Spanish dinner and birthday surprise

Now that I knocked out a paper, a journal and a presentation in Spanish, I finally have some time to blog more than a sentence.

This weekend was a Zoe and I weekend. Three of our roomies were gone and the apartment was so clean and quiet - it was perfect! On Friday night we wanted to try out this restaurant, Cerveseria Catalana, we had heard about that supposedly has great tapas. Well, we heard right. Best tapas I've had here. They were delicious. When we got to the restaurant around 9:30 it was packed! (That is one thing I won't miss when I have to return home, eating dinner so late!) They said it was probably about a forty minute wait so we ordered a glass of wine from the bar and just hung out around there. We were starting to get pretty hungry so we decided to just order tapas from the bar like a true native and a spot sitting at the bar had just opened up so we hoped on it. We ordered one tapa at a time and of course ordered more wine! We started with pan con tomate (bread with tomato, Spanish brochette), then had cured ham and cheese, then moved on to some shrimp skewers, next came some asparagus, and then we finished the tapas with a Spanish omelet. We ordered dessert, of course, but it was disgusting, so we didn't eat it. We ordered homemade cake because we figured it would be delicious, well we didn't know they would pour whiskey all over it! Way to ruin a perfectly good cake!

During the course of our meal, we heard this guy behind us say "lets play a game and guess where these girls are from." Some what annoyed because I was thinking either this is a sad sad pick up line, or he's calling us out on not being Spanish, I turned around to see who this guy was. He looked decent enough so I said, ok give it a try. In two guesses he guessed that I was from Indiana! Crazy! And then he asked where, and I gave my usual response and said "Its a really small town, you won't have heard of it." He said "Try me, my mom's from Indiana." So I told him and he goes, "Yea, there's good restaurant there called the Essenhaus and its close to Goshen that has La Hacienda, good mexican." He noticed that my mouth was about to hit the floor and he told me that his mom grew up in Walkarusa (Spelling?!) and he had actually just been in Middlebury/Goshen over Christmas for a wedding, had eaten at both the Essenhaus and Hacienda. Wow! What a crazy small world! So we ended up talking with him and the girl he was with. They are around 25ish and are friends from college. She works for the government and just decided to fly both of them to Barcelona, first class, for the WEEKEND! WHAT?! Crazy! Apparently, she does this sort of thing all the time. The weekend before she was in London and in like two weeks she was going to China for like 5 days, just because she wanted to. Wow. Ridiculous. But whatever, she was loaded so she bought Zoe and I a glass of wine and then the most expensive bottle of Cava (Spanish Champagne) for us to share. They were really cool and so fun to talk to. Zoe and I had a great night and felt really native after our dinner of tapas and wine sitting/standing around the bar.

After dinner we met up with Mike, Nick and Jake. It was raining pretty hard so while they were waiting for us they went into the Burger King. We ended up hanging out there until it closed at like 3. Ridiculous but so much fun! We like to refer to it as the BK Lounge if you will.

On Saturday, Kate, Amy and Christine, two of my sorority sisters and another girl from Butler respectively, were in town from Florence, so we hooked up with them and I took them to a club near our apartment called Mary's Place. The first time I was there was when Kiki was in town and I fell in love with the place. It's so much fun! I tried not to be too out of control though because on Sunday I had a surprise for someone special....

Mike's birthday is on May 13th. Unfortunately I probably won't be able to be with him on his birthday, but I still wanted to get him a birthday present before we left. I wanted the gift to be something that would remind him of his time in Barcelona and maybe even a little of me. So I decided to get him a FC Barcelona (the futbol team) jersey and a official mug. So I sneakily figured out who he would want on the back of the jersey and what size he would want. I'm so good at being sneaky and telling little white lies! I was deciding when to give this jersey to him and how to do and then I realized that this past Sunday was the 13th- a month before his birthday - perfect!

So I began to scheme. He likes the musician, Jack Johnson, as do I and he has a song called Banana pancakes and we've talked about how sometime when we visit each other I'll make him banana pancakes..... well the banana pancakes came a little early. I got up and made them on Sunday morning and then had everything set up and ready. I put his jersey and mug with a card on the table and made a 21 out of bananas on his pancake with a candle in it. I had him come in with his eyes closed and had the song "banana pancakes" playing. He opened his eyes and his reaction was priceless! Just what I wanted! I had successfully surprised him! I was elated! So we both enjoyed some wonderful banana pancakes and the whole time he just kept thanking me and saying how good a job I did with pulling it off. It was wonderful.

Definitely a good almost last weekend.

Zoe and I eating our shrimp!

Chillin' at the BK Lounge


Birthday surprise!