Here's to Real Friends

Happy xmas break! I hope finals went okay. I have yet to take any tests at all. Most courses here are a year long, and besides, the academic year is shifted a month later than at UMR.

Anyway, here's a warmfuzzy for you all: A few days ago we had a party at the Italian's apartment. After the landlord kicked us all out we called it a night. Antonio (the guy from Sevilla) and I take the same bus and on the way home we engaged in the great male bonding ritual of a drunken heart-to-heart. Well, to tell you the truth, it was a bit one-sided because he'd had a lot more to drink than I.

Among other things, he told me that he's already dreading leaving Madrid, and that he is glad that isn't taking for granted the time we have left of this year. He said that he's already made friends here that he would like to keep for the rest of his life, and that he's sad knowing that after this year many of us will never see eachother again.

I didn't tell him this, but frankly, he's either full of shit or he doesn't know what real friends are. Seriously, if he and I were talking about the same people, I don't understand what he sees as so great. Of course, it's possible to have excellent life-changing relationships with people that "aren't so great" but from what I've seen, the friendships we've got going here are mostly out of necessity and superficial. I guess that's how most relationships start, but very few make it past this stage. Has Antonio never had such a relationship? Is he just so shallow that being in the same class, making small talk and drinking is for him the basis for a profound friendship?

I just smiled and nodded, when really I wanted to say "Wow. You're really deluding yourself. You haven't found 'friends for life', you just went another city, found a bunch of exchange students that don't know anyone (cornered friends) and are playing a down-to-Earth charismatic asshat with them. It's fun, but that's all." He probably would have played it cool and just say that I'm way off base or pretend that I'm the only one that doesn't feel like he does. People who are full of shit will deny it until it squirts from their seams because they don't realize it themselves.

ANYWAY.
The point: His melodramatic speech made me realize how lucky I am to have real friends. When I go out tonight I'm making that fucker toast to Goat House, even if he doesn't even know how to pronounce it.