To set the scene, my host brother, Guillermo (30) is out of town and he is the proud owner of our 6 year old border collie, Shiva. By out of town I mean he is in SPAIN with his Dad (no big deal) for 15 days, and that leaves Shiva alone at the house with me and Sara. Sara is truly Argentine and doesn't like going out of the house without 5 sweaters/jackets on - so I offered to pitch in on bringing Shiva out. We live on the 8th floor of our building and have no balcony, so there is no alternative for her to go to the bathroom. We have to bring her outside and take her on a walk.
Last night around 7 I asked Sara if I could have a friend over before she and I (my friend from Madison and I) went out to dinner at 10PM, and she said yeah, of course! Do you want to walk Shiva over to meet up with your friend and then you can both walk back here together? So that's what I did, it's only a 15 minute walk or so to get to my friends apartment. I thought it seemed like an awesome plan because what I miss most about Madison and Minnesota is being able to have friends over, not for any specific reason, just to hang out in a relaxed setting like home. Let me tell you, things can get awkward prettty quickly.
Yesterday I had gone on a walk so that I didn't sit in my room doing homework ALL day, and I ended up in a grocery store, just looking for some basics, and walked out with 2 bottles of Santa Julia Malbach (red wine). It was Santa Julia brand, I had to buy it, and I had been looking to buy a bottle of wine for my host sister to congratulate her on getting tenure at her job anyway. So 1 bottle went to her as a present and the other stayed in my room, just asking for us to drink it when my friend came over. Now Sara had given me permission to have a friend over, but I'm not really sure that extends to drinking wine clandestinely in my bedroom. Either way, we thought it wouldn't do any harm, so we (mostly I) tried to use the bottle opener I found in the kitchen and failed miserably. The cork was all shredded up and eventually ended up inside the bottle, with little chunks floating everywhere.
And the story would be all great and funny if those were all of the details, but no. In the process of trying to jam the cork down into the bottle (because damnit I paid $4.50 for that wine and there was no use throwing it out) little bits of cork got strewn around my room, not a big deal. Then, when I wasn't really paying close attention, my friend somehow managed to ram the whole cork into the bottle. Awesome, SUCCESS! NO NO NO. Red wine sprayed EVERYWHERE in my room, it was on 3 of 4 walls if that gives you an idea. 3 of 4 WHITE walls, 1 brand new tan colored shirt I was wearing, my freshly changed white bed sheets, a huge puddle on one of my blankets, and all over another white Urban Outfitters t-shirt as well as my white North Face fleece. (Potentially hundreds of dollars worth of clothing/bedding ruined.)
I managed to wipe the walls off, put my shirts under some cold water and find them in decent condition this morning, and salvage 2/3 of my homework/ books that got sprayed. The sheets are the most complicated matter, as I poured dish soap on the stain on my blanket and let it sit overnight and am bringing it to a laundromat today. There is no inconspicuous way to take off my sheets and get them washed. They, however, are not too badly marked. Needless to say, I have left my mark on this bedroom, and I will never clandestinely drink wine in here again.
On the up-side, the wine was great (yes, we drank some of it after all of that hard work to get it open). I am currently wiping little wine splatters off of my keyboard as I type this, and hoping that this doesn't lead to an extremely awkward moment with my host mom, as I haven't seen her yet today and she came into my room last night and left me a little note on my desk asking about what time I took Shiva out.
That's it for now.
No comments:
Post a Comment