French fries and bus fights

First of all, God really loves me. Which might sounds egotistical or something, but I´m flat out spoiled. I live two minutes from the beach. Rachael and I have our own bathroom (which is a HUGE deal here, most houses have one bathroom that everyone shares, ours has three) and we are ten minutes from school. My madre loves feeding me, and I love eating, so we get along great. And all of this is really awesome and I am really greatful, but here´s the real reason why I am positive that the Big Man Upstairs has a special eye on me:

There are french fries, of McDonald deliciousness status, in my building. And a bar. And a pizza hut.

It´s like he is saying "Okay, you are going to get sad and homesick, so here, eat your favorite food and shut up. I´ve got your back."

Did I mention I had a donut to rival Dunken´Donuts from the Lupa grocery store (oh, by the way, this is a two minute walk from my house) that were three for one euro.

On a little sadder note, I´ve yet to find the legendary AMAZING paella, or seafood. Everything thus far has been, mehh, alright. In San Sebastian, I had the best food thus far, but in Santander I haven´t had that mind blowingly delcious meal that leaves you saying "I´d move here, just to eat that every day."
One of my main goals for coming was to eat, so I feel like a bit of a slacker. I´m going to try to get to the open air market next week... I planned too this week but had to open a bank account on my two free days, so that didn´t happen. I AM going to find cheese. That is a must. Where the hell is all the famous Manchego cheese, that´s what I want to know. I´ll keep you posted though, on my cheese mission, as it is my new life goal.

Now, about the bus fight. THIS is a classic.

So it was like a week ago, and Rachael and I decided to be really motivated for a Sunday and go down to the Center. Just a note about Sundays here... if you are desperately in need of anything, you´re SOL. Everything closes down. Other than Regma ice cream, Santander looks like everyone died of the plague. By three, families start going for ¨"pasaos" for an hour, but aside from the one hour emergance from their little dens, the city is dead. D-E-A-D. So we get on the bus to go down to the Center, and join two other women who look like they just crawled from bed, to their seat in the back of the bus. We sit down by the driver, since we have no clue where on earth we are going. And then an old man gets on. He walks up to us and starts telling us to move. We figure he wants our seat, uhm, okay sure whatever, so we get up and move across to the other side. He sits down and progresses to take out this blue card thing and starts telling us something along the lines of "See this pass? Do you have this pass? My leg is hurt, I have this pass, your leg is not hurt. I need space for my leg, idiots." Following normal instructions about men and harrassment, we don´t look at him or respond and sit there trying not to laugh. Which pisses him off even more and he progresses to start yelling at us. Full on "**** you, you dumb American ***^**añlsdkjf, etlk, lwerwler lwerkwer" in other words, you should go back and walk the streets, along with some very choice vocabulary rhyming with duck and boars. Part way through his rant, he starts standing up and waving his cane, at which point the women in the back start screaming at him to leave us alone, we paid, the bus is empty, we all work, calm down, at which point the bus driver starts yelling at everyone to shut the hell up or he´ll stop the bus and kick us all off, which really pisses off the already livid old man who then starts another tirade about how he pays taxes and the bus driver can stick it somewhere.

I know enough Spanish to follow this whole absurd fight, but not enough to take part in it, so I owe it to that woman for saying what I couldn´t. Leave it to me to start a full on bus fight over a seat I didn´t know not to sit in, and then have to sit and listen and try not to laugh slash cry the whole time. I kind of wish I had a video camera, because there´s really no way to explain the total freak out of the old man on the bus, other than to say, having had more than my fare share of yelling fights with my father, this man had skills.