Spanish Night Out

(Wednesday, October 12)

Tuesday night, I had my very first typical “Spanish night out” fully equipped with food, beverages, native Spaniards, and wee hours into the night.

The night began around 7pm when Clint and I went to meet Kendra for coffee. Little did we know then that we wouldn’t be coming home for another 10 hours or so. Kendra was with her roommate Javier, a science professor at Remedios and a pretty cool dude all around. He works in Jimena on the weekends, and this particular day (being a holiday) his Jimena friends where coming to visit later on. Javi took off to teach night class and said we could meet up later, so the three of us went to have a delicious meal on the Avenida (the Avenida España is literally THE Avenida, the one street where everyone in town goes to eat, drink, shop, walk, visit, rest, etc..) Debra and Shannon met us for drinks and some delicious tapas (fried rolls of asparagus, ham and bacon are a personal favorite of mine).

Javi returned around 1030 and we were soon joined by his friends Rosa, Nicolas, Silvia and Ismael. From the restaurant, we progressed down the Avenida to a local hopping joint for drinks and Spanish comedy (I’m always the last to laugh at jokes due to the time it takes me to process them in my head). Later we progressed further down the Avenida to the one and only Morgan’s Pub where I was enlightened to the wonderful world of futbolin (fuesball). I swear it’s almost as intense as real fútbol (soccer) is here. It’s a little more difficult too, because their little soccer players aren’t just blocks like the one I had growing up, they actually have little legs and feet! I need some serious practice.

 When Morgan’s started to die down around 315, we meandered over to the one and only discoteca (dance club) in town, Babel. Pepe and Andres had warned us not to go there by ourselves because we would be very out of place and it would not be pretty. We felt much more confident venturing there with our new Spanish friends. It wasn’t very crowded, but it proved to be a lot of fun. Our cheesy American dance moves (sprinkler, lawn mower, shopping cart) need a lot of work, but some locals have already started to attempt to teach us how to move the Spanish way (I though Bachata was supposed to be easy?!) It wasn’t until 5am that we decided to call it a night and head back (sometimes a Spanish night out lasts until the sun comes up. Dios mio!) The whole gang was super nice and I learned a lot conversing with them in Spanish, especially on the walk home. I truly hope we will cross paths again! It helps having Spanish friends, mostly because then other Spaniards are no longer afraid to approach the weird foreign people.  

The next day was also quite the typical Spanish day. It was a holiday so no there was no work or school. (October 12 is día de la hispanidad – a day to celebrate the discovery of the New Word and Hispanic culture. My typical Spanish day went like this: Desayuno (breakfast), walk, drink, walk, almuerzo (lunch), walk, siesta, dinner, relax, bed. And in between all the walking was a bit of sitting and conversing with friends. Pretty good life, eh? I also met some more English speakers – Adam from Connecticut I believe and Sophie from England. We had dinner with auxiliares at El Laurel (the restaurant, not the tapas bar!) and it was quite incredible. I could really get used to this whole sleeping and eating thing...

That's all for now!