Flexi Coco

what a whirlwind of a weekend! Even though I'm mostly exhausted, though it best to write it all down before I forget all the fabulous things that happened on my first weekend in Espana!

So first, the dinner party that I went to. It was AMAZING. I felt very nervous at the beginning going, but my roommate Irene and her friend Ari made me feel so comfortable right off the bat, as we all 3 rode the metro together to the house of Rosa and her boyfriend whose name I forget. We get there and do the spanish greeting of kissing both cheeks and I met Rosa's brother, Joan, who was so interested to talking to me and hearing why I was there in Barcelona. My other roommate Estelle came later with her friend from Madrid, Juan, so there was 8 of us all together. Rosa had made a Basque region themed dinner (Basque is in the northern part of Spain) so we had red peppers stuffed with bacalao, a kind of fish, bread with tuna and onions, this awesome salad with avocados and I forget what else, potato chips (?) and a lot of fruit for dessert, and of course bottles and bottles of wine!

None of them speak English except for a few words, and they all primarily speak Catalan so they kept switching back and forth from Catalan to Castellano, apologizing to me for forgetting I don't speak Catalan but I didn't mind at all! They asked me a lot about myself, about Obama, about the immigration problem in the States and also about our healthcare system- all stuff Im so used to talking about, but it felt totally different explaining it all in Spanish! I loved their interest in me, and how they all made me feel so welcomed.

Then they wanted to play games (oh dear) and so we played Tabu, which is very different. Of course it was all in Spanish, and I tried my hand at drawing words for one of the contests and wasn't as bad as I thought I would be. The BEST part of Spanish Tabu is the contest where you have to use the purple monster stuffed animal named Flexi Coco to act out actions or people, which was basically hysterical. The other game we played was called Compatabilities in which you have a word and then pick about 4-5 cards with images on them to best correspond with the word. One of the words was patriotism, and my roommate Estelle picked the card with a black man on and said it was supposed to be Obama, haha! After the games they played some American music, and Rosa and her brother Juan sang the song "Falling Slowly" from the movie Once, which I happen to love love love so it was like a mixture of cultures. A really fabulous evening, and not once did I turn off the Spanish switch in my brain so I felt pretty proud of myself. Of course I make constant mistakes but I don't even care anymore, I'm just so happy to be invited to things like that and to be here.

Best part of the evening: On the way home from the party, we got on the metro which was packed since it stops running at 2 AM on fridays. Well, wouldn't you know it, but we walked into a spanish cliche. A guy pulled out his guitar and began playing flamenco and a girl began clapping and singing flamenco songs! People came into our metro car and clapped along, and some guy walked down the aisle selling cans of beer, which apparently is typical here. It was hysterical, and I couldn't believe it. My roommate Irene was like "todo ha sido por ti, Channon!", meaning everything was done for you, Shannon! She thought it was funny that it was such a spanish-y cliche, and she even sang some flamenco songs. Fabulous night!