Sunday, September 7th "Family background here in Seville; Dinner in a Pueblo - Indulgence; Sunday morning in Santa Catalina"

I don't mention a lot my situation in Seville in regards to the family and my significant other. It makes for interesting reading and hopefully I won't have to explain it to too many people if they read it here. For may family's sake I'll just use initials for their names. My sister, J, is married to A. They met during her study abroad year in Seville back in 1987. In 1989 I visited J and A and stayed with A's family for about a month. I spoke very little Spanish, but quickly learned estoy lleno after a few nights of eating at their house. They in turn quickly learned what "I'm full" means in English. I met G along with the rest of the family, she being only 15 and myself 19 at the time. She was just the sister of A and I was the just the brother of J at the time. Are you following all these initials?

Over the years we saw each other whenever I came to Sevilla to visit my sister. And I was never anything more than the brother of her sister-in-law. She lived in Spain and I lived in the U.S. Finally last year she visited the States while I was living there. With my plan to go back to Sevilla, and her badly needing translation things just, well, happened. So this is how I've come to be what A, my brother-in-law, calls his doble-cuñado. He's married to my sister and I'm going out with his sister. As we have to explain to many it's all legal! Whew!

So we spent Friday night in Umbrete with G's sister. Her brother Carlos picked us up and we headed out to Maribel and Miguel's new house. Nice place, with much more space than the 400 square feet we have in the center. Large patio, big rooms, upstairs terrace and air that actually moves. I could even see a star or two. Everything was set up for a long night. The grill outside, kilos and kilos of secreto and presa iberica to throw on the grill, plates of jamón serrano, manchego, and chorizo, many liters of cold Cruzcampo, two fifths of Brugal rum, coke and some other strange after dinner liqueur. Five people ate as if we were ten. I think we spent 6 hours at the same table, except when it was time to open up another liter of cerveza or perhaps a run to the freezer for more ice. Around 4am we realized nobody was in condition to drive us back to Sevilla so we rolled out the beds and the couch and spent the night there.

In the morning we had breakfast of jamón serrano on toast with olive oil and tomato, coffee and water, and then an hour later a beer to "brighten up our day". Made it back to our apartment around 2pm, ate lunch and then slept until 8:30. We spent the night watching the selección (Spanish national team) beat Portugal 3-0. Joaquín, from Betis, scored the second goal.

This morning we did manage to get out of bed early and we were out in the street at 8:45. Sevilla on a Sunday at 8:45 is a ghost town. I think most people are still getting home from the bars and it's a nice change from the city life here. Wandered into the San Buenaventura down the street where they know us well. We don't even have to order any more when we get here - they already know. It's nice to be back home.