FAMILY DIN

Last night as a group we experienced a family oriented event. For the birthday of our friend Kate we traversed all the way to a neighborhood called La Lisa to have a dinner with her friend Damian’s parents. The experience was absolutely lovely. The house was filled with an aroma of delicious authentic Cuban food and the atmosphere was purely conversational. We drank white rum and coke cocktails and talked for ours about all subjects under the sun and it was a smashing success. The culture of conversation here is particularly strong in events such as this and as the food and rum start flowing out of the kitchen. Words of all shapes and sizes and in both English and Spanish rush out of the mouths of all participants in the house and laughter and games such as dominos always ensue. I find conversation to be most people’s absolute mode of release we have a need to think and speak and share what we are thinking and we design entire social situations around this notion. The Cuban party at its core is about entering this flow of shared speech and relieving the stresses of the day by sharing energy with each other. This concept of sharing has surfaced multiple times in my blog posts and I think it plays back into the central theme of community. It is always astounding to me that with a will to communicate people can always find something to dig up as a means of conversation.