The cast of characters

Max is off "teaching" private lessons to a painfully boring software engineer. This "teaching" involves listening to him talk about whatever and occasionally grunting some sort of assertion. And he's making €12/hr to do so. Of course, no one has responded to my offers for private lessons yet. I´m still walking dogs. I´ve had two teaching interviews thus far, though. Another place sent me an email offering me a job, and there's one other place that I haven´t called back yet. So hopefully something will work out.
I do enjoy walking the dogs, but teaching pays a lot better. Plus, the bulk of my income comes from one set of dogs that involves an hour commute each way. And 20 minutes of that is walking from the metro stop to the house. They´re the retrievers, Puskas and Ekita, that live in the ultra-rich neighborhood.
I was walking them last night, and it was incredibly nice out, though it was a bit cold and windy. There were clouds going by over head and I was out in the middle of the park I mentioned, which is really just a piece of land with some paths, but it's big enough that there are parts where you can't see any buildings. I was just listening to Four Tet and looking up at these clouds racing by the moon. Very calm. Very peaceful.
On the other hand, I'd only had about 4-5 hours of sleep for the last two nights due to having to get up early and run to an interview and look at an apartment (which was not very promising, though it was in Quevedo, a nice area close to downtown). So I was exhausted by the end of the day.
Another reason that I was exhausted is that we'd been out until 3 or 4 am with Mario. He took us to a jam session at "Beethoven Blues Bar." The first people up there were playing old-style, my-woman-gone-n'-done-me-wrong blues, and it just seemed so... white. I wish I could play guitar like the singer, but he just didn´t thrill me. Then this young guy got up there and played a song in some language I didn´t recognize. He was amazing, both his guitar and his voice. I talked to him later to tell him that I liked his stuff. I thought he´d been singing in French, but it turns out that it was Arabic, though he also spoke French. And English. And Spanish. Possibly more, but I didn't ask, because I was jealous enough. He was from Algiers and he even bore a certain resemblance to a young Camus.
Mario then drove us home, even drunker than when he picked us up, along with being addled from hash and god knows what else. He kept cackling and saying, "Don´t worry. You're with Uncle Mario!" as he careened around corners in his oversized shoebox of a car. I have to say, there's really no better way to see Madrid than zooming down the late-night streets with a crazy little drunk man driving and the radio blaring flamenco music from the '20s. To paint a better picture, Mario looks like the Mario of Nintendo fame. Or, in his words, like he's trying out for a role as a '70s detective. It was a blast.
We've also met a bunch of interesting people at the intercambios. You may think an Algerian who speaks four languages is impressive, but we'd already met a guy named Guillermo that works as a translator and speaks five languages. But he doesn't seem as cool now that we've met a flaming homosexual Dutchman that lived in Manhattan for a while and speaks upwards of 11 languages, including, but not limited to, Dutch, German, Russian, French, English, Spanish, Chinese, Romanian, and Japanese. Did I mention that he works writing, shooting, and editing documentaries? Yes, everyone in Europe is cooler than you could ever hope to be. It's annoying sometimes. But we're going to hang out with this Dutchman anyway. Not only because he has an apartment in Amsterdam that he lets his friends stay at, but because he's just so damned interesting.
I'm going to meet our friend Juan in a little while at J&J's, which has become our new hangout. That's also where Max is at the moment. And it's also where I will get completely trashed because tonight is all you can drink beer for €9. I'm going to attempt to be less of a drunken ass tonight. Anyway. Juan is our pseudo-communist friend. He was a member of the Communist Youth League when he was younger, but never a member of the party. He now considers himself more of a socialist, but still has various friends in the Communist party, which he always refers to as "the CP." Because, y'know, there are fascists lurking everywhere. We met him because of a sign he put up looking for people to hike in the mountains. He sells chemical supplies to high schools. He also took us to "Marx Madera," a bar owned by the Communist Party. He's definitely a weirdo, but he's been very nice to us and helped us find an apartment, though it unfortunately got rented before we could confirm it.
I have no time to write about our other acquaintances at the moment, because Juan and a bottomless glass of Mahou Clasica calls my name. Adios.