Feliz cumpleanos!

Well I think I officially have the best family in Bilbao. This week was a rough one because I was feeling pretty sick and had mucha tarea so I couldn't really interact with the fam too much, but they still invited me to this little family party they were having for a nephew's 11th b-day today. So I decided to suck up my bad attitude about school work and take some cold meds and hit it up after class ended at 7. I arrived around 7:15 and immediately was given a plate of food, a drink, and multiple people to talk to, including a French teacher/family member who obv speaks perfect Spanish but talked with me the whole night and corrected me when needed so I could learn simple conversation tactics better. So that was a great surprise because here I was expecting this little formal family gathering around a table with lots of weird fish or Spanish cuisine with a group of people who notoriously talk too fast and informally, and instead I got A BIRTHDAY CAKE! It was obviously the 11-year old (Alex)'s birthday so he got presents and party favors/balloons/the works, but they bought me a raspberry torta with 21 candles and sang to me in Spanish! It was a pretty great surprise considering I really didn't expect them to do anything because I'm going to Germany on my actual birthday to visit Mr. Alexander Crist, let alone I am only here for a few months and am no way a real part of the family. But alas, they all really welcomed me to the party and to Spain in general, into their family, culture, and traditions, so I am feeling pretty content about my situation in Espana now (a nice change from the panic attacks I had upon my arrival that the family would quickly realize how incompetent I am at Spanish and throw me to the metaphorical dogs). Also, a quick note about birthday and regular "tortas" here: in the US it is customary to have a big spongey cake with a much thinner layer of icing in any variety of flavors, but HERE they must love their desserts because my cake was an ICING CAKE. It was literally a very tiny (think 1/4 of an inch) layer of sponge cake on the bottom and top, and then a solid 2 INCHES of icing in between!! Needless to say, I had pieces of both cakes but could barely even eat half of either one. It definitely added to the wonderful spectacle that was my unofficial Spanish birthday party.

The other great part of this fiesta today that gave me an "aha!" moment was speaking with Lucia, the Spanish French-professor (hahah confusing!) who seemed to really enjoy not only asking me about home, my hobbies, Deusto, etc., but correcting me as I spoke on grammatical errors, verb-noun and gender agreement, and idiomatic expressions. It was great! It was like having my own personal tutor, and maybe it was the 3 San Miguel cervezas Esti keep handing me but by the end of the party I felt truly fluent! This was a drastic change to merely 2 hours before in my linguistics class when I spent a good 7-8 minutes trying to explain/understand a linguistic tree diagram about subject/verb/adjective/prepositional phrasing in order to understand Hispanic syntax (WTF) and barely getting my point across without yelling it out in English (I won't deny that I didn't ask the other students pleadingly if they knew what the heck I was talking about, in English of course). So although the day started rough with 9am classes and a remaining head cold, it quickly pulled a 180 and possibly became the day I finally felt fluent at Spanish. Who knows, maybe I am!

Just a quick note before I end this epiphanic entry (I miss my crosswords), like I said I'll be going to Munich, Germany this weekend so I probs won't be able to send any updates until Monday morning when I'll have time to load pictures and give you all the juicy details of my extravagant and momentous 21st b-day bash celebration of going to the BMW museum and sitting in the Englischer Garten. wHoOoOo watch out Munchkins! (I should probably refrain from calling the residents of Munich "munchkins", although I can't promise I won't after I have a few leiderhosen and schnitzel in me! Those are the only German words I kind of know. Should be an interesting weekend...)