Lamento Boliviano

The Mexican Carnaval didn't happen.......again. This time we had the right night, and the right time, but when we arrived, there was nothing going on except for a DJ and a few tables worth of people at the riverside bar/restaurant. As I was walking there I ran into Adina and her French friend Adrian, who ended up being really fun to hang out with. The three of us got a table and had a drink anyway, despite the lack of carnaval, and Diana joined us shortly after. The four of us went for dinner at Luka Lu, one of my favorite restaurants in Prague (so far, because I know sooo many, ha:) and then to a small underground bar where they were playing very loud American music (good stuff, not crappy stuff). We sat awhile having a drink, and headed out around 12:30am.

Walking back toward Andel, Diana and I decided to stop into Rincon Latino and see how it was. We were at the bar having a drink when two guys came up and asked us to dance. Mine turned out to be from Bolivia. I'd seen him there before several times but we never spoke. I warned him that I'm really not that good at salsa, but we danced anyway and he turned out to be a really good lead. So we danced, and Diana danced with his friend Gabriel (mexicano), and then they invited us to their table where we met a couple more of their friends from Mexico. They were all really nice but slowly left one by one. At the end I was left with Rolando, the Bolivian. We danced quite a bit, and then while he was off dancing with other people and I took a break, I chatted/danced with my semi-new friend Sbendi from Macedonia. He's super nice and speaks about 500 languages (okay, 6), but is just a really nice guy. I'm trying to get him in at my company because I think he'd be really good for it. I also made up a great Ariba joke about him, which Diana loved:

Knock knock.
Who's there?
Sbendi.
Sbendi who?
Sbendi management!!

Hahahhaha, for you non-Aribians, that's a play on Spend Management. Man I love business humor.

Anyway, after some time, Rolando was hungry and I accompanied the borrachito to the walk-up window (because nobody has cars here, and something's got to be open 24 hours:) of KFC, then sat with him on a bench while he ate his chicken. We ended up talking, and talking, and talking, and talking, and talking, basically non-stop until about 7pm today. No funny stuff, really just truly hanging out and getting to know each other. It's not a romantic thing - we even talked about it and agreed that we just don't get that vibe from each other - but that we could see being really really good friends. He suggested one weekend soon that we go to Prague Castle because I haven't actually been there yet, and he said I really have to go before winter comes. He offered to help me build my Ikea furniture when it comes. We talked about all kinds of things we want to do - I feel like I really made a friend with none of the BS that usually comes with meeting a guy here. I really love it more every day here - you never know who you're going to meet or who's going to come into your life from one minute to the next.

Back to work tomorrow. Talked to Adina tonight, we might go see a movie tomorrow (hopefully Beliza can make it, too:).

Buenas noches, mi gente.