My host mother pretty much makes housing students her business (I swear she has her name written all over the internet saying "need a place to stay? live with me!"). She's old (like really old) and her husband is retired. Since they don't have a source of income, they take in students to pay the bills. The house I live in is pretty big for Spanish standards. There are 4 bedrooms: one for my host parents and 3 for students. One bedroom is tiny but with bunkbeds, then there's a very large one that has 3 beds, and then there is my room which is fairly spacious with 2 beds. So they are able to house up to 7 students at one time (actually, I wouldn't be surprised if they pushed it to 8 and had someone sleep on the couch). It's literally like living in a hotel.
Fortunately, Brittany and I are the only long-term students she has, so we do get a lot of time when it's just us (which, really, that's how it should be). But there seems to be new students coming in every week! For the most part, they have been high-schoolers who travel here for about a week with their class. The best part is that our senora never tells us when new people are coming. It annoyed us at first, but now we're used to unexpected guests.
Our first new roommate was by far our favorite. Her name was Vanja. She was a 24-year-old student from Denmark who was studying in Seville. She stayed with us while she tried searching for an apartment, so she was here at the very beginning of the semester. She was the only roommate we actually got close to and keep in touch with. She has parties at her apartment in Triana that she invites us to but I haven't been able to go :( She stayed here the longest out of everyone. During her stay, we also got 3 French girls from Paris who were here with their high school. Dinners were fun because because it was a full table with 6 of us. It was really cool meeting people from around the world and being able to laugh and have fun together coming from completely different cultures. It also helped that they all spoke english perfectly lol.
Brittany and I out in Alfalfa with our favorite ex-roommate, Vanja!
Over the following months, we had many more travellers. Next was an older French girl, about 23, who was just travelling through Spain with a friend who was staying elsewhere. She was very reserved and not very friendly towards us, so we didn't care for her. After her, we got 2 16-year-old high school girls from London who were soo cute. They were both very bubbly and giggly and reminded me of what it was like being in high school. A couple days into their stay, we got another 2 girls but they were from Paris, also in high school, and they didn't speak english.
A couple of weeks went by without any new guests in the house, but then we got a group of high school Italian girls who were here for 2 weeks. This is when having new people in the house really started to get on our nerves. I was so tired of having to do the same small talk with these people and Brittany and I just wanted to have the house to ourselves for a while. And it was even more annoying that these girls were always here. The other girls were occupied with all-day trips with their schools during the day. But it seemed like these girls never had anything planned and they were always in the house. And they always needed to borrow my hairdryer and my eyeliner sharpener.
What was worse, was that the 5 of us were all sharing one bathroom. There are 2 bathrooms in the house, but there is one right in between our 2 rooms so it's more convenient to use. This one night, Brittany and I needed to shower. RIGHT as I was about to get in, I here the door close. One of the girls got in before me! So I was like ok, and I waited. Once she got out, I got my stuff together again to take the shower, but then I hear the door close again. ANOTHER girl went to take a shower! I was pissed. So I waited yet again, then I finally got my shower. When I was finishing up, I heard a tapping on the door. It was Brittany. She quickly whispered something to me through the door but I couldn't really understand. I assumed she was trying to say let her in because the other girl wanted to shower too. So as I finished up, I did a secret knock on the wall between the bathroom and our bedroom to let Brittany know I was done. When I opened the door, Brittany was right there and she scrambled in haha. She told me afterwards that she and the other girl literally had a staring contest with their shower stuff in hand and both of their doors. The girl, who was 16, really thought she would get to shower before Brittany. Hell no. Brittany was not budging. So the girl eventually backed down. That night was ridiculous. 5 of us had to shower at the same time with one bathroom. What pissed me off was that we were here first, this house is our turf. There's no way these new girls should be allowed to shower before us and take all the hot water. Brittany's shower was cold that night.
We just wanted these girls to go back to Italy. The one girl who was 16 was actually from Venezuela I think and she was my least favorite out of all of them. She just had a really bad attitude. But right after they left, we then got 2 15-year-old high school girls from France. I wasn't so annoyed with them. One of the girls was so funny, she played Waka Waka on her ipone at dinner and basically had a dance party. I was gone for Semana Santa, but while Brittany was here, there were 2 new girls for a short period of time. Then a couple of days ago we got a girl from Germany. She's 22 and very nice. I don't mind having her here because we don't share a bathroom with her and also it keeps things interesting in the house. Then in a couple of days we'll be getting more girls (our senora only houses girls for some reason). It's just frustrating always having guests here. It's like having the feeling of just wanting to go home and be at peace, but you come back to find someone else living there that you feel like you have to entertain. This whole living in a hotel thing is getting old.
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