~Runas~

Friday the 14th, Jiovana called Connie and I to go out. (Jiovana is the 20 year old daughter of a Rotary member that I met) So we got ready & Jiovana and her 15 year old brother picked us up around 8:30. They took us to this local restaurant that was going to have a live band later in the night. Runas was really chill place where I drank some amaretto Sours & Connie had a Pisco Sour. Personally, Pisco Sours are better than Pisco with coke, but that's just my opinion. By the end of the night, Jiovana's mom, two girl friends of Jiovana, her dad, Jose, another Rotarian friend (Jose's best friend to be more specific), and 4 guy friends of Jiovana, and her boyfriend had joined us at Runas. We didn't really eat a meal, we just ordered an appetizer that was meat with onions. It was really good.

Jiovana is really cool, she talked a lot but I understood most everything she said. We started speaking some Spanglish because she wanted to practice her English, so that was kind of fun. And her dad moved down the table to talk to me, which was neat. I carried on my first full conversation entirely in Spanish with him, and let me tell you after about an hour my brain literally HURT. You can't imagine how difficult it was because I had to pay complete attention to everything because I didn't know some words so I had to pick up on context clues. And anyone who knows me, knows that I have a slight problem paying attention 24/7.

Around 2:00 a.m. Jiovana, Connie, Jiovana's brother, and her friends left for a club called "Salsa Morana." From the outside, the building was so ugly. Actually, on the inside it wasn't that pretty either. Pretty basic. To be honest I liked the layout of Coyote better, but it was still fun.

The DJ was pretty good. I thought that the song selection was kind of random though. They had pieces of really old American songs (like I'm talking classic songs from the 90's and 80's) mixed into their rap songs, but it was cool. They played just enough to make the song interesting. Salsa is really fun to dance to, you actually have to have some coordination and skill to dance to it. They played some techno, which I cared for about as much as I care for techno in the US. They played some old snoop dog songs, some 50 cent. Nothing like brand brand new, but the songs were still cool club songs. But most of the songs they played were either reggeaton or salsa.

Let's take a minute to talk about Latin boys & their dancing skills. First off, as soon as we walk in some guy wants to dance with Connie and his friend wants to dance with me. So, we consent. Within 45 seconds I decided that I had made an awful mistake. The guy that I was dancing with..... wow I can't even put into words what he was attempting to do. First off, we thought the 3rd guy that was with them was the one that wanted to dance with me, not the short guy. Secondly, he was like just comical to watch. I had to look up, left, right just anywhere but down (and i say down because he was my height but was dancing with his legs bent so much that he was at the level of my chest or lower) because if I looked down I started laughing. Thank GOD Jiovana's friend saved me, too bad it took him about 5 songs to realize that I needed to be saved.

Then, there were the "artistic" dancers. Everyone knows that I LOVE to out to Vise Versa & I have never in my life witnessed this type of "artistic" dance. It was interesting to say the least and I think I should just leave it like that.

Then, Latin men as a whole. WOW. If what they saw about dance ability holds true DAMN. I mean that's all I can say. But, I am going to elaborate. They have so much fun when they dance and they don't have to be wasted to dance. They dance for fun. And the dancing is different here. You don't dance pressed up on the other person the whole time, and girls don't really ever dance real close to each other like we typically do in Morgantown. When you dance here, on some songs (like reggeaton) you dance close. But for the most part you dance with a little bit of space and the guys are really good dancers. They move their hips and I don't know it's just cool. The guy I was dancing with was really good at Salsa. Salsa is so fun to dance to. The hip movements are so rhythmic and you don't stand in one spot. You kind of dance around in a circle but everything is about the hips. And the guy spins you around and pulls you close or pushes you away. I would love to dance Salsa more often.....

Jose keeps telling me that in another life I was Chilean. If you think about it, I love Salsa, reggeaton, the food, the culture, the people, the night life....