Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Gatitos, Gitanos, y Guiris

As I have started to become more accustomed to the environment here I have noticed a few things that are kinda funny to me.

1. Gatitos

If you do not speak spanish, gatitos or gatos are cats. There are cats frickin everywhere here! Most of them are annoying, but others are really cute. On our way to a friends birthday party we were walking along the river and you could hear the mews from the cats everywhere. They live in the shadows here...creepy.




2. Gitanos

With the current French controversy and my new found interest in gypsies I thought that this would be a fitting post. Similarly to the cats in this city...the gypsies are EVERYWHERE! I've been trying to sneak a few pictures...but they ask for money if you get a real good one. It has become somewhat of a joke that the perfect gypsy is the one that has a patterned scarf around their head and gypsy looking garb. I am still on the hunt for my perfect gypsy. However, I must admit that it is sad to see a group of people so marginalized in most European countries. What France is doing is only going to stir ethnic issues and cause more problems in the long run.

Ok...this gypsy is pretty close to being perfect.


3. Guiri

Americans are not called gringos here! But...dang...they should be! Guiri is a name for all of the foreigners here. I must admit it is hard to spot an American here...but there are so many popular hang-outs the Americans have adopted that it is not hard to find one. The first few weekends it was easy to pick out the guiri's because - like freshman college students - they hung out in large packs and roamed the city with their perfectly coiffed hair and slacks. Some of the more popular locations for this foreign group are the Chupiteria (they like their cheap shots), the Botellon (good place to socialize and meet other guiri's), and Granada10 (American music galore). Guiri's know that they are being photographed so I only was able to take two from some of the more common stomping grounds.

At a local bar called Hannigan's...its Irish, go figure.

At Granada10

2 comments:

  1. Whenever I smell cat pee, I think of Granada...

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  2. hahaha it surprisingly did not smell too strongly when i was there!

    ReplyDelete