An outing with 4 girls from the school, all around my age except the one who may have been around 60. She was very nice but I could not imagine going out with such younger girls at her age. I’m not sure whether to call her brave or strange. I would have given her a thumbs up, but she was wearing the same dress this morning?

Flamenco show = one of the most utterly passionate and emotional mind-blowing shows I have ever experienced. The guitarist was so talented, and while the traditional style of singing took me a bit off guard, I was feeling every note of that sad love song by the end. He was too. He was crying. And the dancer was fantastic! She had sooo much energy, stomping around in perfect rhythm to her gorgeous guitar-playing/clapping counterparts. How badly to I want to take a flamenco class?

Tapas afterwards - even smaller than I may have expected, but still very good. I don’t eat nearly as much here but as everything that I do eat is pretty much straight grease, it’s not really a problem. I got “la tortilla de mariscos” which translates to “tortilla of shell fish” which is kind of like a crispy little shellfish omlette. But very good. I am also now acquainted with the “hip” chick drink of the country, “tinto de verano.” It translates to “tint of the summer” and is basically like red win with sprite. This is apparently what almost every girl gets almost every time she gets out. No more vodka shots for me!

ADVENTURE

So I hang with the northeastern crew again (my new favorite bunch) and we go to this bar where they know the bartender and we all get free shots. It’s this little hole in the wall place, there were maybe 20 people in there altogether, but we were from all over the place. Butterscotch rum is SO GOOD and drunken Irish men (named Rory) are hilarious (especially when lecturing in the ways of love and destiny). As we were leaving at 5 am I tried to take a picture of him sitting (very drunkenly) in a broken office chair in the middle of the street that somebody had put to the trash. Unfortunately, you can’t see anything because I was also drunk and there was no flash =(. Now don’t let that 5 am fool you – we were off to a bumping party on the other side of town! Seeing as how I am always surrounded by gay men it should be of little surprise that my first real European discoteca was a raving gay club. But it was crazy awesome. And we got in for free with those sweeeet connections! I saw things that I had never seen before, and didn’t arrive home until the sun had begun to rise: enough to call the night a success.