Day 5 - MUNDIAL!!!!!!

Woke up and went to class, which was great just like yesterday. We went incredibly in-depth with “ser” and “estar,” and our professor explained the almost philosophical difference between them. We did a lot of vocab stuff about things around the house, and I basically suck. I can remember bed and rug, and that was about it. Haha. Have a little bit of re-learning to do…

Got to Skype with Mom and Dad a wee bit during break, but unfortunately, their microphone wasn’t working, so they could hear me but I couldn’t hear them. Sadness. It sort of worked, though, I guess. Better than nothing at all.

Zemke’s class is actually pretty cool, although I had enough problems with poetry in AP Lit in high school, it’s even more difficult in another language, if you can imagine. Luckily all the terms are more or less the same, so I just have to re-learn those, too.

Had lunch with the fam like I always do, but it wasn’t quite ready when I got home, so I went into the salon, and Claudia and Luis were playing the PlayStation 2! Harry Potter!!! Haha. Actually, Luis was playing it, and Claudia was using scissors to cut paper to make a sun, then taping the rays on. Adorable. Lunch was ziti noodles which were really good, and then fried slices of rolls of ham with cheese in the middle. Quite delicious. Been having Activia yogurt with every meal, too, so I should be pretty regular when I return to the States J It cracks me up that they have Activia here. Just funny stuff. We watched The Simpsons in Spanish during lunch, and I figured I found a new job market to try for – translating TV shows from Spanish to English! Haha. Don’t quite know how that’s gonna work out.

Anywho, Claudia said the CUTEST thing at lunch right before The Simpsons came on. We were watching the news, and it was all about the game tonight. Where people were going to be watching it, who people thought was going to win, etc. Then Claudia says, “España! España! España ganará!” (“Spain will win!”) Too adorable.

The cool thing about yesterday was not only that it was the World Cup game, but also San Fermin…the running of the bulls. So it was just a pretty damn big day for Spain all-around.

Stephanie, Alee, and I originally thought that we would want to watch the game in a bar, but the more we thought about it, the cooler we decided it would be to watch it outdoors in a plaza like you always see the Europeans doing when their country is playing in the World Cup. Problem: we misunderstood what the eff was going on because the University was supposed to be taking people to one of these said plazas.  After we had dinner at Yuppi (BLT with fries!!!), we walked all around the centro comercial to find where Zemke had told us, and we couldn’t find anyone watching the game, and it had already started. Finally, I got fed up and told the girls I would call him and ask him where the crap he told us this place was supposed to be, because we were in the right area. Turns out, a bus was leaving from the area to take students somewhere else to watch the game. I thought he would be pissed that I called him, but he was really, really nice and told us to go to a bar with the locals and have a great time. And that is exactly what we did J

There are bars everywhere in the centro comercial (downtown, basically), but they’re not skeevy like bars in the U.S. Mostly, it’s just old people (60 years+) visiting with each other. Anywho, we saw lots of that, but we wanted one with some younger people, which we eventually found. I have a ton of pictures. It was hilarious because all the guys were wearing Spanish jerseys, but no one had the same player’s jersey on – they were all different. The place had a great local feel and some pretty sweet HD TVs.

I can’t even really describe it. It was absolutely awesome. So much energy and excitement! I had my camera ready when the corner kick came, and it’s all on film. People just going completely nuts.

And a lot of singing, “YO SOY ESPAÑOL, ESPAÑOL, ESPAÑOL, YO SOY ESPAÑOL…” (I’m Spanish). Just fuckin sweet. SUCH an experience. Without a doubt.

Then, the streets afterward…absolute madness. Horns, fireworks, and EVERYONE in cars was honking. Flags everywhere, people screaming, yelling, clapping, singing. I can’t even equate it with any other sport because I don’t think there’s anything else like it in the world. Better than baseball, better than basketball, better than hockey, better than American football. I mean EVERYONE was out, and EVERYONE was having a great time. If you think about it, the U.S. as a whole doesn’t have this kind of thing. Only one team from one area in the U.S. wins the Super Bowl or the World Series. This is a WHOLE COUNTRY!!! THIS SHIT IS REAL!!!!

It was absolutely the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. Downside: Stephanie and I were wearing black, which happens to be one of Germany’s colors, and I think it explains some of the weird looks we were getting. I thought about this before going out, but I figured no one would care. Wrong. EVERYONE was wearing red.

Oof…missed the boat on that one.

Some random old guy started talking to us while we were waiting to cross the street and asked us if we were rooting for Germany. After we told him we were for Spain, he seemed a little relieved. Then we told him we were from the U.S., and he said he knew someone from Tennessee. Random.

All in all, it was just nuts. Just crazy.

And I loved every minute of it J