Last Saturday (Cont.)

After I got home from the Real Alcazar, I took a quick siesta before I awoke to really fast spanish. It was my Senora's birthday and her family was arriving. She has four total sons and 2 of them came, with their wives and children. Santiago stayed at his girlfriend's mother's house with their baby. One mother in law came, and a spanish woman of whom I missed the family connection was there too. Overall it turned out to be a lot of fun, but early on I was completely overwhelmed. I was basically like a clown sitting at the dining room table, holding everyone's attention (definitely not by choice), and mumbling out spanish in clips. I realized just how important it is for me to see people's lips move when they speak to me and there were easily 4 people talking to me at every moment. And when my answers didn't make sense, they would ask the same thing louder, which meant things escalated quickly.

The party settled down a little bit when we brought all the food out. We had a great layered cake, hot chocolate (which is basically like chocolate syrup), and a lot of random pastries. I was especially fond of the hot chocolate, partly because my senor Antonio had been preparing it all morning. I spent about 15 minutes before the party watching him stir the chocolate while he described his exact stirring method. I love the guy. So when the party settled down, Antonio and I were just sitting at the table, spooning hot chocolate, and every once in a while one of us would look over at the utter and quietly say, "Esta muy bien".

But first we had to sing. We sang 3 versions of happy birthday, only one of which I had heard before, and when the crowd got really into a tizzy, they decided that the children (who are learning english in school) and I should sing happy birthday in english. Probably not my favorite idea, and I have to say I didn't get a whole lot of help from the kids, but I'll tell you what I sang happy birthday like I was a 7 year old to the party's delight. Here's a picture of Dolores trying on her present.

Here's another note on why Antonio is the man. Antonio lights the candles and whispers to me, "Mira" ("Watch"). We count down Dolores to blow out her candles and when we get to one, Antonio leans over and blows them all out. He starts laughing to the point of tears and high-fiving me in a way that combines the awkwardness of being both foreign to the high-five, and pretty old. Most of the party didn't think it was quite as funny as we did but it was great. This is Antonio going after 3 of his grandchildren.

After things settled down, I had a real conversation with of of Antonio's daughter-in-laws and I found out she is a nurse. I told her I'm studying to be a doctor and we just started talking. She told me in pretty good detail about Socialist medicine here, and although I couldn't catch everything, I definitely understood that she thinks it's a disaster. She said there is a very long wait to have any sort of procedure done, and her quote was that they have "a million family doctors whose only job is really to tell people to stop smoking and lose weight". She was very aware of the healthcare system in America and probably knew more than I did about the proposed changes. It was very interesting to hear the perspective of someone who is both a patient and an employee in Spain's medical system, and to be honest made me a little worried about healthcare in America. I'm not trying to push any issue here, but the conversation was really great for me because it was the first conversation that wasn't just about where I'm from, and how I like Sevilla. It's hard to describe, but I've found myself wishing badly that I could find someone to talk about anything deep with, and for the most part I've come up short with Spaniards. Moral of the story, had a great convo last Saturday.

Here's another picture of the family, and the woman in red is my nurse friend, Beatriz.

A great thing happened to me on Saturday night, I rented a bike for a week. I can't tell you how much better it is to be able to go to class and the center of the city in 20 minutes rather than 45. Unfortunately, the bike rental system where you drop the bike off at stations all over the city and pick one up when you need it, said to me Wednesday morning that I had a bike out already...meaning it indirectly thinks I'm either stealing, or lost a bike. Because of my 150 euro security deposit, this was very troubling. I'm happy to say that although I haven't had a bike these past few days, the problem is under control and I've decided to spend the 150 euros I thought I had lost on another guitar. Just kidding.

More posts coming soon!