madness

I have never felt so much stress during finals week - especially since NONE of my stress has ANYTHING do to with finals. If you don't notice this, in this moment I am extremely angry and stressed. I found out that I have one final tomorrow instead of two (yay), but that means that now I have 2 finals and a paper the next day (worse). Honestly in this moment, I don't care at all about finals. You don't even know, this day has been so up and down for Nikki and me, so much so that I don't care about my grades anymore. Compared to what we're dealing with, it seems so ephemeral and useless.

We talked to our host mom about what it would cost to stay here in May, since we know we're supposed to pay her weekly. It would cost about 550 euros, which isn't a bad price if you think about it since it includes breakfast, dinner, and laundry and stuff. Nikki and I will move into her big room and be roommates while our friend Zee (actually also from UCSB) will take my single. She's going to pay 300 euros for her stay here (and she stays until June 15th - almost 2 weeks after us), except without the food and she would need to do her own laundry. We had been trying to negotiate a deal with Maru about that since the beginning, but she wouldn't have it before. We've helped her cook and clean her house, and then Zee barely comes and she's making deals with her right away? That annoyed us.

Since then, Nikki and I were thinking that she was getting the better deal. We'd rather do our own food thing because the difference is 250 euros, and we would be gone part of May anyways, traveling and doing day trips. Today we told her we were interested in the 300 euro deal, and she seemed annoyed or angry? I don't know what to call it. She told us that if we do that, we can't even touch the kitchen. We tried to negotiate the use of the stove but she said no. It's all or nothing. She told us we can't use the microwave, the stove, or keep things in the fridge. We were like that's inconvenient, but that's okay. Then she told us we can't even keep food in our rooms. She said that it would be like her house is a hostel for us, and it would be better and less awkward if we went to a hostel for a month than treat her house like a hostel and have that relationship with her. So basically, we have no choice.

Also, in the beginning I thought it was 500 euros, not 550, so it was 50 more euros than I thought. I have to take it out of my savings, which is okay I suppose, it just means I'll be spending my days watching TV on my laptop or reading in the park instead of taking as many day trips. All this happened this morning right in the middle of when Nikki and I were studying for our finals tomorrow. We got up at 7am to study, and this happened at like 11am. Since then, we've been angry and stressed out. I've been thinking about this instead of thinking about finals. It's hard not to.

I don't know if I had to tell you all this, but this blog is about my life here in Spain, and this is what is happening in my life right now. We're worried about having time to study for finals and do papers, stressed about money, stressed about our housing situation in Santa Barbara (this is a big one), upset at our host mom...let's just say Nikki and I have spent a good part of this day either stewing in anger or crying because of everything just overwhelming us. We want to go home. We're done.

So what to do now? Study. My final isn't until 10am, so I have 7 hours to study. What does that mean? Coca Cola, coffee, Red Bull, and tea, in that order.

Let the madness commence.