Adventures of Jill and Lisa, Part Six

By Jill

You know that feeling when you first wake up and your throat feels kind of full and scratchy and your head feels like it could possibly weigh about six times its normal size? Yes, that feeling. This is how Jill woke up on Monday morning, a full three days into the Valdelavilla experience.

Not that she didn’t try with all her might to keep it from happening. And not that she didn’t carefully follow a sort of prescribed regimen of medicinal procedures to keep it from getting any worse …

Let’s flashback to the night before waking up with the aforementioned sore throat and fever. It’s a night of mystery and intrigue. A night that was promised to change the entire course of our experience. A night that will ensure everything is made right and all the proverbial pieces of language learning will fall into place.

You guessed it, we were going to get sloppy-ass drunk.

But not just drunk, no, no, no. That would not be the Spanish way. Achieve a cheap buzz on some bad cerveza and inexpensive liquor? No.

We knew things were going to be different that night when we noticed the notorious wine drinking Spaniards abstained from the fine rioja that was at every table for lunch and dinner. “What’s this?” our heroines, Lisa and Jill asked themselves. “No wine with dinner?”

“No, no, no,” our Spanish friends said. “Tonight is….quemada.”

Quemada. Let me give you the short version of this tradition, nine different kinds of 1000% proof alcohol are mixed in a big silver bowl with dried fruit and coffee beans and then lit on fire while Celtic incantations are recited and we ask for blessing and the gift of enlightenment and something about cursing you with a smelly rear-end if you don’t believe in the ritual (The irony of which was not lost in translation, given the hoots of laughter as we read this in English and Spanish).

Seriously, you can’t make this stuff up.

So, my good Spaniards say, “Yil, Yil (the pronunciation of Jill), you must drink quemada to not get sick …”

Let me tell you, I’m pretty sure that the alcohol content in this concoction could have easily wiped out the bubonic plague, given the added bonus of a Celtic blessing, this Irish lass was game. “Bring it on!”

Lisa was so much more cautious. She took the cup offered her, gave it one sniff, and upon pronouncing it the odoriferous equivalent of gasoline, passed it up.

Jill on the other hand was not to be outdone by these fun-loving Spaniards. She took a gulp soon to be followed by that face two year olds make when you give them a slice of lemon or cough medicine or something they find to be equally distasteful.

“Wow!” (splutter, splutter, cough, gag) “Well, that’s some stuff!” After a few more half-hearted attempts to actually swallow the flaming kerosene, Jill decided she would just take her chances, and her more civilized glass of Bailey’s, and go to bed to wait for the worst.

Flash forward to Monday morning … wicked sore throat, raging fever, vile headache … so, apparently Jill was immune to the medicinal and magical powers of quemada … ok, let’s just say she may have even been allergic it.

Stay tuned to learn more about Lisa and Jill’s Spanish adventures regarding further attempts at self-medication and physical torture …