Saturday, October 6, 2012

Fiesta?

So I learned that, big surprise, there is a big misconception about partying in the US and partying in Spain. There's even a vocabulary difference.

An American party is usually a bunch of people in a house having fun together. That will never ever happen in Spain. First, most people live in apartments so there isn't space for a party. Second, you are supposed to be quiet at home. In urban areas, population is incredibly dense so people just made it so you are quiet at home but you can party as loud as you want in the streets. And that's not called a fiesta. A fiesta is more a holiday than what Americans would call a party. And since the American type of parties don't happen, partying in the street is just called going out with your friends.

Another thing: Spaniards stay out so much later than Americans. For example, I came home at 2am and I was all ready to sneak in and such. Didn't need to. Everyone was up and all the lights were on. 2am is actually pretty early. Clubs don't open until 3am. And by the way, a fair number of clubs are free for females, sorry guys. It's a different lifestyle for sure.

Our castellano professor even told us the other days that it is very, very "ugly" to buy someone a drink here. You only do that to, uh, people you can buy. So yeah. Not a good way to chat up a local. Also, she told us that if you aren't interested in a guy, don't smile at him. Americans, we just smile a lot, especially when people are talking to us. She says that she likes to tell her foreign students these things because its just not something you will find in a guidebook. And Americans in particular tend to have trouble because we are much more comfortable with talking with strangers than Spaniards are and that can lead to problems.

She brought up and interesting point about that too. Spaniards stay in their groups with their same friends for most of their lives. They do the same things. They like to be safe. It's very hard to make friends outside of your group because you need an excuse to talk to people. You can't just go up to someone. It almost horrifies her that Americans are so trusting of strangers, as she put it, especially since she pointed out that it's very easy for people to get guns in the US and there are just so many around. How do you know the person you are talking with isn't crazy and has a gun, she had asked us. We just kind of looked at each other and thought, huh, never thought of it that way.

A huge cultural difference, no?

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