*giggles*

Hi! I have all of my blogs from this weekend written, but I need to study for my last exam in two hours, so I´m just going to post this (the most interesting one) now, and the rest tomorrow when I don´t have to do anything.

Friday night, my late class was canceled. Since I knew I would be busy all weekend (beach Saturday, possible church activity Saturday night, church and game Sunday), I had decided to study Friday night. Everyone else was going to a popular club in the middle of the night, which didn’t particularly interest me, so I planned on using the computer lab until it closed, going home, eating dinner, and studying. All proceeded according to plan, until approximately 7:20.

I heard my phone ring. Shuffling through my bag to find it, I picked it up and glanced at the caller ID. Instead of telling me the number though, it simply said “ID Withheld”. I thought that was rather odd, but I answered it anyway, with my standard “Hola!” When I don’t know who it is. (I love that my default language is Spanish). The response came back in Spanish…"Hola Carolin! Es Wolfang. Que pasa este noche?”

(For the sake of my non-Spanish-speaker readers, I will now relate the conversation in English).

Me: Nothing…
Wolfang: Good! Because I wanted to invite you to go get tapas tonight.
Me: Ok! When?
Wolfang: In an hour?
Me: Ok! Where?
Wolfang: At…Plaza de Colon
Me: Sounds great! I’ll see you then!

As I hang up the phone, I slightly freak out. An hour was not nearly enough time! He actually wanted to meet me at a plaza that was only a 5 minute walk from where I was. But…I didn’t exactly look the greatest, and I live 20 minutes away. So I immediately threw my stuff together, and scampered home to freshen up. There, I think I set a new personal record for the time it took me to brush my teeth, do my hair, change clothes, and put on makeup. (12 minutes). Then I left again, telling my other roommates and señoras that I was hanging out with my Mormon friends and I wouldn’t be back for dinner.

I started the walk back to the Plaza, and stopped to get a little money out of a bank (I wasn’t sure I had quite enough to cover tapas, a drink, and whatever else we might do). Halfway to the plaza, I suddenly had a realization. “Wolfang didn’t actually specify that any of our other friends were coming, or were even invited…” I thought. “This could, actually, just be him and me…”

I tried to dismiss that thought, but I couldn’t shake it. Soon enough I arrived at the meeting point, and less that two minutes later Wolfang surfaced, and started to lead me down a popular tapas bar street, prattling all the way. Yup, it was just him and me. This would be fun! So we ended up sitting down outside, ordering drinks (by which I mean Orange Fanta) and talking for a while…and then he asked me if I’d like to get something real to eat for dinner, to which I agreed. So we ate dinner…for all of which he paid…and ended up talking until midnight (when he walked me home.)

The conversation was wonderful too -- Even if he had lots of fun continuously correcting my errors. (He actually made it a game at one point). But we covered dozens of different topics, including Venezuelan and American politics. I explained how the Electoral college works, and why it exists, in Spanish!! Then we started drawing impromptu maps of the world in my notebook..to show where I live in America, and he in Venezuela. Later we covered various things about church, our families, our friends, why he had decided to move to Spain, and a million other things. The funniest moment came when I found another verb that doesn’t colloquially translate in Spanish. I was ordering off the menu in Spanish, when I flipped it over and discovered that it was repeated in English. I looked at it, noted that to Wolfang, and then flipped it back over, saying “I can’t use English, that would be cheating!” Yeah. Cheating didn’t work at ALL in that context. It took me at least 5 minutes to explain to him how the expression worked in English. (What was even more funny, is that after coming home I discovered my roommate Alana had had the EXACT same "cheating" conversation with a Spanish person earlier that day).

So, I suppose all of this begs the question…was that a date? A cute Spanish (by which I actually mean Venezuelan) boy near my age called me, asked me out to dinner, paid for me, and walked me home. That sounds very date-like…but…somehow I’m not quite sure. The 4 people I hang out here with the most seem like family to each other…and like they’ve opened their arms and let me be their family, too. So…even though that felt like a date, most of me thinks it was just him being nice. It doesn’t help that my Spanish isn’t good enough to read the nuances of the conversation. But whatever it may or may not have been, I know I had one of my happiest nights in Spain thus far!