I am in a dilemma. Should I take out the rubbish and wash up the dishes so I can feel clean and healthy or should I leave it there so they learn that they need to take out their own crap and clean up after themselves?

Postscript: I had to take a photo of the state of our kitchen. It has to be seen to be believed. Most of the cereal boxes and milk cartons on the table are empty. We now have garbage lining our hallway because there's no more space under the kitchen table to put it.

Puerta de Toledo (me, with cheap new sunnies from El Rastro) 

Madrid (without the whinge)

I actually had a great weekend in Madrid before I got sick. I stayed with a friend from UTS, Monique, who's a little bit crazy but absolutely hysterical. She slept on an air mattress and let me sleep on her bed. The first night though, Breda and I thought we'd splurge and booked into a 2 star hotel where we got our own ensuite and didn't have to share the room with anyone else. No smelly guys for us!

The bear kissing the tree/bush/shrubbery is supposed to be a symbol of Madrid but I don't know what it's symbolising. I expected it to be a lot bigger. We found it by accident, and I thought it was a statue of the real statue that was actually twice the size, but no, that's it.

At night, Breda wanted to go to the Hard Rock Cafe, but there was a one and a half hour wait, so we went to Chueca instead, which was supposed to have great tapas and cool nightclubs. Some guy followed us down the street attempting to speak to us and it was only five minutes later that I realised he'd said 'Goodbye beautiful' to me in Chinese. Atrocious accent.

I actually got asked for ID at a club! In a country where the youth start drinking at 12 or 13! I must look 10. Unfortunately, I didn't have any because it all got stolen, so we went to another club where there weren't any scruples about age. (Spot the cow in the background of the photo of Breda and me.) We got home at around 3 am, but it was actually 4 am because of daylight saving, which we hadn't realised. I saw a few clocks that were an hour faster than my watch in some shops, but I just assumed the people were being stupid and playing a prank on their customers.

The next morning, we went to El Rastro, supposedly one of the biggest markets in Europe. It was interesting, but as the crowd grew, I became increasingly paranoid about my bag and pickpockets. Breda tripped over a pole sticking out of the ground and banged her knee. She left on Sunday night because she had classes on Monday, but when she got back to Logrono at 4 am, her knee had swollen up so much she went to Emergency to get x-rays. It is now swaddled in bandages for the next ten days.

Pigs are tasty

Yes, the Spanish people love their ham. Clockwise from top left: wall of ham; another wall of ham; Palace of Ham, random husky begging for ham; Ham Paradise; Museum of Ham.

Each individual pig thigh, trotter attached, costs around 150 Euros at the supermarket. They look really gross, all shrivelled and mouldy but actually taste quite good. You can get it as a tapa where they slice a piece off and put it on top of grilled bread and tomato.

The picture beneath is a thigh that's been sliced to the bone. I wish I could export one home for my dog to gnaw.

Be it ever so humble

Yay! I'm home! I'm home! Home to my hideous wallpaper and dirty bathroom! Home to the metro-less town and fantastic cheap tapas! I was so happy to drive over the bridges into Logrono and see the graffiti underneath the arches, I nearly hugged the bus driver. The apartment blocks actually looked welcoming.

Madrid wasn't too bad- I saw some good things but I was so sick for most of it I'm trying to block it all out. There was Starbucks with my first soy hot chocolate in almost two months (which I later threw up), Hard Rock Cafe and a divine HUGE BLT sandwich (which I also later threw up), El Rastro and the squashy crowds, a strike about parking meters that surrounded our hostel so we couldn't find our way back, a goth club where the only gothic thing was the bartender's face, Joy night club with go-go dancers, and Petra's International Bookstore where I picked up 4 English books, 5 Spanish books and 2 DVDs all for the bargain price of 13,50 Euros (admittedly, the Spanish books are kid's books- my Spanish reading level).

Like the picture? Yes, I know you're drooling. It's a wall of CANDY.

Madrid

I'm in Madrid at the moment and I'm sick here too. My dad's friend said it was unlikely I'd come down with the same stomach virus four times in two months so I must have food poisoning. I'm disgusted. I must be allergic to Spain or something. Am so ready to go home to Australia. It's lucky that I don't have much choice in the matter right now because I don't have a passport, otherwise I'd probably change my ticket and leave. I'm going to whinge briefly: this is the worst few months of my life. I've never been so sick before and it's absolutely horrible being sick away from home and not being able to see a doctor. I want to go home I want to go home I want to go home I want to go home I want to go home I want to go home I want to go home I want to go home I want to go home. I want my dog and Allen and my family and a healthy atmosphere that doesn't make me throw up every few weeks or contract some other disease/virus/bacteria. So ready to leave. So ready to leave. Hate being sick. I didn't see anything in Madrid because I was too sick to walk around. Bah. Bah. Hate being in Spain. Hate being here. Want to leeeeeeeeeeeeeave. Want my mum's salubrious cooking.

End of whinge.