Item #28 - Visit Puerto Rico

"Hola, Jerry! I'm into this Puerto Rican day! The sights! The sounds! The hot, spicy flavor of it all! It's caliente, Jerry!"   -Kramer
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I took AP Spanish my senior year of high school. It was taught by Mrs B (anonymity protected), who also happened to be our religion teacher.

Since my high school was an all-boys school, and since we didn't have to hold back in front of girls, we acted even more immature while at school than the average teenage boys would. That also meant we were basically an 800-person strong "old boys club", passing down rumors and myths from class to class. Every class had a story on why the typing teacher, Mr Bacon,was apparently kicked out of the brotherhood (the male version of nuns that taught 20% of our classes). Our class' myth? He got caught having sex with Mrs B . . . . I can neither confirm nor deny this rumor.

On the very first day, we were given a non-graded assignment. Get up in front of the class, and in Spanish, give an impromptu 1 minute summary on what you did over the summer. Fairly simple, and since the entire class was now entering its 4th year of Spanish, it was fairly easy. But being the boys club that we were, we decided to have a fun with it.

I got to go with the first half of the class - the kids who went on day #1. I forget what the entire 60 seconds entailed, though I'm sure it was something along the lines of "Jugaba al fútbol. He trabajado en un cine." (I played soccer. I worked at a movie theater). I decided to finish though with the always hilarious mom joke. "Fui a la casa de Micah para ver su madre." (I went to Micah's house to see his mom). Technically, nothing dirty to Mrs B. I mean, I'm just a friendly kid who wanted to see how Micah;s mom was doing. SEE her.  But the point got across to the class. 

The next day, the rest of the class gave their speeches. Micah, the resident class clown, had a day to figure out how to not be out done. Again, I'm not sure how his whole speech went, but I know it finished like this: 

Micah:  Fui a la casa de Al para hacer su madre (I went to Al's house to do his mom). 
Note - the previous phrase was uttered while Micah did the following:

Mrs B:  Micah! Get out!

Micah: What? I thought "hacer" meant "to see" 

This story maybe one of those "funnier if you were there" stories, but I still think someone doing pelvic thrusts while talking in Spanish about doing his friend's mom in front of the religion teacher is still amusing regardless. 

15 years later, Micah and I would reunite to try and use our Spanish knowledge for good. Our friend Bryan had been working down in San Juan, Puerto Rico, for the last year and a half, and I had been wanting to get down there at some point. Last year, I talked about it, and did nothing about it. This year, it was time to actually show some initiative. So after 5 or so months of half-assed planning, I met Micah and his girlfriend Sarah down in San Juan for a 3 day weekend, crashing at Bryan's.  

There's no great narrative to the San Juan trip, so we roll with lazy bullet points instead:

• This is the best picture of the beach I have. Notice something? . . . An utter lack of sun. 80% of our non-excursion time, it was raining. And watching Hulu in San Juan is really not that more exotic than watching Hulu in Boston (though both Community and Parks and Rec were fantastic last week. Seriously people. Get on board).

• Speaking of percentages, 98% of all Puerto Rican girls at the bar wear heels. And 96% of those girls were good looking. Multiply those numbers together, and you get a very high number of good looking girls in high heels . . .  all of which I'm just going to stare at while holding a drink instead of actually having what the Puerto Ricans call "cojones." If only I knew a pick-up line in Spanish besides asking them where the library was.
• In Barcelona, it definitely helped to know some Spanish, though you could probably get away without knowing any at all. In San Juan? Yeah, you didn't need any. It really was like Spain and the US had some sexy time and made a baby.
• Bryan picked me up from the airport. As we were getting off the highway on the way to his place, I wondered aloud about the cuisine down there . . . . and then we immediately drove past a Starbucks, Subway, Burger King and Uno's Pizza. Even my weak palette was disappointed by those sights. But we did make it to some delicious hole-in-the-wall Mexican food and tequila the last night. Viva!
• Fun fact for the day - more Puerto Ricans live off the island (typically in the states) than do on the island.  Mind? . . . blown.
• The weekend also consisted of 2 events worthy of their own itemization, as I would have counted them no matter where I was. They'll get their own posts. Puerto Ricans spiders, and Puerto Rican cocks. Yeah, you're intrigued.