Journal Entry Four- The Irish Bar

This week one cultural encounter I had was when we went up to the Bunkers in Barcelona for sunset. It was myself, Mandy, Sandy, Adriana, and then my friend Lou and her friend Marissa who were visiting. We went up to this beautiful outlook and we brought wine, snacks and my speaker. We played mellow music and talked for a while. As the night was winding down, we really had no interest in leaving because we were just staring out over lit up Barcelona and it was absolutely incredible. We talked about how crazy and surreal this felt, the fact that the city that we had this overhead view of was our home for the next few months. It was one of those things where it all registered and as Adele’s song “I Drink Wine” played in the background, we literally cried. The way I felt in that moment I cannot begin to explain, the wine definitely had something to do with it, but it was a mix of gratitude and disbelief that I haven’t experienced in a while. Then, just as our cryfest was wrapping up, this gigantic group of Irish girl’s came over to us and began singing along to the music. We all finished off the Adele song, had some quick introductions and before we knew it, we were headed to Flaherty’s with them, the bar they were going to that night. That was where the true cultural interactions went down. I felt like every single person I met was from a different country. One group in particular that we spoke to was a group of guys from London. They bought us shots and we laughed about each others accidents. What I really noticed however was our different slang language. It was a mix of pronunciation differences and we also heard them use different words for adjectives like, young, old, short, bro. It was very interesting to be a part of and just to see these displayed cultural differences in terms of the things we do and say without thinking twice that may appear strange to someone of a different culture. This was definitely a situation in which you notice those variations on the exposed portion of the iceberg, the analogy we learned in class.