Making Friends vs. Habla Español

Tonight I accidentally told my friend's aunt that she was older than my aunt. These are the good lessons; the ones that really stick are the ones where you embarrass yourself thoroughly and into not making the same mistake again. this lesson: too much positivity can be negative when you don't know the language.

I went with my friend Kike and his girlfriend to a dance/kareoke fiesta. Apparently I was pretty popular there, though only 3 or 4 people spoke to me. One of those people was Carlos, who has some mental problems, and told me in broken english 'I'll help you with Spanish and you help me learn English. I am for USA. I need deniro, I am unique." he went on to tell me how his family needs money to move to los estados unidos, where he can be "full-contact". When it was time for kareoke, I was voted onto the stage only to learn that they didn't have anything in English. They asked me to sing some Michael Jackson, a capella. I didn't trust my pipes. I guess that's the point of Kareoke though, huh? Maybe next time. I excused myself from the stage.

The police came and shut us down around 12:30am so I decided to join my classmates on Calle 84--the club district? The place I met them at was small and cramped, so we moved on down the street.

Let me just say that being in a foreign country definitely has its perks, especially when your group has other foreigners: Trinidadians (beautiful women!) and a Brit. Add a couple of beautiful locals, and a smooth-talking, savvy, Colombiano clubber (from one of the host families) to the group and what you get is not only free admission to the nicest clubs, but also lots of attention from the managers.

Our friend told the bouncer that we were Ambassadors, or Consuls from our respective countries, and we were in without a hitch. Someone gave me a heads up that that was the story, so when the manager came to take us to a table I decided to be a little bit pouty/snooty. He gestured to our corner and I kinda turned up my nose and looked around the club before 'settling' for the table he chose. Based strictly on body language, I think this kinda made him nervous. He wanted to make sure we were happy, so drinks, on the house, were immediately forthcoming (don't worry, I never touch the stuff). The manager came back several times: once to move the tables next to us to give us more floorspace for dancing, several times with juice, alcohol, water, ice, etc. And twice to ask me if everything was okay.

Luckily the atmosphere was loud enough that he couldn't hear my awful Spanish, and I just sort of nodded in a 'sure-sure' fashion and mumbled 'Gracias, es bueno. Gracias.' and he would leave us without ask anything else. Whew! I imagine a consul would be able to understand and speak Spanish pretty well.... Anyway, I have to wonder if that story will ever work on them again; we pretty much made ourselves apparent mooches. We didn't leave in style or anything.

We are going to Cartagena next weekend, for some site-seeing and cultural experiences. I'm sure we can pull off the same story there. Woot!

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]