In short - last weekend was a blast. It’s always the weekends where there are no expectations, where you go out and say “Well, let’s grab a glass of wine or a beer” and then the next thing you know, you are having a dance off with a guy that looks like Tim Curry circa Rocky Horror Picture Show in a club on top of speakers. It was one of those weekends. So Friday night Anna and I met up with a new group of Catalan boys that we recently befriended. They are all so precious – very nerdy engineers with fabulous senses of humor and a pretty darn good level of English. It just so happens that the one boy in the group that I think is pretty cute and whom I happened to hit it off with happens to have a twin… who hit it off with Anna. Hi! Double-date with twins? Check! Anyways, we bar-hopped around our neighborhood and ended up at this fabulous bar that was tucked away various dark alleys and ancient buildings – God, I love this city. This bar happened to have an amazing DJ as well (way to my heart) and was blasting fabulous 60s/70s R&B and Funk music, making me feel that I ended up at The Funky Butt in New Orleans more so than a bar in Barcelona (whose name I cannot pronounce/remember!). One thing led to another and we decided to create our own dance floor in the corner of the bar. We showed our new friends some sick moves: the sprinkler, the lawnmower, the shopping cart… And they showed us their “moves” as well (think Pee-Wee Herman’s bar dance mixed with Flamenco). While we are dancing away, we made more friends at this bar who invited us to come with them to a club nearby. So once they kicked us out of the bar (bars close at 3AM, clubs at 6AM) we ended up at this fabulous club, Magic, and continued our dancing marathon until the sun started to rise. Nights that consist of dancing, fabulous music, tasty adult beverages, cute Spanish/Catalan boys and tons of laughter are my absolute faves.
So come Saturday night, I was grateful to have chill dinner plans with a former boss/advice guru/friend of mine (who was in town for a big conference) so I could sober up from the evening/morning before. The next morning I took Claire around the city and got to show her some of my favorite parts, my neighborhood and everything that makes Barcelona delightful. Claire has been the first familiar face I have seen since I have been living here and let me just say, I loved it! It was so great to catch up in person, not email, and show someone your new hometown. I loved playing tour-guide and cannot wait to do the job full-time once my family gets here… Anyhu, if you have been toying around with an idea to come and visit me – do it! I want to see more familiar faces and, by the time you get here, my tour-guide skills are going to be amaaazing. Promise.
Anyhu, Sunday night rolls around and I planned on having a very chill, lesson-planning kind of evening. Right. Sunday night held the biggest match for football in this town – Real Madrid vs. Barcelona. It only took one phone call from a friend to convince Anna and me to go out and watch the game. After the game (we won) we decided to keep on celebrating… And this time, as bars and clubs were done at 2AM, we decided to create a dance party at our friend’s flat instead. I know his neighbors must have loved it. It was Friday night all over again – except this time – switch out the Catalan/Spanish boys with American ones. Still fun, still crazy and I’m still tired from it.
Anna and I recapped our weekend and decided that if someone was real smart, they would consider taking our life stories and creating a sitcom out of it. I had some incidences that occurred that it was as if they were taken directly from episodes of How I Met Your Mother, Sex in the City and The Hills (d-rama! HaHa…Not really, but the way Anna and I recap our evenings the morning after reminds me of how Kristen and that bartender hoe always recap their evenings).
Oh, by the by, we have a mascot! Yes. We have a mascot. So Claire brought me a goodie bag of Americana (Canadian) delights and one of these items happened to be a little stuffed animal of a squirrel/beaver/chipmunk Canadian creature. He happens to be one of the mascots for the upcoming Winter Olympics in Vancouver…But now, he also happens to be Anna and my mascot as well. His name is Muk-Muk (no, we didn’t make this up) and he’s so adorable but looks rather mischievous. Plus, it’s really fun to yell out “muk-muk” at random times in a bar. Try it.
Teaching has been going along fabulously. My teenage girls are pretty funny. They found out I’m on Facebook and wanted to befriend me – I told them at the very end of the year, I’ll go ahead and accept them but not now…Also, as a treat for doing so well these past classes, I’m letting them pick American songs that they like and help translate them. So get what song they really want translated: “She Wants It” – 50Cent/Justin Timberlake. I was like – “Yeah, no. We can’t do this song. I mean, do you know what they are referring to when they say ‘it’ – they aren’t talking about cookies.” So they started laughing and think it’s so cute that I’m really “shy” when it comes to talking about sex. I told them my job was to teach English and not sex-ed and that even though I can agree that Jacob looks hot without his shirt on in New Moon, that’s about where sex-related discussion end. Dear Lord - they start way too early in this town.
Last week, my students loved hearing all about Thanksgiving and Christmas and American traditions and I loved learning about the Spanish traditions for Christmas, NYE and Kings Day. For my little ones, I made them make turkey hands as one of their projects. Well, I attempted this but they didn’t understand why we were making turkeys so, instead, they made hands that said BARCA on it (the ones you see at the football matches) and ran around yelling the chant for Barcelona’s Football team. Mmmhmm. Making such a mark on these young ones.
As for Thanksgiving in Spain – it was delightful. Definitely not anything as good as being home in the States but Anna and I decided to go out for a traditional Catalan meal at a great little restaurant and gorge ourselves to death. I got the chance to talk with my family (via skype) as they were all at my parent’s house for Thanksgiving. It was sooo wonderful to hear my little cousins’ voices and to talk with my grandparents and feel the love coming all the way from home in Baton Rouge to my little flat in Barcelona.
I know I have mentioned that I may never leave this city. I actually said that to some friends I had dinner with the other night- that I don’t see myself leaving any time soon. I am working under 20 hours a week, I love my job, I love my flat and I love this city so much. But there is something that really tugs at my heart a bit stronger than this city which is full of culture and history and hot guys (hehe) … And that is missing my family and friends back home. I think with the holiday season, it really has made me reflect on how close I am with my family. How this is the time of year I get to spend with them. This realization really occurred when I started talking to my Granny on Thanksgiving. Even though I send family emails and letters to my granny, I forgot how important it is to hear your loved ones voices. She started off our conversation with “I miss you soo much and I’m happy you are having fun but we want you back.” It took every nerve in my body to not breakdown and buy the first ticket back to Louisiana then and there. I have such a special relationship with my grandparents – I talked to them about once a week on the phone and always made the best attempts to visit them numerous times during the year. I guess since I’ve been so busy going and going and partying and teaching and going I haven’t had the opportunity to sit and think and reflect on how much I miss everyone. If only I could have my cake and eat it too – I would ship everyone out to Barcelona so that I could continue enjoying this city, the life I’ve created here, while having all of these wonderful, familiar faces of loved ones enjoying it alongside me too. I still don’t know what I’m going to do come June… There is so much that can happen between now and then. More places to visit, more parties to attend, more classes to teach, more cute boys to meet and more friendships to form. I do know that the longer I stay, the more I miss my family and friends. This has been such a great experience for me and I hope that I continue to grow from it. As well as squeeze out a few more crazy, party nights.
It’s getting super cold here in Barcelona. It’s been in the 40s-50s and – I KNOW that is nothing compared to all of you who are getting snow back home but when you do not have a heater…it sucks! Anna and I walk around in triple layers of clothes and huddle around our portable three-foot heater.
So - I think this will be my last blog entry for 2009! As I mentioned, my family arrives next Sunday and I get to show them around the city for that week and then we jet off to Italy (Rome and Florence). They leave, New Years Eve occurs (can’t wait!) and then Anna and I take our crazy, jam-packed trip all around the south of Spain and Portugal. I plan to have many stories and pictures to share upon my return so if I don’t update this blogity-blog until mid-January 2009 – I want everyone to have a Merry Christmas (Bonnes Fetes! Feliz Navidad!) and a Happy New Year…
Continuing the Search for My Matador into the next year…
Lindsay
Song Suggestions:
The Perfect Crime #2 – The Decemberists
Show Me – John Legend
Old Friends/Bookends – Simon & Garfunkle
PS – Diana Krall’s Christmas CD is de-light-ful.
PPS – Loved this article. For various reasons: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/fashion/06love.html
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