Spain Part 23 – Lluvia de Verdad y Pop Goes the Weasel

It actually rained on Wednesday, of course it chose the time while we were walking to school to rain, and then cleared up into sunshine the rest of the day.  Sin embargo, classes went alright, we were reminded in every class that there would be a poetry reading the next day in honor of el día de San Valentín (Valentine’s Day).  Almost all of the professors had picked out a piece to read, the daughter of one of the professors was going to read her favorite poem, and two students from the center (including me) had written poems to recite. 

 

After class there was the taller Danzas del Mundo.  This week we learned a very authentic Canadian dance game (Leah, please ask Taylor if he ever played it) that you play to the tune of Pop Goes the Weasel.  We had a fun time trying to figure out what the heck the animal was called when Nacho (which is short for Ignacio) was first explaining it to us.  All he could say was that it was bigger than a squirrel, smaller than a raccoon, was like a fox, but not the same animal.  Finally, he was teaching us the steps and humming the tune under his breath when the girl standing next to him said “it’s a weasel!  You’re singing Pop Goes the Weasel.”  Nacho wanted to learn what the words meant but we told him that they’re just nonsense.

 

After that we learned a wedding dance from Israel and repeated the Greek and Scottish dances from last week.  Next week we’re going to do the Charleston.  Nacho told us that he would like to do something for the talent show at the end of the semester, so we should think about what kind of a dance we want to do.  We told him that we would like to do some of the partner dances, but it was hard because we are all girls (all 8 of us).  He said that he would bring 7 friends to class next week.  We don’t know if he was joking or not, but he definitely said that it should be easy to get a group of Spanish guys to come and dance with 8 American girls.