Because I didn't go to orientation in Madrid (I went to the Canary Islands instead, see previous post), I met the rest of the group at the Cádiz bus station straight from Granada, and it was here that I met my host family! Here name is Pepa, and she owns her own shop in the middle of Plaza San Antonio filled with quirky little doodads and trinkets. Where else could I get my awesome ladybug earphones? She has a 19-year-old daughter named Alba, who's also a student, and is obsessed, obsessed, OBSESSED with Michael Jackson. The first things she showed me was her Michael Jackson tattoo on her wrist. And then the front page article outlining her obsession in Cadiz' main paper. Apparently when she found out he died, she didn't get out of bed for a week, and when she did, she booked tickets to LA and went to his funeral. Now that's what we call dedicated. They're super nice, welcoming, relaxed. And they're also the owner of Pepa's Grand Menagerie. Ok, that's a joke, but they do have a lot of animals. Which I love of course. I'll put up pictures soon, when they're all looking their very best. There's Turca, who met me at the train station in her little bomber jacket. She's a fox terrier, think of Tin-Tin's sidekick, and she's got the sweetest face you've ever seen. 
Then there's Coco. How to describe Coco? He's a long-haired Chihuahua, and I'm not gonna lie, when I first met him I didn't know what to do with him. I mean, I didn't want to break him while petting him, or accidentally step on him, but I have to admit, he's growing on me. He has an unhealthy attachment to me, and likes to velcro himself to my leg when I walk in. And he has the funniest habit of wrinkling his nose and barring his fangs when he wants love/affection. 
Pepa is now very proud of herself because she taught him to go to the bathroom in a litter box. I swear, this dog is weird. Then there's Joselita, who's 1/2 of a lovebird pair. Apparently if they never get a mate the moment they're born, they never die of a broken heart, or whatever they do. At first she hated me (she drew blood from me on several occasions), but now she's also warming up to me. Once Pepa let her out of her cage to fly around a bit, and she climbed onto my laptop, typed around a bit (I like to think she was typing a letter to me in her own language, in which 'szha;e' means 'I love you'). And she then proceeded to climb up me, and park herself on my chest. Then she started pecking me on my lips, and Pepa said to smile, and when I started to smile, Joselita stuck her beak in my mouth, and started to, apparently, eat the food from between my teeth. Ummm, I thought my teeth were pretty clean, but she apparently found enough in there to keep her going for a good 5 minutes, until I had to forcibly pry her off my gums. Finally, there's Elvis. He's a guinea pig with ADHD and a mohawk (those usually go hand in hand anyway, don't they). He sometimes gets a little hyper, and decides to run full speed at the side of the cage and bounce off. He just does this for 20 minutes, its incredible! And that finishes off the menagerie, and I'm so glad I have them all. The house is never boring, I can say that at least.I should describe our piso as well. Their real house, where I spent my first two weeks in Cadiz, suffered some water damage from a broken pipe or something, so the Ayuntamieno made them move out so they could repair it, and they said it would be a 'long-term' repair job. So Pepa found another piso to rent. And to be honest, I don't know how they're ever going back. It's double the size, and this place actually has windows!!! Before we moved, she kept trying to warn me, like 'Kiki, es muy antigua... MUY antigua'. I didn't understand what the big deal was, 'vale... no pasa nada?' I was expecting the crappiest house ever. But I have moved into a history buff's dream. The whole building has to be about at least 150 years old. Typical Andalucian style. It's on one of the main streets in Cadiz, Sacramento (which I keep confusing with Sacromonte, a neighborhood in Granada), and has a huge, HUGE wooden door. Like 12 feet tall. Once you get in, it's an open courtyard in the middle, with all the apartments all around it. We're apartment 2I, or 2 Izquierda. It's the top floor facing the street. Amazing. I've never seen a house like this. When you open the door to the piso, you're actually opening the door to the outside. All the rooms in the apt open up to the outside courtyard. I don't have any windows in my room, instead I have 1o foot tall glass doors that let in light from the outside. Although apparently it won't always be 'outside'. The glass roof over the courtyard has panes of glass missing, so they just decided to drape a tarp over it for when it's raining. But I love it, it has 4 balconies looking out over the street, which is super fun because we're 2 blocks away from Teatro de Falla. During Carnaval, and leading up to it, all the Chirrigotas (performing groups who sing songs that are like social commentaries, making fun of everybody) do a big victory lap on their way to the teatro/on their way back from the teatro all through the city. And they're always dressed up. We've had Roman gladiators, lost tourists, the pope with his papparazzi, and Marilyn Monroes marching through the streets at 11 o'clock at night with drums and cymbals, screaming 'CAMPEONES, CAMPEONES!' Or sometimes they sing my personal favorite, the Cadiz F.C. (our soccer team) team song: "Alcohol, Alcohol, Alcohol, Alcohol, Alcohol/ Hemos venido/Emborrachamos/El resultado/Nos da igual!".
My house is also located about a 6 minute walk from La Caleta, which is the only beach in Old Cadiz (there is a very, VERY long beach in New Cadiz, actually I think of all new Cadiz is just one long beach). La Caleta is also probably the oldest part of all of Cadiz. It's so cool, I'm usually sitting there, lying in the sun, thinking about how hundreds and hundreds of years ago, ships we're coming in here from all over the world, full of Romans and Phoenicians and Moors. Super guay. Ok geek moment over.
But anyway, that's a small introduction to Cadiz. I'll definitely post more once Carnaval happens! Adios!
