Ostia!

Such drama is going down in our piso right now. So there are five of us all together: me, Evan, Naz, Mounir, and Dulce. Evan and I share a room (obviously) so there are four rooms in the apartment. Naz is an auxiliar (like me) from Nevada. Mounir is a PhD student from Morrocco who is studying 4G wireless technology. Whew! Heavy stuff. Dulce is a 50 year old music teacher....yeah that was not a typo.

So a few weeks ago Mounir and Dulce got into it big time. She is very quiet and passive aggressive. So he left his laundry in the washing machine for a couple days. Not the best thing to do when you have four other roommates but it isn't the end of the world. So instead of asking Mounir to take his laundry out, she took it out for him and put it in a dirty bucket where we keep the broom and dustpan. Talk about passive aggressive. He, of course, blew up at her and the argument just spiraled downwards from there. We could hear the yelling from our room, it was that bad. So pretty much ever since then we rarely see Dulce. She used to sit out in the living room in the evenings and watch TV and cook food. It seems like she never cooks anymore and she definitely doesn't watch TV.  I have even seen her twice on the street, said "Hola" with no response. I don't believe that she is trying to be mean, I just think she is a really depressed woman with no friends and probably not much family. Anyone would have to be that is living in an apartment with four people under 28.

So this whole situation came to a head again yesterday. It was Dulce's day to clean the house and she cleaned only the stove. I kind of saw this coming with her recent behavior but I wasn't sure what exactly was going to happen. So she only cleaned the stove because (I assume) her reasoning was that is the only thing she uses in the house. And she crossed her name off the cleaning schedule we have posted on the fridge. Definitely not a sufficient amount of cleaning when there are five people living in an apartment.

So essentially I am going to try and use all the social skills that my social worker parents have bestowed upon me and find some way to work this situation out. Probably, because I never see her, this will involve some sort of note and discussion. Lucky for this situation, not necessarily so lucky for us, Mounir is moving out on the 29th of this month. I think once he is gone she will feel comfortable using the rest of the apartment again. Who knows what kind of roommate we will get next though *crosses fingers*.

On a lighter note, I did well on the 10K on Sunday! I ran it in 1 hour, 4 minutes and 58 seconds. Probably about a 10 minute mile average. I definitely want to do another race here again. There is a really nice looking 8K that goes along the coastline in Formentera in May that looks tempting. That would be a great excuse to travel there with my running buddies!

I will sign off with this picture of Sa Jaia Correma. Every class at my school has this poster in the classroom. They were put up four weeks ago. There are three feet left, and when those three feet are gone it will be spring break and Easter. So each foot signifies the seven weeks before Easter break. It is funny how each foot/shoe is different. I wish I had gotten my camera out sooner to document all the feet. She reminds me of Stregga Nonna a little bit. Definitely a mischievous old with grandmother if I ever saw one.