The Odd Quintuple

A German, a Colombian, two Americans, and a Guatemalan. In Seville. A fairly uncommon group I’d say, united in a fairly uncommon place, with levels of bi-and tri-linguacy ranging from Latin American Spanish, to almost Andalucía and classroom Spanish (that’s me), to English, and German. Our language in common was, of course, Spanish, with me being at a slight disadvantage because I wasn’t born in Latin America and didn’t spend a year in Ecuador in high school. But no matter; the laughter in some things like running out of gas in the middle of the night and getting caught in a downpour on the wrong side of the street run across languages and cultures, and by the end of the night the five of us were getting along quite well. A whole night of Spanish got me used to some easy phrases and speaking without thinking too much about verb endings, and for the most part being understood. “¡Que suerte!” was the most important phrase, because really, running out of gas in the semi-outskirts of Seville in the middle of the night in a town that doesn’t seem to have many gas stations… and then sputtering up to a Repsol sign 50 km away… is extreme luck. Sin duda. En serio. Buenisimo. The other word that became more cemented was “¡Hombre!”, which, in the words of a hippie at a dirt-lot music festival earlier in the evening, means nothing. Nonetheless, Sevillians, Germans, and our señoras use it often to positively punctuate their sentences and it’s fun to say, hombre.