This afternoon, I baked Snickerdoodles to take to our dinner - they turned out soft and chewy with a little bite and lots of cinnamon - perfect. We took a bus (wow two days in a row), and spent five hours eating, talking, eating, laughing, eating, singing, and eating. Actually only one guy sang, a Spanish university student who didn't speak Chinese sang along karaoke style while sounding out the Chinese words on the screen of a phone...
The girl who invited us was in my language class for a short time. We have kept in touch - going out a couple of times. Her parents met her in Spain and they will be traveling around Europe together for a few weeks - but they are in Sevilla for a couple of nights. A bunch of folks that the student knew from Sevilla got together for her last nights in town.
Now a math problem. There were three primary languages - Mandarin Chinese (spoken by 4 people), English (spoken by 6 people and 2 others a little), and Spanish (spoken by 4 people + 2 of us who spoke enough to get by and 2 others a little). Two people spoke at least some of all three. Ok, there were 10 people in all. Can you figure out how many people spoke only one of the three languages?
The girl and her parents made a number of traditional Chinese dishes and the food was wonderful. I am posting a few pictures below, but what I wish I could post was an audio file of the cacophony of conversations with people switching in and out of languages telling silly stories and describing their views on a broad range of topics and finding connections with each others lives, work, friends, travels, and experiences - constantly adapting and translating for each other so that everyone who was interested could hear and understand.
Since we left so late, the buses were on a night bus schedule - so we decided to head home on bikes instead. It was a lovely night. Of course, now it is nearly 2:30 in the morning (don't worry, Albert has been asleep for a while now) and I am just finishing up this blog entry.... so tomorrow might get a late start. But, it was worth it - what a fun night.
