group showers= great time to learn spanish

I never had the group shower experience. Maybe this is because women tend to prefer to shower in the privacy of their own house, or its just not common like it is for men to stand around in the locker room naked and talk. Apparantly it is though, and I thought wrong. Since I am living at the YMCA, i also use the facilities at the Y (including the showers). The shower room is a giant room with 15 shower heads. My first day I was a little apprehensive. Not because I care about standing in a shower with other women, but because they were all singing and chatting away. Don´t get me wrong. I enjoy singing in the shower as much as the person next to me, but its the singing part that I considered to be private, not the actual showering.

Its now a regular occurance that the old ladies chat it up with me as I´m washing my hair, or lathering up with soap. Getting dressed too. I always heard comedic stories about the strange guy who will come upto you in the men´s locker room, totally naked, and put his foot up on the bench, stretch out and start conversation. It happens in the womens locker room too. I´m in no hurry to throw my clothes on, but I have other things to do instead of stand their clothless with my towel in my hand, and talk about what I ate last night for dinner.

With that said, my conversational spanish is improving drastically due to these ´shower talks´, so I can´t complain. I never knew how friendly the locker room was...maybe I was just attending the wrong locker rooms prior to this trip. We, or actually, I will know when I reach full comfort level, and this is when I can sing freely in the group shower. And it will certaintly be madonna.