En Finalamente (Chapter 3)

But no, our night was not over. . .from here we went to another bar (La Dama de Las Camelias) and my companions had more beers, I ordered water (by this time I had stopped. . actually I had stopped a while ago. . apparently I am a lightweight now a days. . .interestingly, one of my teachers told me that the difference between an average party night and a special party night is 20 and 40 beers. . that's a lot of beer, either way).

This bar (an afterbar) had a Cuban feel and the music was a little slower and the dancing a little less intimidating. Unfortunately, we were pretty much done with the dancing. We just talked and joked and watched one of our companions (Esme) sink into a fairly drunken stupor. By the way, the cast of characters is: Rolando, Luis, Esme, Sarah, Me, Laura, and Meme (the latter two left earlier).

It was great. By the end of the night strangers were engaging in other stranger's conversations and no one could really say anything straight. I couldn't understand a damn conversation I was evesdropping on, but I'm pretty sure it was not due to my Spanish comprehension level. I overheard one conversation that went like this:

Hable?
Hables. .
Habla?
Hables, hables. .
Si. . Hables?
Hables, hables, hables, hables.

I'm not joking. It was awesome.

The most surreal part of the night was when a gringo our age dressed in hip-hop type clothing (big baseball hat, big, low-riding pants, jersey) kneeled down to our level (by this time we were all sitting/squatting on the floor) and started begging a ciggarete off of Esme and Luis, in excellent Spanish. And then he started talking to Sarah and apparently they are both from the same town in Colorado. . and he's been here for three years. That was when I started looking for the video cameras, because it was so strange, so very very strange.