Welcome back to The Lost Stories of Spain!

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STORIES!

Shenanigans in expresion oral

I had three classes at La Casa de las Lenguas, but the one I enjoyed the most was expresion oral. This is not necessarily because I was a good student, but because of all the shenanigans, as well as the fact that Eduardo, our instructor, was a pretty cool dude.

There were several bouts of shenanigans, most due to my less-than-stellar Spanish.

Shenanigans with Ally

I mentioned my friend Ally from Boston last set of stories. Well, we met through expresion oral.

We were doing an introduction exercise, for which I was partnered with Ally. We were just asking each other estar questions, questions about our current state. I meant to ask Ally, “¿Estás cansado?” (Are you tired?) Instead, I had a slip of the tongue and asked, “¿Estás casado?” (Are you married?) I backpedaled hard when Eduardo called me on my mistake.

But hey, I made a friend out of it.

Shenanigans with Tristan

Another exercise, this time one where I was a waiter and my partner, a guy from Oregon named Tristan, was my customer. Tristan had written out a fake menu, which I was supposed to read from. He sat down at his fake table, I walked over and introduced myself, and then I held up the menu to read from it.

And that’s when I found out that Tristan has really messy handwriting. Like, messy to the point I couldn’t read it.

My likely sleep-deprived mind found this incredibly amusing, and I was probably wheeze-giggling for a solid 45 seconds before regaining my composure and continuing with the skit.

All was fine and dandy until I reached the dessert menu. One of the items was apple pie. I had a brain fart and forgot the Spanish word for pie. (Tarta, if anyone is wondering.) I improvised and asked if he wanted “una pie de manzana.”

Eduardo said from the back of the room that pie (pee-ay) is the Spanish word for foot. I then asked Tristan in English, “Apple feet. You want an apple foot?” and burst out laughing again.

Shenanigans With Oliver (and David, too)

Dialogue assignment. I picked the first person I saw as a partner. In this case, it was David, a super-cool dude from England in the process of moving to Spain to live with his girlfriend.

Well, our day to present came, and David was nowhere to be found. Well, Eduardo insisted I go, so I presented with Oliver, a dude from Ireland who was absent the day we picked partners.

Oliver’s Spanish wasn’t too hot, so you can imagine how good our dialogue was.

The next time I saw David, I asked him what had happened. And…he had a pretty good excuse. He had given his furniture from his flat back in England to some shipping company. Well, said company closed, leaving his furniture floating in the aether. He had spent the last few days kicking down doors, trying to get his stuff back.

Sorry, Dave. Hope things worked out.

Mary, Queen of Scots

In my first volume, I mentioned I had three different professors. On this particular day, our instructor was Carla, and the topic was Scottish literature. She wanted someone to read an excerpt from a Scottish play called Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off. She looked back to our row and said, “Perhaps one of the American students?”

Now, if there’s one thing I love doing, it’s making voices. And I had a point of inspiration. Benji had this joke where he’d put on a Scottish accent and act like he was from the old country. Let’s call Scottish Benji Old Benji McTavish. So I channeled Old Benji McTavish and raised my hand.

Old Benji McTavish was the right way to go. The excerpt was written in phonetic Scottish English. To give you an idea, here are the first few lines:

Country: Scotland. Whit like is it? It’s a peatbog, it’s a daurk forest. It’s a cauldron o’ lye, a saltpan or a coal mine. If you’re gey lucky it’s a bricht bere meadow or a park o’ kye. Or mibbe…it’s a field o’ stanes. It’s a tenement or a merchant’s ha’. It’s a hure hoose or a humble cot. Princes Street or Paddy’s Merkit. It’s a fistful o’ fish or a pickle o’ oatmeal. It’s a queen’s banquet o’ roast meats and junkets.

I had started out at a normal tone of voice, but I was yelling by the time I was a few lines in. I could hear people giggling at my impression, and I had to stop myself from laughing a few times, but I plowed on. I got an ovation when I reached the last lines. Carla said something about how native speakers could bring more context to the text, and I had to clarify that that was not English I would use on a daily basis.

As we were walking out of class, Tanner said he had been watching the rest of the class as I read. By the way the girls in the class had been looking at me as I was reading, he said, I could have asked any one of them out and gotten a guaranteed yes.

The Rainy Night

It was one of those nights I suspect every college student has had: you desperately want something to happen, but all of your friends are busy. So you take yourself out on a date and just let it be.

Such was this night. I had been checking and rechecking WhatsApp, hoping that someone would drop some plans for the night in the chat. I had even thrown a few offers out, something I didn’t usually do. I was that gassed up to do something.

It was probably about 9:30 or 10 when I decided to fly solo. I walked out the door and then walked back inside when I realized I was still wearing my house shoes. I walked out the door and then walked back inside to grab an umbrella, due to there being a drizzle outside.

Once I had started walking, I realized why there were no plans that night: it was POURING. I think there was a lip over the exit to the Villas’ apartment building, which made me seriously underestimate how much rain was coming down. However, I was going to get wet no matter if I kept walking or turned back, and I was hungry for McDonald’s.

I made it to McDonald’s with soaked pant legs. I ordered some food, sent out a message asking if anyone wanted to join me, and then lingered around after I ate. I wanted to stay out of that rain as long as I could.

I should also add that I did not see Jeremy Renner butchering Japanese gangsters with a katana on my way to my apartment or on the way back.

Endgame jokes…

Asturias Day

My host parents looked at me like I was crazy when I told them we were having an Asturias Day celebration at school. They told me that Asturias Day was long since happened–as in, “I came to Spain during it” long since happened.

I was confused, but it was something to break from the monotony of classes.

On the Not-Asturias Day, I was assigned to read an excerpt from the poetry of Ángel González. Aside from some mic troubles, it went off without a hitch.

And that’s it.

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Just kidding.

Once I was back home, Matt invited me to hang out at a sidreria. He said he was “with some people”, which as I was to find out, was like saying Bruce Lee was sort of good at martial arts.

I walked over to Cider Hill and walked into a mob. There were so many people I have to categorize.

From Calvin: Myself, Matt, Jamie, Amy, Noah Shin, Kassidy and Kennedy.

From VTech: Maddie and Meghan.

From Boston: Ally and Madison.

Newcomers:

Alex–one of Matt’s classmates. Every time I saw him, he was wearing a scarf. I introduced him to Ronald Reagan’s jelly bean addiction.

Sara–a girl of confusing national origin. The best I could tell was that she was a native Italian abroad in Spain, who could speak Italian and Spanish, and could understand English but not speak it. Also had one of the most distinctive laughs I had ever heard: combine Spongebob’s squeaky boots with Jamie Foxx imitating a creaking door, and you have Sara’s laugh.

When I first sat down, it was me, Matt, Sara, and Alex. Then MaMeKaKe (Maddie, Meghan, Kassidy and Kennedy) joined us. Then we ran into Ally and Madison, and Jamie and Amy passed by and decided to join in. I felt so bad for the waiter, partially because our group was going through a few dozen bottles of cider and partially because I was on a second bill due to drinking Coke instead of cider.

Much to my relief, we did ask for the check and got out of the waiters’ way. We walked to Mas y Mas so boxed wine could be picked up. After enough cheap alcohol to stock a bar was in our bags/hands/whatever, we walked over to San Fran Park. And we just talked.

This might sound boring, but it was actually a really fun night. It kind of reminded me of that scene in every war movie or team movie where the ensemble sits around a campfire and opens up to one another. Only instead of fighting Nazis or ISIS or aliens, we (with the exception of me) would be fighting hangovers, and instead of sitting around a campfire, we sat around what looked like the foundation of a torn-up fountain.

Either way, great night.

A Night at Bible Study

I don’t talk a ton about the GBU Bible study, but I should.

It was a night close to American Thanksgiving, which Spanish people are aware of, but don’t celebrate. On this particular night, Marita, Jasmin’s roommate, went all out. She had cut pieces of paper into squares and added some VSCO aesthetic by burning the edges with a lighter. We wrote out lists of things we were thankful for. Then, we went around and said something good about someone else in the room.

I got pleasantly surprised. Liz, of all people, said my name and praised the blog. (Which gives me something of a timeline as to when this was: I had published “Humble Idiocy”, but had yet to write “The Hill Point”, so this story takes place sometime between those two posts.

I still have that list. I should probably pull it out and hang it somewhere I can see it.

Always remember to be grateful, people.

Claudia

Speaking of hanging out with Matt…

Wait. That was two stories back.

Eh, who cares?

Matt invited me to a coffee shop called Dos de Azúcar to study. I said “sure!” Spanish coffee shops are cool.

When you can find them.

I looked up the place, and maps.me said it was a few blocks away from the evangelical church. So I walked my route to there…and got lost. I walked around, I asked people, I looked and re-looked at the maps.me route. Thankfully, this was not another Fireworks Fiasco. I found it by coincidence and walked in, now regretful we weren’t meeting at a sidrería. Elise and Elizabeth were sipping tea in a step down area, and Matt and Noah Shin had a table saved. They were sitting with two people I didn’t know.

And that’s how I met Claudia.

Claudia was the daughter of a friend of Matt’s host mother. She was a stunner, and I was considering pulling out my best impression of Joey Tribbiani’s “how you doin’?” until she introduced her boyfriend, Leo. (I’m pretty sure that’s his name.)

Anyway, we just hung out.

End of story. Claudia’s a cool cat.

KKK (Keene, Ken, Kass)

Admittedly, this is a story with a downbeat undertone. Juan, a classmate of ours from Iowa, had been mugged a few nights earlier, and it had kind of poked a hole in our bubble.

Well anyway, I had been talking to Kassidy and Kennedy about studying together. They bounced back and forth as to where we would be studying, before saying “screw it” and asking if I wanted to hang out that night.

I walked to the bottom of Cider Hill and ran into Ally, Madison and Ally’s visiting boyfriend Trevor. In the two minutes I met him, I immediately saw why he and Ally were together: 1. The dude’s an Adonis, and an African-American one at that. 2. He positively identified my T-shirt as a Punisher shirt. Ally, if you’re reading this, marry that man.

Ahem.

I invited them to join my group, but they said they were gunning for the clubs, so I wished them luck (a good time? many free drinks? what do you wish for people trying to club?) and kept walking.

I found Kass and Ken in a restaurant near the bottom of Cider Hill. Once I sat down, I learned something very quickly: if you want free stuff, go abroad and make your travel companions are attractive white women.

The two staffers were both men, and we were their only customers sitting inside. At semi-regular intervals, they’d bring us platters of tapas, and they were chatting with all three of us, but Kassidy and Kennedy in particular. They might have had a chance with Kennedy, who was (is?) single, but Kassidy had earlier said she was essentially waiting on her boyfriend of several years to propose. This may make them sound like scumbags, but despite laying it on a little thick, they seemed like cool dudes.

It was while sitting together that I learned of another unfortunate occurrence: Kassidy had been followed. I didn’t learn all the details, but the skinny was: she was walking in the city by herself, and some dude in a turban had followed her. She pulled some evasive maneuvers and lost the guy. It was yet another needle in our idyllic bubble, a reminder that as much fun as we were having in Spain, creeps who want to get their rocks off by any means possible know no borders.

We eventually decided to pack it up. We said goodbye to Miguel and Antonio, the two waiters, and paid our bill. Kennedy lived pretty close, so she went off on her own. I told Kassidy I’d walk her home. She said it wasn’t necessary and that her place was out of the way of mine. I in turn told her she could either slightly inconvenience me by making me walk out of my way or she could deal with Turban Man again. We compromised: I walked her halfway and then went on my way.

Stay safe, ladies.

Anywho, that’ll do it for now. Two more volumes to go. For now, may your fake menus be legible, your walks to McDonald’s be without a cloud in the sky, and your travels be in the companionship of attractive white women.