Ok, so I told you that I might share some bulerías tesoros directly from the mouth of Ana María López with you today or tomorrow. Well, it's not happening today because I just got this great email from Becky. Becky is a student. She came on the Spain Tour.
Below you'll find an email that she sent to her husband.
She passed it along to me. and I asked her if I could post it. She was sending it to me for me, but she very graciously agreed.
I read it as a series of snapshots showing how life has been going here in Jerez, which is why I wanted to share it with all of you. So, here you go, from Becky...
What a full and fabulous day.
We went to our last bulerías class this morning. Ana María had us each dance by ourselves. I was a-skared. But I did it. She said I got out of compás once but got right back on, and I got a smile and a nod. Secretly - I was ready to try it again, but my turn didn't come back up. Then, she offered and poured us all a beer... We were so honored by the gesture. We have been talking about this all day. What an amazing experience. We all signed one of your cards and bought her an expensive bottle of sherry from our bodega tour yesterday. Did I tell you about that????
So I came back to the apartment to have lunch and take my first siesta... Which was only 24 minutes. And I never really went to sleep. It is all too exciting and busy to rest.
Then to Mercedes's class with new material and a solid hour of castanets... Amy says it's more like 4 freakin' hours because she'd never done castanets before coming to Jerez.
Then we showered up, went to tapas together until 10 pm, and we got 2 taxis to go to Peña Terremoto to see singer David Lagos and his brother Alfredo who plays the best flipping guitar I've ever heard.
So these peñas are clubs. But you can go to their shows for free, and they have a bar that sells oloroso sherry, etc. in little plastic shot glasses for 1.20 euros.
We were all awestruck and emotional and couldn't believe what we were seeing and believing. Then Mercedes was invited up to perform bulerías. We, once again, could not believe what we were witnessing.
Afterward, Laura talked to a Jerezano friend who is friends with an important member of the peña, and he gave us 4 CD's to copy and share. Of Fernando Terremoto who the peña is named for and who died over 2 years ago. More to that story later.
We're so excited and energized we can't sleep...
But we must. We have our final class with Mercedes at 10:30. We dance with her big dogs the first hour. But we are going to hold our own and show them we have cajones y I can't believe we are heading to the finale.
Big show tomorrow night at the Villamarta Theatre: Jesus Mendez and Miguel Poveda. Unbelievable.
Until tomorrow, it's almost 2 am...
As always, your comments are welcome. You can leave one below.
And, just in case you haven't heard, Ricardo is coming to Portland in a couple of weeks!