adventures with Spaniards

I've been trying to hang out more with Sevillanos lately. 1) because they're cool. 2) because I need to practice my Spanish.

On the way back from Córdoba, I got a text from Gerardo asking about our plans for the night. Since we had no plans, Sofie and I planned to meet up with him later at a bar nearby our house. At about 10.30, we headed out and found the bar. Which was closed. No problem though, we waited outside for Gerardo to get there, and when he did we went to a different bar. After having a couple beers (NOT Cruzcampo, this bar had beer from Madrid! Although it wasn't much better), we headed out to find something else. He took us to a street we had walked down before in a historical tour of the city. We walked into the "market" area of this street and discovered the best place ever. We sat down (we were very lucky to get a table) and enjoyed. Gerardo ordered us some sweet wine. Best. wine. ever. It was like juice. But alcoholic. And we listened to some impromptu music. There were a couple guys with flutes, an accordion, a guitar or two. A flamenco singer. It was amazing. They just played music and we sat around listening, chatting, and drinking sweet wine. After a few glasses each, they had no more wine :( so we got some beer. (I should mention that this wine came from a box. Not sure what to think of that. But I don't really care since it was so good.). Oh it was so much fun! We just hung out until like 3am enjoying the night! Then we stumbled home and fell asleep. Until late the next day...

Later that week, we hung out with Gerardo again. We went to lunch with him and a friend of his at a little restaurant inside the Feria market. This market is where a lot of locals go to get their fresh produce and seafood. Good stuff there. We had a couple beers and some fried fish. We got boquerones, which we both have tried and like. Then there were a couple other kinds of whole-fried fish, a little bigger than boquerones but I don't remember what they were called. They were delicious as well. Then there were the fried fish eggs. Sounds weird, but it was amazing. I don't even know how they make it, but I don't really care. The most unusual thing we tried was fried squid eggs. The consistency is just about exactly how you would imagine it to be. Really squishy and gelatin-y. It tasted good, but it was kind of hard to get past the gelly-ness. We each tried it but left most of it for Gerardo and his friend to enjoy. Then Sofie and I had to head to a meeting (with a little buzz...).

On Wednesday, I met up with my Intercambio, Ale. CIEE sets their students up with Spanish students from the University. We meet up, we practice our Spanish and they practice their English. Ale (short for Alejandro) speaks near-perfect English with an Australian accent as he studied in Australia for a couple years. He is actually out of school and looking for work (which is extremely tough in Spain right now), but still likes to meet up with students to practice his English. He's really fun and has some great stories! We met up for coffee and just talked about all kinds of things for an hour or so. He asked me what "gotcha" meant (since I apparently say it all the time, and he's also heard lots of other English-speakers say it), saying "what did you say? Is it 'ketchup'?" Such weird things that we say...Anyway, we had a fun time!

Today, Sofie, Sarah and I, along with about 10 other CIEE'ers, went to an elementary school in Sevilla to help with Halloween festivities. We didn't really know what to expect when we got there, but we all planned to show up dressed as black cats. Although most of us couldn't find kitty ears, we wore all black and used some face paint to draw on whiskers. We had all kinds of activities to do with the kids (who ranged from 3 years to about 12 years old), including coloring, face painting, bobbing for apples, jack-o-lantern carving, chupa-chup ghosts, etc. The first class I went to was a class of about 7-year-olds. Again, I didn't really know what I was supposed to do but walked into the class armed with a bag of chupa-chups (lollipops), a package of kleenex and some rubber bands. They were making ghosts ("fantasmas") out of the materials. I walked in, introduced myself and showed them how to make the fantasmas. This isn't a very long or complicated process, so they were done with it pretty quickly. I talked to them a little bit about how we celebrate Halloween in the US (although you don't really learn much Halloween-y vocabulary in school...), including "trick or treat." Here in Spain they say "truco o trato" for this. After teaching them "trick or treat" and talking a little more, I was out of things to do. I ran and grabbed some coloring pages from the younger classrooms to pass some more time. They had fun coloring pumpkins, vampires, etc. I walked around and talked to them during the coloring and at one point one of the little girls asked me why I speak so weird. I said, well, I'm from the United States, so I speak English!



After the class of young kids, Sofie and I headed to a class of like 10-year-olds. We walked in and they were finishing a math test. With this class, we were to carve a jack-o-lantern. We had a little tiny pumpkin as well as a knife and spoon. We talked a little about pumpkins and how its different in the US, you go to a farm and pick them and they're much bigger. We demonstrated the pumpkin carving (well, Sophie did) while they asked questions. They asked if everyone dresses up, even adults. Why were are in Spain, etc. At the end, one of the boys asked if we knew any Halloween songs. For some reason the US doesn't really have any songs for this holiday! We do for everything else, but not much for Halloween. Not that we could think of anyway. Sophie thought of the "Monster Mash" song, but neither of us knew the words. Fortunately, this class was equipped with a giant (no, you don't understand, I mean giant. Normal projector-screen-sized) touch-screen computer on the wall. So Sofie looked up Monster Mash on youtube to show them. Sofie started doing the twist-type dance during the "Monster Mash" part of the song. I'm not sure if this is the actual move to this song, but it seemed right so I joined in. The kids thought we were crazy. But they wanted to learn this fancy dance! After the video was over, their teacher told them that they should give us a present too. So one kid starts playing "drums" on his seat, the other kids start singing flamenco-style, and best dancers of the group (reluctantly) started dancing flamenco. They tried to teach us.....but it didn't catch so well. It was so much fun though! They loved it, wanted to watch the video again, and just had so much fun talking with us and asking questions. Their teacher was fantastic (a male, not something we've seen a whole lot here-male teachers) and they adored him. We had to leave after that but we didn't really want to! Normally this age freaks me out, but this class was just so great! They were in the playground when we left the school, and we got hugs and "good-byes" when we were walking out.




Anyway, that's been my experience with locals in the last week! Lots of Spanish practice :) And I loved every minute of it!