This Christmas I visited home. It was just about the strangest feeling. I was stopping by, saying hello, and leaving for another six months. But, it was also happy. It was like a layover to help me push homesickness away in order to enjoy my last lag in Spain. I was at a point in my life timeline where I was pretty positive my Iberian Peninsula adventures were coming to an end. I would be moving back to Bird-Town in summer. I was already pondering going to look for some rockin' bilingual job, interpreting on the side, and hopefully becoming stable enough to move into the near-Uptown area. Well... that was before I met the Spaniard everyone said for years and years that I would end up meeting. Right when I was pretty convinced my love affair with this country was ending, turns out it was just beginning...
Summer came and the days started to pass, and pass, and keep on passing. I soon realized I had to make a decision: to move home or to visit. I ended up with the later choice, and "take my Spaniard home day" came in late August.
The visit home is a strange sensation, as suddenly meeting up with friends and family is for catch-up and meet my fabulous boyfriend purposes. Days in Minneapolis were filled with concerns about where to eat? where to drink? where to do everything I love about this city and only have two weeks to do? Talk about decisions!!! The plus side is that playing tour guide with a foreigner makes things way more fun. We were generously gifted Twins and Vikings tickets. My mom threw a family BBQ. My friends made lots o' time to hang out. I got to watch Pelayo eat his first s'more, and, shit, we even got to shoot a gun at Bill's Gun Range!
I considered filling this blog entry with a blurb about every stop on our month long American adventure. But then I realized that can get quite boring to read, and even to write. SO, I am going to debut my fabulous Spaniard on my blog today with the most entertaining story of the trip... And if this bores you then you are probably boring.
...
It was a stickily humid weeknight right in the heart of Uptown, where we were engaging in the typical tourism chat which always consists of: "This used to be hipster and cool and unique but is now commercialism center." Yes. Very typical. And overdone. But true? Anyway, as we were walking up Lake, a few guys sped past on their neon-glowing motorcycles. Pelayo does the whole, I'm a dude and love motorcycles thing, whips out his camera and tries to snap them, failing pretty miserably. So, the chase down starts. We run, as casually as possible, stalking them into the Cowboy Slim's parking lot. Suddenly there was no way to sneakily takes pictures of them. I am used to being a foreigner and have come to discover that when you are foreign you can get away with shit you cannot get away with being a local, like asking three scary, gangster looking bikers if you can take their picture. My conclusion? "Pelayo, ask them if you can take a pic with them." To my surprise, he does.
"Hey, can I take a picture with you guys?" he asks innocently.
"You can take a picture of the bike, but not of me," biker 1 growls. Camera in hand, I started to back up slowly...
It seemed like an eternity passed before Pelayo let a huge grin spread across his face and spit out, "But I wanna take a picture with the bad boys!!" He recalls regretting that the second it flew from his lips, but it ended up saving his ass.
"Umm, you're not from here, right?" questions biker 1.
"Nope, I'm from Spain."
"Yeah, that's what I thought." Is that really what he thought, though? Of all the foreign dudes asking to take pictures of you- a scary as hell dude- they would be from Spain? Whatevs. All I know is that all of a sudden this guy was like, nicer than I could have ever imagined. "Is it your first time here? Why are you here? Where did you guys go?? Did you go to Dinkytown for Mesa Pizza? Are you gonna go in to Cowboy Slims? There is a better one is Bloomington, you should bring him to Bloomington. Did you go to the Mall of America? When are you guys getting married????"
We chit-chatted, took a couple of pictures, and kept on our way.
I guess pigs can fly now.
Summer came and the days started to pass, and pass, and keep on passing. I soon realized I had to make a decision: to move home or to visit. I ended up with the later choice, and "take my Spaniard home day" came in late August.
The visit home is a strange sensation, as suddenly meeting up with friends and family is for catch-up and meet my fabulous boyfriend purposes. Days in Minneapolis were filled with concerns about where to eat? where to drink? where to do everything I love about this city and only have two weeks to do? Talk about decisions!!! The plus side is that playing tour guide with a foreigner makes things way more fun. We were generously gifted Twins and Vikings tickets. My mom threw a family BBQ. My friends made lots o' time to hang out. I got to watch Pelayo eat his first s'more, and, shit, we even got to shoot a gun at Bill's Gun Range!
I considered filling this blog entry with a blurb about every stop on our month long American adventure. But then I realized that can get quite boring to read, and even to write. SO, I am going to debut my fabulous Spaniard on my blog today with the most entertaining story of the trip... And if this bores you then you are probably boring.
...
It was a stickily humid weeknight right in the heart of Uptown, where we were engaging in the typical tourism chat which always consists of: "This used to be hipster and cool and unique but is now commercialism center." Yes. Very typical. And overdone. But true? Anyway, as we were walking up Lake, a few guys sped past on their neon-glowing motorcycles. Pelayo does the whole, I'm a dude and love motorcycles thing, whips out his camera and tries to snap them, failing pretty miserably. So, the chase down starts. We run, as casually as possible, stalking them into the Cowboy Slim's parking lot. Suddenly there was no way to sneakily takes pictures of them. I am used to being a foreigner and have come to discover that when you are foreign you can get away with shit you cannot get away with being a local, like asking three scary, gangster looking bikers if you can take their picture. My conclusion? "Pelayo, ask them if you can take a pic with them." To my surprise, he does.
"Hey, can I take a picture with you guys?" he asks innocently.
"You can take a picture of the bike, but not of me," biker 1 growls. Camera in hand, I started to back up slowly...
It seemed like an eternity passed before Pelayo let a huge grin spread across his face and spit out, "But I wanna take a picture with the bad boys!!" He recalls regretting that the second it flew from his lips, but it ended up saving his ass.
"Umm, you're not from here, right?" questions biker 1.
"Nope, I'm from Spain."
"Yeah, that's what I thought." Is that really what he thought, though? Of all the foreign dudes asking to take pictures of you- a scary as hell dude- they would be from Spain? Whatevs. All I know is that all of a sudden this guy was like, nicer than I could have ever imagined. "Is it your first time here? Why are you here? Where did you guys go?? Did you go to Dinkytown for Mesa Pizza? Are you gonna go in to Cowboy Slims? There is a better one is Bloomington, you should bring him to Bloomington. Did you go to the Mall of America? When are you guys getting married????"
We chit-chatted, took a couple of pictures, and kept on our way.
I guess pigs can fly now.
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