On the evening of the sixth I ate dinner with my host family. The entire household sat around the table and talked in both English and Spanish. It was very lovely - no TV, nor music. Just conversation.
All the students here are my age and all girls - which is good and bad I guess. It would be nice to go out with a guy to get a beer and it would be awkward to go out for a beer with one of these girls here since I live with them.
Later I went back to the hostel and shared my birthday with Nav (its here birthday too, 25) and people at the bar bought us shots and beer and I was already buzzing by the time the Irish lads wanted to go out to a pub.
At the pub we just talked to a few girls while the guys kept buying me birthday shots. I was once told that I should never keep up with an Irish guy - I need not be told again. After arriving back at the hostel I don't remember anything. I was awoken at 3pm next day and when I stepped out of the room the first thing somebody said was ‘I heard you were drunk last night!' - I'd never seen this person before.
Here is what I'm told happened:
For some reason I walked into the girls' bathroom (thinking It was the guys, of course) and I forgot which door was the exit. I ended up banging on a locked door for an hour yelling ‘let me out!' quite hysterically. A girl come up, tapped me on the shoulder, pointed to a door 3 feet away and said ‘the door's there mate'. ‘Oh, right' I said. In the morning while eating breakfast I heard people talking about a loud banging that kept them up part of the night. I didn't enlighten them.
Later that night the Irish guys wanted to exchange emails with me because they were leaving the next day and they handed me a blue pen. I thought he was handing me a cigarette and put it into my mouth and sucked on it. It exploded. My teeth and tongue were vivid blue in the morning. There's a bunch of other stuff I did but I really am too embarrassed to write it down.
Around 5pm on my birthday I was in a café and was watching the news - a riot was breaking out somewhere in the world. Something caught the corner of my eye and I glanced outside the window and people were running. I walked over and I saw people with sling shots pelting the police. Then I saw people with whomping sticks beating the shit out of a police car - then they set it on fire! Cool! I looked back at the TV and the same police car was burning. I joined in.
I didn't do any damage or anything like that but I followed the riot. Heavily armed police on foot/motorcycles/trucks were casing them down - I ran along, blending in. I tried to stay along with the rioters because the police were getting the shit kicked out of them and I like being on the winning side. I had to dodge a stray brick and rocks and whomping sticks once when I somehow ended up in the middle of the madness.
Each time the police tried to arrest somebody the crowd would jump the police and set them free - so I really wasn't too afraid of being arrested. By the end I followed the rioters to a safe house in an ally where the police didn't go. A news person wanted to conduct an interview with me, but hell, I didn't speak Spanish that well and had no clue what the riot was even about.
Later several people from the safe house were taken to the hospital - one guy really didn't look so hot. I wish I had my SLR for this - it was back at the home stay, but Susie, a girl I was with at the time, took a few shots.
That evening people from the hostel went to a drum concert, one of the coolest things I've seen, ever; Ten or twelve guys on different drums on a stage making the coolest beats while hundreds of people danced and Moshed. I joined in the Mosh but it was a bit rough and I was too sober. Well, I was still a bit drunk from the night before but I had been chugging water all day.
I met a girl there, Ali from San Francisco. She invited me to a famous steak place in BA along with her mates from the hostel. Food was brilliant and had an excellent time.
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