This past weekend was the 2nd to last one that I will spend in Santander. Because of this, I rationalized going out on Thursday night, in spite of having class at 9am on Friday morning.
I met up with a friend at the Chupiteria to start the night. We drank tequila to pass the time, and I couldn't help but feel that roles were reversed, as we drank tequila while waiting for the men to get ready and meet us there. We took 3 shots each and then left to go find the guys because they were taking too long. When we met up with them, we all headed over to a place called Rio De La Pila, which is a street that I walk everyday to go to school. It's really close to my apartment, and I had been there once before to hang out with a friend, but had never been there late at night or on the weekend. By the way, Thursday night counts as the weekend here. Anyway, it was a shock because the place was PACKED. Just about every young Spanish person and ERASMUS student was there. Usually people get their drinks and go outside to socialize. I learned this fairly late in the game (as it was my second to last weekend, as I mentioned before), but all the kids go to Rio De La Pila to hang out early in the night (and I use "early" as a relative term, because early here is anywhere from midnight to 2am) and then move toward my side of town, where all the heavy drinking and/or dancing goes on. That's just a coincidence, by the way...Anyway, that was fun because I got to see a lot of my ERASMUS friends as well as some of my American friends. We bar hopped the night away, and I got home around 5am, and even made it to class the next day.
One thing that was particularly striking to me, and what originally inspired me to write a blog about this weekend was something a friend said to me. As my friends and I were walking the street heading to Rio De La Pila, we ran into another friend of ours who is from Mexico. We stopped to talk to him and he asked me, "¿Adónde van?" Now, this deserves both a bit of context and a tiny grammar lesson. If you speak Spanish or at least know how to conjugate verbs, you can skip the grammar lesson. I took 7 classes over the course of about 5 and a half years in the states learning Spanish. Because Mexico is the closest Spanish speaking country, the American public schools teach you what's called Latin American Spanish, which makes sense. If you're to run into a Spanish speaker, they probably come from a Latin American country. It's really not all that different from Spanish Spanish, but there are notable differences, as I've come to realize. In Spanish (in general), they maintain the difference between a friend and a person of seniority or respect, and conjugate the verbs differently. I'm sure you all know this, especially knowing that "¿Cómo estás?" means "how are you?" when talking to a friend, and "¿Cómo está?" means "how are you?" when talking to an elder. You is "tú" and the formal you is "usted." Now, more to my point, if you're talking to a group of friends, it would be multiple tús, right? That's what we call vosotros. If you're talking to more than one person of respect, you call that "ustedes," because it's just more than one "usted," make sense? But in Latin America, they don't make this distinction. When they're talking to multiple people, no matter if they're friends or professors or what-have-you, they refer to them as "ustedes." However, it must be noted that the conjugation for "ustedes" also functions as "ellos," which means "they." This may sound confusing, but it's easy to understand within context. If you say "Van a Rio De La Pila," this can mean "you all go to Rio De La Pila," OR it can mean "They go to Rio De La Rila," depending on what you want to say. I learned for five years to use ustedes. I never ever EVER used "vosotros." It just isn't done in Latin America. Even my professor for Advanced Spanish Grammar said that he was unable to use vosotros without taking a second to think about it first. And yet, when my Mexican friend looked at me with a group of friends and asked, "¿Adónde van?" I actually looked around and said, "Who?" What's striking is how quickly I fell into Spanish Spanish, and I didn't even realize it. After five years of studying Latin American Spanish, I forgot it in two months. I had expected to hear "¿Adónde váis?" which is the "vosotros" form.
Okay, sorry if that was boring. Just had to get that out.
Side note- The last bar we went to, a place called "Indian," gave me a heart shaped lollipop with my rum and coke!! I love Spain.
Friday night was a little crazier. Actually, I'm pretty sure it was just like every other night. Pre-gaming with the Americans, then separating and bar hopping with our respective ERASMUS friends. Nothing particularly memorable. And if there was and I'm not exactly remembering it at the moment, I will edit this later on.
A lot of my wilder stories came from Saturday, which is truely saying something. I chose not to drink, which was SUCH a good idea. I'm glad I was fully there for all of the insanity. (Side note-I found out the cheapest and easiest way to get hammered, if you're interested. Simply tell all your friends that you're not drinking. I did this and I think about 7 of my friends offered to buy me drinks) We started out at the Chupiteria, doing the usual, which, if you haven't gathered by now, is drinking obscene amounts, because they're 1€ per shot, which is the cheapest you'll find just about anywhere in the world. Qué mala idea, ¿no?
There is another group of Americans from Oregon studying here for a "term." I assume this is kind of like a tri-mester or something, because I didn't care enough to ask when I was actually talking to an Oregonian. Anyway, put all of us Americans in a room together (a room that happens to sell cheap liquor) and what should we do? Take body shots, of course. The Spaniards acted as though they'd seen nothing like it. After terrorizing the poor place, we walked over to Tempo, where the ERASMUS used to hang out. None of us had been there for a long time, and it felt like kinda like home. No, that's a lie. It felt like the beginning of my time in Spain when we all used to go there. I got to see a lot of ERASMUS students that I hadn't seen in weeks while I've been busy jet-setting all around Europe.
A group of us decided to do some bar hopping like always. I had a wonderful time and the night ended at about 4:45. One of my more tamer nights, but let me tell you about the rest of us. Without naming names, of course. By the end of the night, one girl had lost her keys, several had had horrible falls, two guys had gotten in two different fights, and one guy had had the policía called on him. Oh, and I hear that about 3 or 4 never actually made it home. Americans. Can't live with them, can't live...well, let's just leave it at that.
So I can't really ask what I thought about Santander, like I usually ask myself at the end of my entries. I'm sure I've bored you all with my talk about how much I love this city anyway, because every time I go somewhere else, I compare it to Santander. I really only wrote this blog so I could put into writing my thoughts on all of a sudden knowing vosotros.
This is going to end now due to poor planning. Until next time, vosotros :)
"El mundo es un libro y ellos que no viajan leen solo una página."
Remember who bought you that rum and coke
ReplyDeleteNo no Bobby. It's drinking karma. You just gotta pass it on, you know? What goes around comes around!
ReplyDeleteBtw, this is Emily. Not a random creeper.
ReplyDeleteHaha I was like, who the hell is Lila? And Bobby, remember what that rum and coke was considered payment for?
ReplyDelete