Woo Party

Last night I went out with the seneca (exchange students from within Spain) and erasmus (students from Europe). It was a good time, but we skipped the usual "botellon" phase and went right to a discotec. I think most of the other students fake enjoying conversation in the same way I fake enjoying goofing off in a dark, loud, crowded and smokey room (it's okay, though. If you fake it and drink enough, you will end up having fun).

Or maybe they prefer that because it levels the social playingfield. The subtlies of conversation are lost in deafening eurodance. Difficult accents are also drowned out, so foreigners don't have worry about their enunciation and Spaniards don't have to worry about understanding them. Just smile and nod.

At least, that's what I imagine is the motivation for inflicting this experience week after week. It can't be for meeting girls. Sure, the guys make a lot of talk before we go out. But once we're there, we rarely break out of our own little social circle which includes, on a good night, 2 girls.*

I had to go hit on a couple of Canadian girls all alone because I couldn't convince Julio to come with me. I don't know how the fuck they meet girls in Extremadura, but "wingman" isn't in their vocabulary (it only recently entered mine). The Canadians brushed me off. Of course they did. I was breaking protocol. Don't give me that look. I don't make the rules, I just learn them.

Jose took a pictures of some of our past outings but I just now got my hands on them, so for today just pictures of last night. Complete with reckless commentary. Fuck them if they read this, I guess?:


Left to right, excluding myself:
-Bruno, the only genuinely friendly French person I've met. Stereotypical, yes, but if the shoe fits.
-Jose, one of the guys from Extremadura. Very considerate and intelligent.
-Antonio, from Sevilla. Kind of an asshole. Normally, this isn't a problem. Some of my best friends are assholes. But he's a different kind. He's like the horny jock stereotype, except he's smart enough to be a social opportunist, on top of that.


-Raquel, I forget from where in Spain she's from. She seems nice enough. Everyone likes her a lot. They don't know what you and I do, though. I detect a lot of falseness in her. Smiles too much.
-Jose again. Poor guy must've had taken 15 pictures of himself with Raquel. A symptom of nerd-herding? (see aside below).


-Guile (I dont know how to spell his name) is a dude from Belgium. I dont know him that well because his Spanish is pretty bad, but he's seems to be a fun and positive person.
-Julio is the other guy from Extremadura. He doesn't drink, but that's because he would probably kill off the last of his remaining neurons. He's actually a pretty cool, aside from being retarded.


You can't really see his face, but that's Anton (An Italian. I think that's his name?) screaming into Raquel's ear. She obviously has no clue what he's saying.


That's the other girl that was with out with us last night. Her name is Cindy, and she's Guile's girlfriend. I don't really know much about her because her Spanish is even worse than Guile's.


Just another photo. There are lots more, but they're pretty much all the same. Fun times.

*An aside:
UMR, by the way, is not the only place on Earth with a bad "ratio". A computer science department in an engineering university is not going to have many female students. This is especially true here in Spain where each department is somewhat isolated from the rest. Ours is OUTSIDE the city.

So this fear the guys have of dividing their attention from the few girls they know may be similar to the Rolla nerd-herd mindset. Each girl's got her own stock of nerds, and the nerds are afraid of straying from the flock. It's not like they've got a shadow of a chance with the shepard, but at least they get some female attention. Can't risk losing that, right?