Alejandro Can Actually Talk, Who Knew!

Saturday April 12, 2008

This morning I started the day off by doing the ever so dreaded souvenir shopping. First of all, I hate feeling like a tourist in my “home town.” Secondly, that means that my time is coming to an end. Finally, I had no idea what to buy.

 This week the city is alive and hopping with tourists and people from all over Spain that have come to celebrate Feria in Sevilla. Every corner you turn you see women dressed in brightly colored flamenco dresses, you hear some form of music whether it is clapping, instrumental, or vocal, and there are horses with carriages galore. I love the spirit of the town this week. It’s pretty common for groups of people to break out in song and dance at any minute…so basically it’s my perfect world.

 At lunchtime we talked to our “host brother” Alejandro, who normally lives in Madrid, is around 30 and is studying Graphic Design, for the first time ever today. Before I thought he was kind of mean…or maybe a mute, but today he was bouncing off the walls and chatting up a storm. We even got a compliment from him that he’s glad that we are actually speaking Spanish here. I shot back (in Spanish of course), “Of course we are speaking Spanish, we are in Spain…right?” He laughed and apparently thinks that most Americans who come to Spain and stay with Encarna haven’t/don’t speak Spanish. I pointed out to him that we are here for 4 months…and its kind of a necessity to know the language. We joked around for a while and when he came home later in the evening he brought Allison, Sam and I a flower…I think he likes us now that he knows that we can actually speak Spanish. He kept making the joke that there were a lot of blondes (Allison and I) in the kitchen and that that was different. He’s kind of a character. We have only seen him 2 or 3 times when he has come home for the different holidays, but I’m glad that he finally talked to us so it won’t be as awkward anymore!

 Encarna also decided to bust out the old family photo alum today at lunch…she is such a goober, but I wouldn’t trade her for the world. It was fun looking at all of the kids as they were growing up and hearing the family stories. For the record, they used to call Rocio the “cangrejo” (the crab) because she had long legs and long arms when she was born… Just imagine hearing stories similar to this one!

 Tonight we headed out to try a new bar in the Alameda because we had been working on homework for most of the afternoon and we just needed to get out of the house. We had a tinto de verano (½ wine mixed with ½ lemon soda, and its delicious) and talked about a lot of different things. It was a very chill night just talking. I’m super coordinated and took it upon myself to spill part of the tinto on my lap because apparently I like talking with my hands…who knew? The favorite topic of the night was our upcoming return home. Even though the days are dwindling down I think that it’s progressively become harder to be away from home. Each day is one day closer to when I’m coming home, but it seems like each day it’s a little bit harder to be away…These feelings are also mixed with the feelings of not ever really wanting to come back to the States, so as you can imagine…it’s a pretty awkward mix altogether.