Okay, I managed to accidentally overwrite one kinda silly picture with this equally silly one. So probably only a select few of you saw the one of me holding the glass of water and talking to Mario and Fiona. Here is me showing off my American fashion sensibilities (note the socks with the sandals - I DIDN'T HAVE SHOES WITH ME AT THE TIME AND I'M SORRY).
We had 4 Vodafone employees doing the program with us, so this is me showing off my Nokia/Vodafone móvil. I'm not sure, but I'm going to pretend it happened the same night as the tapas & paella dinner (I filled up on tapas) which was then followed by a Flamenco party with guitar played by the guy who cooked our paella. Why? Because I already wrote something up about that night.
I don't fully understand why Silva, the guitarist/cook, does it. He's apparently one of the greatest living classical guitarists in Spain...and while I'm sure he makes good money playing guitar, I can't imagine he's being paid much more to make a paella.
Artists, man. They're just so...weird.
Moving on...I'm going to call this section "Darin and his Couch of Pimpin.'" All these pictures were sent to me by a friend, because my pictures of Gredos are still on my camera, along with 30+ others, waiting to be released.
So, just to invent a fun narrative to go with the story, let's say I used my phone in the picture above to call up some peeps and homies to throw a phat party to show off my new Couch of Pimpin'. In reality, it was the last night of the program, so everyone was getting pictures taken with their friends and all that, but...that just doesn't quite have the zazz I'm looking for.
So my homegirl Fiona shows up an' says "Whassup, dawg?" Actually, she'd probably say "'ello, muppet trousers," because she was British, and apparently some British people actually say "muppet trousers" in conversation. Fiona told me at one point that if it weren't for her pesky boyfriend waiting for her in Madrid...
Moving along, we have Eva, who is from Bilbao. Bilbao is the 4th largest city in Spain and home of the new Guggenheim museum, and also located in the Basque country, where they speak the single most bizarre language ever. I've only met 3 people from there, and they've all been cool - I think it has something to do with the weird language or maybe the terrorist group, I'm not sure. Eva liked to say "Nooooo..." really emphatically and we always said it meant "No, you stupid man," although she didn't particularly hate men. In fact, she's in a relationship with one. His name is Igor. No joke.
I was supposed to be telling a story about a pimp couch, wasn't I? So I texted up fly chica Norma and said "Damn, yo." And she came over to chill on the pimp couch. Norma lives in Madrid and has offered to let me stay in a room in her apartment whenever I need to, and is just all-around a nice person. She's done Englishtown three or four times now, because she works for Hewlett Packard, and they cover her expenses and don't count it as vacation days.
So then I called the rest of my crew and we was all like, "Go shorty, it's your birthday." The guy in the striped shirt next to me, showing off the beautiful tan lines on his thighs, is Mario, who was nice enough to send me all this pictures, and was featured in the earlier one that I've managed to erase. In between Mario and Eva is Libe, who was the one who said "You keep fucking me and I have no ass" when we were playing cards (she meant to say "ace"). Jaime is the other guy next to me, and was the one the fucking me comment was directed to. Next to him is Tia, who passed out from heatstroke in the middle of a restaurant in Ávila the day we visited the city.
On the other side is Chris, one of two Australians, who had some sort of fling with Miriam, the Spanish girl standing behind me. I have a funny picture of me and Miriam on my camera but...it will have to wait.
So that's the story of me and my couch. The couch was actually in the lobby of the hotel where we were staying, so unfortunately it had to stay behind, but we keep in touch and hope to hang out again soon.