¡Arriba, Abajo, Al Centro, Pa' Dentro!

It has been almost three weeks since I arrived in Madrid and so far I have been resisting Spain-ifying my Spanish. I have been utilizing the lisp (gra-thias instead of gracias) even though I feel like I am going to spit on someone and I try hard to use the vosotros instead of ustedes. But I still feel impervious to its influence. The city itself feels welcoming, but not necessarily the people. I feel like my experience navigating Madrid will be one of an outsider (obviously), because everyone I surround myself is foreign to this place. My roommate is Venezuelan. My friends are an amalgam of different backgrounds: Australian, Belgian, Paraguayan, Peruvian. Everything I have learned about this city has been from them, from the eyes of immigrants and foreigners. I know this will begin to change and I want to get out there and meet Spaniards, but it is also somewhat amusing to me that I always end up hanging out with Latinos. My roommate Mariana asked me today how my parents felt about giving birth to a Latina girl. I guess I throw people off when I speak with Mexican slang words, listen to Spanish music and prepare yerba maté and tacos.

Last night I went out for my friend Erin's birthday. Her Irish cousins are here visiting so where did they want to go two nights in a row? Moore's, the Irish pub near Plaza Mayor. I was talking to a guy from Bilbao (Basque city) and he told me I speak perfect Spanish but with a crazy accent. I told him it is a hybrid of Mexico/Guatemala and Spain and that it confuses everyone. It was also necessary to explain to him that it is easy to get lost when simple words like "straw" and "toilet" are different in every country you go to. I am thinking of making an excel spreadsheet of Spanish words comparing each country's translation.

I did something truly Spanish the other night when Mariana's madrileño friends took us to a flamenco bar in the La Latina neighborhood. We got there around 3am (because at 4am they close the doors and no one else can enter), and were just in time to hear the beginning of the show. It wasn't really a show in the normal sense of the word, just a bunch of old men sitting around, chain smoking, and alternately singing flamenco songs, eliciting occasional "olés" from the crowd. I would have stayed longer but I am still adjusting to the cigarette smoke. I left with a horrible headache that persisted through the night and until the next morning until I finally woke up around 1pm and took some paracetamol (the Spanish-speaking world's ibuprofen).

Picture on the left: Plaza de Coscorros in the La Latina neighborhood (amazing view from the Irish cousin's weekend flat)

Picture on the right: the hallway leading up to my flat