It is the last day of November meaning …

- today one of my roommates is moving out and tomorrow the new one is moving in.
- starting tomorrow I can open a door of my advent calendar each day until Christmas Eve.
- it is the last day of NaBloPoMo, and I made it!
- I will make two posts just for the heck of it, so watch out for a second one later!

A month ago, I had ordered two books from Play.com. One came around two weeks ago, but the concierge gave it to my roommate who is only here a night or two every week (or even less). Last weekend he told me he got one of the books and he would bring it the next time he is around (why he took it to his other apartment? … no clue). A few days ago, I came home from class and the concierge told me a postcard came for Viviane something, a girl who doesn’t live here anymore. I told her, ummm that is me! Apparently she never even bothered to learn my name, always calling me “la extranjera” even though I gave her a note with my name on it right after I moved in. She gave me the postcard and then proceeded to tell me that two weeks earlier a package had come in the mail for Viviane and that since she thought it was for someone who didn’t live here anymore, she didn’t accept it. I couldn’t believe it! I was fuming [sadly only on the inside, I was way too friendly to her]! I was pretty sure that was my other delivery from Play.com, so she had just returned it to the UK! It makes no sense why she would give one of the packages to Jordi, and then return the other one, but also put the letters for a Bibiana [who she apparently confused me with] in our mail box! Now I knew this concierge is not one of the brightest but wow, how incredibly stupid, I mean she could have asked us about it, seeing as she always asks us about all kinds of other crap as well, but no, she just decided (even though it is really not a decision that is up to her, she has no business deciding whose mail is being delivered and whose isn’t) not to accept this one delivery! Luckily this book did not even cost €10, luckily shipping is free, and luckily it was something sent by a company, not a private person (imagine this had been a package from a friend or relative in Germany, the amount shipping costs from abroad!). Yesterday, after I finally received the other book from Jordi (so I knew which one was missing) I claimed the other book as not having arrived (because it hasn’t, and after all I cannot be absolutely certain, this delivery that the concierge rejected was actually the one from Play.com, and opted for having the money refunded, and I just got the e-mail that I will be refunded the money on my credit card within a week. I decided to buy the book while I am in Germany, and as the offer at Play.com still seems the cheapest one around, I will probably just order it again in two weeks or so and have it delivered to Munich [where there is no retarded concierge going through my mail].

I have decided to borrow a Flickr group’s idea for myself. I was thinking about creating a photo blog, but I know I would probably not have enough photos to post, so this is perfect: Love Thursday. This is what it’s about:

On Thursday, August 17th, 2006, Irene Nam from MOMster in Paris and Karen Walrond from Chookooloonks declared every Thursday “Love Thursday,” inviting people to post pictures depicting love on their websites each week. In conjunction with this, behold the “Love Thursday” pool: feel free to upload your photographs depicting love in all its forms — love of a partner, love of a child, love of a favourite toy, love of life — to share with everybody. Unusual images of love — fallen leaves that look like hearts, for example — are also very welcome.

Instead of posting pictures to this Flickr group, though, I will post them on my blog, starting today.

I love reading so, so much.
Books = Love.

Today I have a riddle for you guys …

What is wrong or, let’s say, weird about this picture that I just took of a can of Coca-Cola I bought here at the university’s vending machine today?

So the decision is made finally regarding roommates. I did not want to write about it until everything was certain which is why I waited until now.

On Saturday, a girl our age (I forgot how old exactly she is, but somewhere between 20 and 25), Nuria from Tarragona [a city that is also in Catalunya, like Barcelona] will be moving in. We had also found someone for the bigger room but just tonight Jordi and his girlfriend decided not to rent out his room after all [for now]. Talk about confusing. The two girls we had considered for the room were kind of annoyed that after waiting so long we had to turn both of them down, but it is not our fault Jordi cannot make up his mind. In fact we were pretty annoyed with all of this too. It is nice he lets us choose our roommate and doesn’t just present us with one, but at the same time we put a lot of time and money into this and now we find out we might as well not even have bothered with finding someone for one of the rooms. I just hope he won’t change his mind again next month, because we don’t have that kind of time to show so many people around the apartment all the time. He is a nice guy but it is a bit aggravating that he is so unreliable.

Anyway, in the end of course this is better for us, the girls in the apartment, as Jordi and his girlfriend will still not be here much [they are keeping the room in case she finds work in Barcelona but even then she would probably not be around much more than a couple of nights a week I assume] and there will essentially only be three of us most of the time. So it will be Anais and me, and Nuria, and as she seems like a really sweet girl I hope we will all get along great!

Furthermore we will not have to deal with any more questions from the concierge who is a bored old lady who pokes her nose into things that are none of her business and a pain in the butt. Since renting out rooms in Barcelona without a contract is not exactly legal and Jordi has not been around a lot, especially at her working hours, she has been asking Anais a lot of questions to find out if he even still lives here. It’s none of her business of course but she is good friends with the apartment owner so we have to be careful with what we tell her. Luckily, she thinks I don’t understand her very well so she doesn’t ask me anything. She actually refers to me only as “la extranjera” [the foreigner] when talking to my roommates, which is kind of ironic because all of us are foreigners [but Nice is Argentinian and since Anais already lived in Spain last year her Spanish is much better than mine]. At first I was a little insulted because that is pretty rude and kind of racist, but now I think it’s convenient for me that whenever I don’t want to understand her, I will just pretend that I don’t. [I think she got this impression that I don't understand Spanish very well from when she was trying to tell me something about panties that had fallen down from our clothesline and that she had put them on our door, and I did not understand what on earth she was talking about because I did not know the word for 'panties'.] So while Anais tried to befriend her a little so she would not be malicious and tell the owner something that could get us thrown out of the apartment and had to endure all her questions, I kept saying ‘hola’ whenever I came and went, and that’s it. The concierge could have become a real issue if there were four of us living here besides Jordi [because she could figure out then that since there are only four bedrooms he does not live here anymore], but now we don’t have to deal with that either.

I am drawing an absolute blank as to what to write about today, but I shall prevail and get through NaBloPoMo, so I will leave you with this adorable video of a dancing cockatoo.