Mi Primer Flamenco

Hey everyone!

Yesterday was my second day of school. I had my other two classes: Intermediate Spanish II (taught completely in Spanish) and Spanish Civilization and Culture. I really liked both classes. The Intermediate Spanish II course has a great professor; she made us speak Spanish during class, and when we made mistakes, she corrected us in a good way. Like.. it didn't make me feel embarassed or dumb. My other class was also really cool. The professor is very eccentric, and I think it'll be awesome to learn about Spanish culture from him. When he was lecturing to us he was practically, like, dancing. That's how expressive his hand motions are. I wish I could take a video of him during one of his lectures...

Then, yesterday evening, I went back to Triana with one of my friends, Kaley. Kaley goes to UF, but we didn't know each other before coming here. She's really cool, we get along well. We walked around Triana for a while, looking through shops. Triana is that area in Sevilla, across the river from where I live, where they say Flamenco was born, that had that tea house that I went to, and that has a lot of culture and pride. 

After we walked around, we wanted to find somewhere to eat dinner. It's a challenge to find dinner here at US normal dinnertime hours: Sevillanos don't eat dinner until like 9:30P. So sometimes you have to hunt for a place that's serving dinner-ish stuff, and not just tapas, which are appetizer things that people eat around siesta time, pre-dinner. We found a cool place that was right on the river where we could eat outside, so we decided to eat there. 

I've discovered that I evidently "look" American. When we were walking by this restaurant, deciding whether or not to eat there, a server came up to us and like... assumed that we wanted to see a menu in English. And we weren't even speaking English within earshot of him! We said no, that we wanted to see a menu in Spanish, please (we said it in Spanish, of course). But sometimes I want to ask how people know that I'm American. Sometimes, too, when I'm walking down the street, people who are inviting you into their bars (with offers of drink specials, etc.) will speak to me in English too. And I always answer in Spanish. But I feel like I have "American" tatooed on my forehead or something. Maybe after more time here, I'll start to blend in better. :)

Anyway - we ate at that restaurant with a sweet view of the river and the city. We split a salad and paella (Spanish rice), with shrimp, chicken, mussels, and clams in it. Delicious!

We didn't really have a plan after that, so we just started walking around the area. It's very busy at that time of night (between 9 and 11) because that's when everyone goes out for dinner, which is very weird to me. We had some drinks outside by the river. Then we walked past a bar that had a sign out front that said "Martes y jueves, Flamenco, libre!" which means "Tuesdays and Thursday, Flamenco, free!". Kaley and I hadn't seen flamenco before, so we decided to go. 

Where we had drinks, with El Puente de Triana and el Río Guadalquivir behind me.

The view.

The flamenco show was awesome, not that I would know if it was a bad show, haha. I've never seen a dance that's so expressive and passionate.

One of the things that I thought was especially cool was how dramatic the facial expressions of the dancers were. Sometimes the dancer look sad, sometimes she looked elated. And the body movements didn't seem planned or rehearsed. I also thought that the other "members" of the group (idk what to call them) watched the dancer extremely intensely. And they would say encouraging things to her while she was dancing. There seemed to be a very strong connection between the woman dancing and those around her (including the guitarist and the singer). Also, the clapping was done so perfectly! Somehow, everyone seemed to know how fast or slow to go. I am new to this whole "flamenco" thing, so if anyone reading this is a pro, we should talk. Because I think my understanding of flamenco is pretty low, but I'm absolutely amazed by it!

But yeah - check out the videos. They explain it way better than I do.

Our drinks. Vino blanco for me and vino tinto for Kaley.

Also, as you can see, the bar was packed. So that's why random people get in the videos. 

The first dancer we saw.

More of the first dancer. I also zoom out in this one so you can see the whole scene.

Gives you a full development of the dance.

According to the (cute) British guy that we met, after the performers dance they have a fin de fiesta, where anyone from the crowd can get up and dance. It was amazing, some of the people who got up there were just wearing jeans and flipflops, but they still danced. And they showed the same expressivity that the "more professional" dancers had previously.

One of the dancers from the audience.

Don't worry, boys - you can do it too!