Weekend update

coli = short for colegio = school
por fa = por favor

This blog is quickly becoming a once-a-week kind of deal.  The thing is that I don't really do anything that exciting during the week.  I go to classes and take siestas and do homework and eat delicious Spanish food.  I'll do what I can to post more often, but we'll have to see.

This past week (by which I mean last weekend), I delved a bit into the realm of the social Spaniard.  It's a bizarre and confusing territory, and my research is as of yet incomplete, but here are some initial observations as well as a brief firsthand encounter.

So far, we (my American friends and I) are all stumped by the alleged nightlife here.  The first weekend or two that we were here, we didn't see anyone in the centro (downtown) past about one in the morning.  Conversely, our sources (host brothers and sisters) told us that 1) people our age go out almost every Friday and Saturday night, and 2) nobody even leaves their house until at least midnight—and then they regularly stay out until five or six in the morning.

...So where did they all go?

The answer is that "at least midnight" really translates to "more like two or three in the morning," and that the centro is not the party part of town.  The spot to be is called La Garena, and it's a little plaza of nightclubs about a ten-minute ride from the centro.

Last weekend, my friend's host sister Sara took the two of us with her.  We started in the centro around midnight in a little bar tucked away from anywhere we'd been so far.  At midnight, the place was virtually deserted.  After an hour or so, it started to fill up, and she said it wouldn't be until three that anybody would be at La Garena.  We left the bar around two and took a taxi to get there.

We popped in and out of a few clubs.  Now, I have no idea if these were typical Spanish nightclubs—it didn't seem like it—but they struck my friend and me as a little bit odd.  The places were packed, and there was loud music and bright lights, but nobody was really dancing or mingling.  They were kind of bouncing to the music and just really kind of... being there.  So we be'd in a couple of nightclubs for several minutes each, and around four, we called it a night.


My friend and I were exhausted, but it was clear that Sara could have stayed out longer.  We later found out that four really is on the early side to return from being Out.  Normally, she and her sister don't get back until at least seven, and sometimes as late as nine.  Then they sleep until three or four in the afternoon and do it all over again.


Overall, a confusing experience.  It was fun for what it was, but I'm not sure if I'll tener ganas de doing it again anytime soon.  Maybe I'm lame.  Or maybe I just need to find a real Spanish discoteca.  We'll go with the latter.


A note on Spanish fashion.

 

First of all, every person in Spain has exactly the same style.  You don't see prep and gangsta and goth and grunge and bohemian and hippie and chic and whatever other styles we have at home.  You see a punk/emo blend with just a touch of hipster, and black, black, and more black.  Seriously.  It's a little more casual during the day, with a little more variation of color, but at night, the above photos roughly describe the outfit of every single Spanish female my age.  They all wear boots, they all wear a crazy short skirt slash dress, and they all heap on the mascara.  It looks nice, but seeing as all I own are a pair of gray boots and the potential to heap on mascara (on which I'll take a pass, thank you), it's not easy to fit in.

My obviously not-dark-colored hair is a bit of a giveaway, too.

I'm predicting a relaxing tapas date with my amigos americanos tonight.  I'm lucky that my host family is regularly in bed by eleven.  Many of my friends get super-judged by their families—who are still awake—when they are "only" out until one.