Partying like a Spaniard

About a month ago my (Spanish) roommate Marta and I decided to have a joint birthday dinner because our birthdays are only two days apart.  To make a very long story short, we had to make final arrangements for the party last minute.  By the time we announced the date for the party, all of my guiri friends had already made plans for the holiday weekend.  As a result, I spent my birthday with Marta's Spanish friends.  Craig, my other roommate Paloma, and I were the only guiris.  At first I was little disappointed that my other friends couldn't make it as well, but it turned out to be a cultural experience.  In Spain, the word for birthday party is taken from the word birthday, cumpleaños, and shortened to cumple.  And a true cumple it was.

Directly below my apartment there are two bars on either side and a plaza across the street with tables.  On a daily basis there are customers lining the sidewalk and plaza conversing (aka shouting), arguing about football, and screaming for the camarero--from 8am to 2am.  The three of us above go crazy trying to put up with the constant noise.

But on the night of the cumple, it was our turn to disturb the neighbors.  We reserved a table for the twelve in the plaza and spent the night shouting for José the waiter, yelling across the table, and laughing louder than Dios.  For hours we drank the local Estrella Levante beer, ate the three-course menú, and enjoyed the birthday cake that Marta had prepared.  The dinner lasted for three hours.

I felt very murciana.

As later we found out that Marta received a scholarship to study at West Virginia University.  We're going to spend another year living in the same city, only on the other side of the Atlantic.  Next year Marta and I will have a cumple americano.


My advice to a guiri:  Celebrate your birthday with a cumple.