New Life abroad (again!)

Bloody telefonica!!

2008-09-30T14:13:00.002+02:00

Hy guys!
It's not that I'm too busy or in holidays. I'm not being able to write because the local monopolic phone company left us dry and hunging (or whatever the idiom is!!) and without a telephone line since mid-August!!

I'm unable to log in or even make a phone call since then and I'm force to go to the local cyber café round the corner. The place doubles as a long distance phone booth so is extremelly noisy, as I'm writing this I'm listening to a guy screaming his head off while talking with "babushka" back in Siberia or somewhere like it... I don't know if his conexion happened to be very bar or the old lady is deaft... In the next booth is a guy talking in rapid Latin American Spanish with his mother in Ecuador and that's even more distracting because he's telling her all sort of gossip about the family here and it's quite entertaining in a soap opera sort of way. (aparently his sister is going out with a -gasp- gipsy guy and all the family disaproved but there's nothing they can do really).
Nex to me where the computers are, sit two kids that should be in school as they're not older that 15, they're watching some video in youtube and beating the rythm on the table while singing badly out of tune (blame the headphones) in a phonetic English... that would be hillarious if it wasn't so annoying!

And last but not least all the keyboars are sticky and yucky and I'm tying as fast and lightly as i can in order of 1- not to get the muck in my fingers and 2. be able to get out asap.

Not nice.

Living in Spain is great fun most of the time but the services and the attention of clients is as bad as it can be in a third world backwater country.

With any luck we'll get phone line this month... or so they say in September.
Pray for me!

And my mother in law left

2008-05-06T23:33:00.002+02:00

On the 5th of May "the husband" took her to the airport where she took a direct flight to Argentina.
To my, and her surprise, I cried in the morning!!
The thing was that I left very early, before she was awake, and when I returned home, at around 10am, I was expecting to find her busy finishing packing but she was not to be seen... The flat was completely empty and it was if like a frozen hand grabbed my heart. I make myself a cup of tea and then she arrived and when I saw her.... I just burst into tears!!
All of a sudden I felt very sad and terribly lonely.
For goodness sake!! What's wrong with me!! The lady was a pain the backside most of the time, she's demanding, doesn't help around the house, messed up my bookshelves and turned upside down our routine... I truly though that I was going to be totally relieve when she finally went home. But no, when the moment arrived I was crying and feeling terribly sad.

To her credit, I have to say that she was as shocked as I was and the only thing she managed to say was: -"I didn't have a clue that you liked me being here! That you feel like this". To which I answered, still in tears and with my arms wrapped around her neck: "I didn't know either!".

Go figure!

The flat is really empty since she's gone and I really miss to have somebody here, even though she was useless and we bickered almost all the time... well... I guess that I miss having family around. In Bristol we always had friends and they were (and are) very loyal and I knew that I could count on a number of them, phone them and they'd be with me if need be. While here I've been feeling really alone. Being in Bristol recently just serve to remained me how lonely I really feel and now even she was going.

Don't get me wrong, living here is good but all this experience's been harder that what I wanted to admit even to myself. I know it takes time to make new friends and I know that it¡s even harder the older you get and I know all the theory... but I feel I'm holding myself up by my own hair... like the Baron Munchausen in the old movie saving himself from drowning by pulling himself out of the water by the straps of his boots (or his own hair, don't really remember). It doesn't really work in real life... not even as metaphor.

International rugby

2008-05-05T16:13:00.001+02:00

On the first of May P's club was invited to play in the local tournament in a town near Perpignan, in the south of France, a place that most people here consider as "north Catalunya" as the cultural links joining this regions are very ancient indeed. In fact the road signs in that area of France have the names of villages written both in French and Catalan and the local flag of Perpignan is the same as the Catalan flag, red and yellow.
So we woke up very early that day and drove all the way there in order to see our guys play.
Last year it was a bit of a traumatic experience for them as they were all under 10 years old and it was their first experience playing against children that live rugby since birth, as the game is particularly big in the region of a country of rugby lovers. By comparison rugby is an unknown and minority sport in Spain.
The French rules for kids playing are also slightly different and they're allow to kick the ball forward while that isn't allowed in Spain until they're older. On top of that they played rougher than Spanish kids and our guys were literally black and blue and that was also under their black and blue uniforms!! There were literally blood, sweat and tears (and almost a broken nose), all for us as we didn't win one match, I don't even think we managed a draw.
(you can check my entry here in my blog of when we went last year and our kids were trashed by the very good and tiny rugby players)

Anyway... probably because last year we had such trashing, most parents decided to stay at home to enjoy the fiesta day of Labour Day and when we arrived to the club we had just enough kids to form one team with one for changes. Hardly encouraging considering that most French teams have at least 2 full teams which give them plenty of fresh players.

The matchs were very short and there were one after the other, all morning and after an hour break for lunch they continued all afternoon. Our guys fought very bravely, as you can see in this close up with Patxi and Angel faces:
And I lost count of how many games we won as what counted was that they were giving the French teams a totally unexpected great run for their money!

Sant Cugat did'n win the tournament, nor was the last team; we finished somewhere in the middle which is a great improvement considering how strong the French teams are.

There was only one incident just before lunch time in which one of our best runner was badly hurt and we later learnt that he actually suffered a fracture on his left arm. But this was outside the field while Felipe was trying to show his dad how he tackle one of the big guys just minutes before, he went too far and tackle his unsuspecting dad, who promptly felt on top of him resulting in the fractured arm.
We then lost a player because he has to be taken to hospital by a French ambulance, luckily for the parents one of the drivers was local and spoke Catalan, because before the ambulance arrived I was translating to the doctor using my bad French and English.

That left our kids without a valuable player but also with no spares so by then end of the afternoon they were exhausted. Even then they really did it magnificently and actually won a cup to be kept at the club.

Here some more pictures:

The happiest coach in town Ricardo:

The hero of the day, Borja, the kid who scored most of our tries.

April (3)

2008-05-04T14:24:00.000+02:00

On the 23th of April I flew to Bristol. The idea was to take a few days off from the family to enjoy myself. A well deserved break. Actually is the first time that I take time off the family for me, and after a month a half of taking care of everybody plus my mother in law... well... I totally deserve it!! Better still: I earned it!

On the day I worked like mad and at 5pm I picked up "the husband" and he drove me to Girona airport where my RyanAir flight was due to leave at 8pm. I was a bit apprehensive as I never travelled with them before and I bought my tickets 3 months in advance, really dirt cheap, and I even saved money by doing the check in on-line. until the last moment I thought that somebody will stop me to say that something was wrong and that in order to fix it I'd have to pay a fortune.
No. Everything went smoothly and the flight was great. As good as Easyjet and a bit cheaper if you buy well in advance. Good to know if you're planing to visit me!
I decided to rent a car in Bristol as public transport is expensive and this trip was all about having a great time and I was planing to visit a lot of people and going to the Mall and Malalan for a bit of shopping. I've a got a good deal with National car hire and they gave me their smaller car, a lovely Daewo Matiz like the one we used to have when we lived in Bristol but bright green, which was a blessing as I couldn't miss it when I parked in a crowded car park.
From Bristol airport I drove straight to Tesco to buy some bread and milk to take to my friend who doesn't eat wheat or digest lactose. To my delight, I found lactose free milk which is something that's impossible to buy here. With age I found out that I cannot digest milk as I could so I started drinking tea instead of café au lait, but I'm forever missing a glass of milk. Here is even hard to find fresh milk as most milk sold here are long life UHT which don't taste as good to me.
While I was there I also brought the biggest box I could find of PH Tips as normal good tea is hard to find (and also Earl Gray and Miss Grey tea from Twinings, awfully expensive here), and a couple of jars of Tiptree marmalade, their Orange and Tangerine is the best one that I've ever tasted... you can buy it at El corte inglés here but it cost more than 5€ each... I wonder if the people at Tiptree would send it to me if I order a big box or something... otherwise I'd have to start making my own marmalade as I cannot find one that is remotely as good.
While I was there I also bought a couple of baked beans tins for Patxi, as there's no better treat for him than baked beans on toast for breakfast. Crazy if you ask me, but there you go.
As a joke I also brought a small Marmite jar although we all totally hated it... I placed it in a shelf in my kitchen very much in sight, and it makes me smile every time I see it, there's few things that remained me more of England as much as Marmite does.

In Bristol I stayed with my friend and former neighbour Rossana. She lives just opposite the house were we used to live so it was a bit strange and sad to see our old house and the garden that I miss so much, still there and with the daffodils that I planted still in the front garden.
We stayed talking for a long time and it's so nice to talk with an old and trusted girlfriend!! This is what I miss the most.

The next day I just went walking down Gloucester road, from Horfield to the Arches. The weather was fantastic, sunny and warm, Bristol at is best. Purely by chance I meet a few people who didn't even know that I was in town so, it took me 5 hours to walk a couple of miles as when I met somebody we had to go for a coffee and a chat to catch up.
Down in Gloucester road I found a great place were they sell t-shits with Bristolian speech written on them and I bought a couple for my guys back home. They loved it. Now I wish I've bought one for my self as they're the cutest things ever.

The other things that I've bought were books, new and second-hand and trousers. Trousers are ok here in Spain as you find a wide range of styles, materials and, of course, prices. However in Matalan (and most other shops in the UK anyway!) they have 3 different leg lengths and I know that my perfect fit is size 12, standard legs. Here in Spain, all trousers have extremely long legs that don't fit anybody and you're supposed to trim it at home. A total waste of time. And, of course, books in English are hard to come by and very expensive and I've only found one second-hand book shop in the neighbourhood of Gracia in Barcelona. Too far away from me to bother.

The shopping was great and I returned with 2 big bags to Spain full of goodies and pretty things. However, nothing is more important than the fact that most of my friends still live in Bristol and that I miss them very much indeed. After all most of my adult life took place in that city and forever will be part of me.
It was great to meet all the people that I miss. great to talk a lot, to catch up and laugh with my mates.

Specially lovely was to have lunch at Glynnis and meet all the ladies from the library. It reminded me of how fun it was to work there. We were all a bunch of crazy forty something chicks, except for Francis who was the self-appointed proper middle-aged lady, which only added to the spice of the place. We could (and should) write a sitcom based on our experience and I'm sure it can have people in stitches.
I'm still remember the time when somebody asked me very politely (sic): "can I borrow your prick stick, please". At the time I knew what a stick was and I thought I knew what a prick was but I couldn't put those together in the context of a lady with some paper on her hands asking me for one. So I say: "wait a minute, please" and turn to face Glynnis with the question: "what's a prick stick?". To her credit, she kept a straight face and only after she served the costumer she turn to me to show me.... a Pritt stick!!
Live and learn.

April (2)

2008-05-03T13:36:00.000+02:00

Sant Cugat rugby club, Patxi's club, was invited to play in the local tournament in mid-April so we all went to support him. My mother in law got bored after a while, poor thing, as she's not a sporty person, plus she's quite shy so she doesn't talk with anybody. But the rest of us had a great time. The weather was fantastic, very sunny but a bit chilly, and I forgot to bring sun cream protection or a hat so I ended with my face all red.
The kids played really well and I think they finished in the third place of all Catalunya, which is great.
After the tournament was over we decided to go with another families to have lunch by the sea in the nearby Costa Brava. The grown ups went to a restaurant overlooking the beach while the kids went on to play... cricket!!
Is funny that Patxi never played cricket while we were living in Bristol, (I don't even understand the rules!). But here with the other ex-pats kids he was just at home doing it. He's such a Brit! (not a brat!!).
This is really worlds apart form our life in Bristol, there I used to take Patxi to play rugby in the pouring rain while it was close to freezing and we were lucky if we could go after the match to get some hot chocolate to try to combat the frostbite! Here... well... just look at the pictures!! We were pleased enough but the British parents were positively glowing with glee as they drink nice wine while the kids run around in the sun.

April (1)

2008-04-30T11:49:00.000+02:00

April came and went so fast that it felt like the proverbial blink and and you miss it . Is it totally true that the older you get the faster times seems to pass. Although my dad tells me that it feels slow again once you pass your 70's. Wait and see. I just hope I'll still be bloggin by then...

I've been very busy in April. There's the usual stuff such as working, taxiing Patxi to his rugby practices and games, keeping the house going and so on and there was also some extra and very good things. All in all, a very good month. Few pictures, though, pity but I keep forgetting the camera even though I love to post pictures here.
Let's see...

I have to start writing about my students, sometime they say the funniest thing or use the cutest turn of phrases and we're really have a good time in class... at least I have a good time. From now on I'll start writing things down to bring here. I promise. No names of course.

On April I started going to yoga. There's a place just on the corner of my block, literally a few steps from my home and I was meaning to start going there since we moved here but for one reason or another I never did. Then "the husband" noticed a sign saying that they have a special offer and they were not charging joining fees for April so I had to join them. No more excuses.
There's a selection of classes doing different things and so far I've only doing Hatha yoga, twice a week and I'm really enjoying it. I don't even break a sweat but my abdominals and the muscles in my upper arms were hurting after a class or two so is not hard to figure it out that this is somehow working. Is also very relaxing and I appreciate that as I don't really know how to unwind and every little thing in life affect me a lot. Everybody have to wear white clothes in the class, which I though was a bit weird, but it does look really peaceful.
I discovered that I'm actually quite flexible and I'm no trouble crossing my legs with my knees on the floor and stuff like that, but, to my surprise, I've got no sense of balance whatsoever. I cannot even stand still in my two feet with my eyes close without swerving badly. And I'm not talking about wild strange yogi posture, no sir; while everybody in the class can stay peacefully still in one leg as in the picture, you can see me wobbling with my face contorted in concentration, tongue out and all, trying hard not to fall and failing miserably time after time.

I'm really going to try keep going as I can see yoga working just right for me.

We also went to the cinema in April, something unusual as movies are dubbed and we don't like that. We went to see Persepolis, and I mention it here because I know is on the Arnolfini in Bristol right now, so please go and watch it as is a gem. Is mostly a black and white animation of the story of an Iranian girl growing out in the 70's and during all the downs and downs that Iran has being through. Sometimes funny, sometimes sad, is a great inside into the culture and also a great entertainment. We loved it. "the husband" then downloaded the comic book in which the movie is based by Marjane Satrapi and I'm thinking of buying it as is comic as its best, with a real and moving story.

On the 19th and 20 of April there was a Fair of the earth in one park in Barcelona and as it's a annual event, I wanted to go and check it out to see if we may do some advertising of the local Freecycle group that I opened. Definitely next year I'm going to try and do some advertising of freecycle as the fair is all about recycling and green issues.
The fair was the usual mix of long-haired people badly playing drums, green activists, save-whatever stands and lovely hand made crafts for sale, plus great ethnic food from all over the world (including Argentinean barbecues!). What really surprise me was a solar oven that people can build by themselves with scrap of mirrors or polished metal. It looks like a parabolic dish and it work by concentrating sunlight into a point and thus heating whatever you need to cook (see picture with the cook and the oven which looks like a box of mirrors). this is great for those part of the world where people need cheap reliable energy to cook, usually people cook making fires with wood that people (mostly women) have to walk for miles to collect or by cutting trees and the deforestation takes place. (In refugees camps women are particularly vulnerable to attacks when they have to leave the camp looking for wood to light a fire)
Then I learned that a German guy created a blueprint to make affordable and cheap cookers and donated its copyright to humanity, so poor people can build a cheap solar cooker or over.
I think that this could work beautifully in sunny poor places like where I'm from in Argentina. Well... thinking about it, I'll love to have one here in very sunny Sabadell... maybe I can build one and use it on the terrace at the top of my building to barbecue... Oh, how I miss having a garden!!

By the way the freecycle Barcelona group is growing and working really nicely, and we've got more than 500 members so far and people are exchanging things and keeping them out of the landfills. To find a group in your area, please check here:
http://www.freecycle.org/group/?noautodetect=1

Castellets!

2008-03-31T23:30:00.007+02:00

Castellets season started on the last Sunday here in Sabadell. This is a very ancient tradition here in Catalonia and one that I really appreciate and like.

A group of people of both sexes and all ages (really, from very old folks to kids as young as 5 years old) will form a sort of very high human tower, crowned by a small child (usually a girl) standing on the very top. There's also a small band playing traditional music with a couple of drums and some small flutes with a very piercing sound.

Each town and village in Catalonia has its castellers and our town, Sabadell, wears the green shirt.
In this day, 2 other towns were invited to participate with their castells, the one form Granollers were wearing the maroon shirt and, sorry, I forgot the name of the other town, in pink.
In the last picture you can see the the three groups together in their final salute, with Sabadell in the centre.
After the final salute, all the three bands play together and everybody gathers to dance a sort of lively traditional dance, something looking as a square dancing with couples joining hands and jumping a lot, and I mean everybody joins, castellers and public alike. Its lovely to see old ladies dancing with their grandchildren, parents or friends and having a great time.

We went to the central square with my mother in law and some other friends. We didn't tell her what we were about to see and she was truly amazed and mesmerised with both the skills and the tradition. Our friends from Japan were also in awe and taking pictures like... well... Japanese tourists!!

Of course there are some castells done in down town Barcelona, and if you ever come here this is one of the must see turistic event. Here it was the Real McCoy, just the locals and we were the only weird people taking pictures!

As you can see, the weather was changing from sunny to cloudy and still is a bit chilly, but when the sun shines it gets lovely.

Flat Christmas decorations

2008-03-24T22:50:00.006+01:00

I mentioned in a tatting newsgroup that I do Christmas decorations with my tatting and somebody actually want to see them!

So I'm posting here a few of the decorations that I tat using a standard bangle for support.
I tat a 5 point start and attach it as I go to the bangle, this is not as difficult as it sounds, just means going around the bangle with the shuttle and getting the next stitch to support it firmly in place.
As you can see, the colour and size of the thread makes all the difference. In this case I used plastic pink bangles and a metal looking one.

Sometimes I also add beads but I gave those away so, sorry, no pictures. I also did them with with a metallic thread as I hope you can see on the second picture (the blue one) but I didn't like it much because the thread was too hard to work with.

I also tried with different designs, basically anything will do, but the snowflakes and stars are my favourites for Christmas.

I'll try to post the baubles as well.

This decorations work really well for me as most of my family lives in the southern hemisphere and my friends are scattered around the globe, so I have to post the decorations and is easier and cheaper to post flat things. And they look really good on the three or even on a window.

What do you think?

Easter's egg

2008-03-23T22:22:00.009+01:00

I start with the recipe for the traditional Easter cake here.

Our second Easter week here in Catalonia and I'm having a tummy ache for too much chocolate and sweets.
As usual here Easter chocolate means much more than just an egg and the creations are as beautiful as ever and it was a pleasure just to go to around town visiting the shops to see what new wonderful things they have. This year, on top of the more traditional styles, I saw many designs such as the ones that I'm posting here. Art to lick! I love this place!

We still have one more day of eating as tomorrow here in Catalonia is Pascua Florida, which can be translated as Blooming Easter. I've no idea what's the meaning, but nobody work and we have to eat a special cake decorated with coloured feathers and sometime small chicks as this one in the picture. Nobody I know takes the trouble to bake one as the local shops do a magnificent and truly delicious job. In some places you even have to book them in advance.
As we were invited for lunch today to our Japanese friend's place, we took one and everybody loved it.

I wish we could share this with a nice cup of Earl grey! or even a humble PG. I'm about to run out of PG tea and "the husband" teases me that the true reason that I'm going to Bristol soon is to get some more tea!
Whatever!

I wish you had as lovely an Easter Sunday as we just had!

Parent's season

2008-03-18T22:13:00.001+01:00

My mother in law is arriving latter today and this means the starting of parent's seasons, the time when our elderly parents travel to visit and to stay some weeks with us.
So... I'll be trying my best to be patient with the old people.

The worst thing is that I have to give up my computer room as this is the place where the old people sleep when they stay here. The desk with the pc are relocated to my bedroom and everything gets smaller and more crowded and the flat gets a bit claustrophobic.

As our family lives in the other hemisphere most of the time, we're not used to have them around living here 24/7 but they were great parents to us and I suppose is time for us to give some care back to them.

My son loves to have his grandparents here as they spoil him rotten, of course. So, he's really the one looking forward to the time of the year.

Wish me luck!

My tablecloth

2008-03-14T22:04:00.005+01:00

Well... is far from perfect, especially because I started tatting this when I was too sad, depressed and unable to read after my beloved dog passed away, so my concentration wasn't brilliant anyway.
However, I'm pretty chaffed with my tablecloth as for the very first time I didn't copied from somebody elses' but made up my own designed as I was going along.
It measures 1.20m x 1.20m and it looks really good.
Here on the right you can see the whole thing and on the left a detail of a corner.

I've been tatting for years but this is the very first project that I can truly call mine from scratch. Now I started another one, this time the fabric circles are much smaller and I'm planing to add some coloured variegated green-yellow thread too so it'll be less plain.

Now I could invite you ladies for tea and use my very own tablecloth!!

Going to Bristol!

2008-03-13T11:43:00.002+01:00

I've bought tickets to go to Bristol for 6 days!!

This is the first time for as long as I can remember that I'm taking a holiday on my own, and God's know that I deserve it.

Then why do I feel guilty?

Well... it all started last year when my mother-in-law declared that if my father stayed with us for 6 months then she's going to stay with us for the exact same time this year. Of course we totally panicked as the old lady is not exactly a joy to be with.
I'm not going to bore you with the whole negotiation story, let's just say that "the husband" managed to reduce the time we have to serve from her proposed 6 months to 1 month and 18 days. A great achievement for "the husband" as she's a very determined woman.
(She was the very first woman to graduate as a medical doctor in our local university and then she went on to a post-grad and became a paediatrician. That tells you a lot about her and her determination in a machista society as it was Argentina on the 50's).

So, as we were talking and trying to see how are were going to organise for her visit, Patxi said that it'll be a good idea if I take a holiday on my own before she arrived so I'd be fresh and relaxed. That got me thinking but then I've changed the timing a bit so I could have a nice break in the middle of her stay to refresh my self.
Then I found very cheap tickets in Ryan Air (total return tickets cost €45 around 30 pounds!) and I'm going!!

That's going to be invigorating. I know that probably the weather is going to be bad but who cares, I've got sun here!
So, ladies of Filton library, here I go! We'll have to organise to have lunch on the pub behind the library as I haven't see you in almost 2 years.
I'm going to visit loads of people and also do some shopping, despite the fact the Britain is very expensive if you go with euros.

I'm looking forward to my first holidays on my own for a very long time.

Book update

2008-03-12T17:31:00.006+01:00

I've downloaded a talking book that I enjoyed very much listening. Is called Naked in Baghdad by Anne Garrels who was the war correspondent in NPR (National Public Radio in USA), only 1 of 16 US journalist who stayed in Baghdad during the invasion. As she's a radio journalist I thought it'd be a better to hear the book instead of read it and I did enjoy the book a lot. She talks about the situation of the people and the city but also of her own tribulations and feelings and she manages to convey a very clear picture as one feels like you're somehow with her. The book also contains the e-mails with personal updates that her husband is writing to friends and family.
Although I remember following the invasion on the news at the time, this book is not just a re-statement of facts but a very insightful and personal view. Often sad but sometimes unexpectedly funny and I enjoyed the very female middle-aged perspective. Once I started listening to this audio book I just couldn't put it down.

Please listen to it if you can get it.

Now I started reading a book that I bought very recently on amazon.co.uk and had it shipped here around a month ago.
I loved Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood bible which is one of my all-time favourite list, but this one is a non-fiction account of her and her family as they're trying to eat only locally produced and seasonal produce at least for a whole year.
The idea temps me as I grew up eating mostly seasonal and locally produced food and then embraced the eat-everything at all times culture more or less when I moved to England. It was there too when I started eating loads of highly processed food, something that was far too unusual and expensive to eat back home.
Then, well after Patxi was born I started to learn about what exactly is inside processed food and the effect of pesticides and conservatives and I slowly turned from junk food addict to a more concious and, hopefully, healthier consumer.
But it was only recently that I learned about the carbon footprint of food as is it send all over the world and I started to wander if we really need to eat fresh tomatoes the whole year around.
Plus... I'm in a country that takes its food seriously and I' learning to appreciate food's raw materials in a different way.
So, as I'm trying to educate myself and my family on ways of eating healthily I bought this book and so far it hasn't disappointed me. I'm even getting some ideas of going rural!!

But so far, I'm still a Coca Cola addict!!

the worst flue ever

2008-03-10T17:14:00.001+01:00

I've had the worst flue ever!
It all started with P getting sick on Friday 23th of February. He had some fever and said that he didn't feel well so he stayed home all day long. When I arrived home later that day he was, very unusually, still in bed (in my bed!) totally knackered and he stayed that way for the whole weekend. He even missed his team final game of the local championship and for my son not to go to play rugby... well... that was a first.
In any case, he's such a strong little guy that by Tuesday 26th he was ok and back to school.

By Wednesday 27th I had a slight cough early in the morning but of course I went to work as usual. By 4pm that day I had lost my voice completely, I was not only hoarse but virtually mute. This never happened to me before but I wasn't feeling that bad and it was sort of amusing to have to cancel my classes for a few days... or so I thought.

By the first of March I was in bed with fever and a heave chest, couldn't sleep properly and was feeling utterly miserable.
Of course, by then "the husband" also got it and this time I felt truly sorry for him as he was as bad or worse than me and he didn't got to work either.

To make a long story short... that was the reason I didn't write, I just couldn't. I spend a solid week in bed feeling miserable and sorry for myself. The proverbial silver lightning is that because I couldn't smell and my sense of taste was all but gone I didn't eat much and I lost 3 kg.

The first time that I felt well enough to go to work was Friday the 7th and even when I only worked 4 hours as some classes were cancelled due to a local fiesta, I ended up feeling as tired as if I'd climbed Mount Everest!

This week I'm working hard to try to catch up with my students and some translation work that I have to do, e-mails, blog, etc.

Not much

2008-02-21T16:47:00.002+01:00

Sorry for not writing but there's not much to write about (thanks G!) as this is a busy but calm month, if you know what I mean.

The local freecycle newsgroup that I've opened is getting busy with more that 350 member and is a nice feeling to know that I'm doing something for the community where I live. The idea of freecycle is to encourage people to recycle by giving away things that they don't need instead of throwing things away as most people do here. The concept of recycling is pretty new here and I'm glad that I'm doing my bit spreading the idea. People do throw away perfectly good things in Bristol too but here there's no such things as charity shops where you can take your old whatever so... imagine the waste!

The job is still ok. I did cut down 2 hours on Tuesdays' morning because I didn't get along with the students and they were cancelling far too many classes. I think I can get along with most people and I'm very professional about that, but the fact is that I hate waking up early and they were cancelling far too many classes so I woke up for nothing. So at the end I value more my sleep and decided to give that class up.
To my own surprise, I'm still enjoying teaching and my boss tells me that the rate of cancellation was way down since I'm here, meaning that I'm keeping people motivated to attend the lessons, which is half of the job as people usually starts with great enthusiasm and then after a few months get bored and quit.
I don't like all the driving everywhere as driving is stressing but for now is too much of a hassle to start really looking for another job.

Ate the moment I'm trying to understand how the education system really work here as we have to enrol P. in a secondary school before April. The system is further complicated by the fact that we live in an Autonomous Community whose laws are not necessary the same as the rest of Spain. So far I know that education is compulsory until children are16 years-old, is called secondary education (as the O levels) and then people can choose to go on to do a bachillerato (sort of the A levels) if they want to go on to university, or choose a more practical thing. After the basic things get complicated in that schools can be state owned or not, a mix of both, religious, non-religious, with Spanish as the main language or Catalan, English, Japanese, German, etc. Sadly there's not such thing as a table for school's performance but some are horrible and some good, the problem is how to know which one as we don't know who to ask or whose opinion to trust!
So, I'm busy researching our options and believe me... information is hard to find here.

Doña Cuaresma

2008-02-10T15:59:00.000+01:00

Once Carnival ends here there another tradition for Lent, is called Doña Cuaresma o Mrs. Lent. She's represented an old woman with 7 legs carrying the tale of a cod, as this one here from a 18th century engrave.
I think the tradition came as a visual helper so illiterate people could properly count the weeks of Lent until Semana Santa or Easter week starts, as the custom is to take one leg off every Friday until Doña Cuaresma has no legs.

Here the Carnaval finishes with a sort of mock funeral called "el entierro de la sardina" the burial of the sardine, when people dress in black and in a pretend sort of burial burn a paper or wood sculture of a sardine that represent the end of the good pagan times. Then Mrs. Lent, Doña Cuaresma, takes over and all goes back to normal for a few days until is time for all the Spanish drama of Semana Santa. She's also carrying the tail of a cod as a reminder that people shouldn't eat meat for all those days.

I love the fact that I'm still discovering new traditions and things going on here.
I asked "the husband" to cook at least once a month and on Saturday he prepared one recipe from our Catalan Cuisine recipe book. Something that people use here to kick-start Lent. He prepared a fantastic deep-fried cod very special as the batter was made with flour and honey. Just that, mix flour and enough honey to get a runny batter, then dip the cod and fry it. It wasn't as sweet as it sounded an it was totally delicious.

Ghosts of Spain

2008-02-07T16:27:00.000+01:00

I've just started reading Ghosts of Spain by G. Tremlett, a British author. Is a must read if you're at all interesting in Spain as a country or culture as it gives you an insight into the country's history, culture and then some.
It has a bit of condensed history, the 500 years under Moors' rules, the civil war, Franco, even the Madrid bombing by Islamic fundamentalist very recently etc. It also provides some cultural commentaries from the Anglo-Saxon point of view. Is informative and also funny.

As the books is bound to create controversy and is written in very elegant English, I'm planing to use part of it with my advance students, as the Spaniards are very amused about how other people see them and this is a subject that is bound to create some discussion among them.

Carnival and political correctness

2008-02-03T11:58:00.000+01:00

Carnival here is is not only for children to get fancy dresses and some extra fun at school. Is for the whole community to enjoy some fun and debauchery before lend. And unlike Great Britain where all communal events are somehow sanitized in order not offend anybody or scare children psyche for ever here they don't give a damn for political correctness, they don't even try.

Look at this picture of the carnival main event in the local central square in the village of Vilanova i la Geltrú at 7pm. A friend of mine took part and he's the first one behind the mail orator, the one just behind the penis. Yes, a penis, and check the other card! The lovely porno pictures at the back were there for everybody to see, even young children. Sex is considered a normal part of life here. Amazing!
Apparently they're reproductions of originals being used in the 17th century that were kept in the council house. Antiques.

Is also interesting to note that in more or less a month from now, this same people will be parading down the street in a very dark and sad mood with symbols of dead and torture in memory of the crucifixion. And immediately after that is the celebration of the resurrection on Easter Sunday.

Carnival!

2008-01-31T17:50:00.000+01:00

Carnival starts officially on Saturday, but in most schools the whole week was somehow related to that subject and P's having great fun. This year he told me that he wanted to dress as Mario, the game character pictured here.
So we starting figuring out what is he wearing and first went to a local shop where they sell working outfits for the industry. There we found a great blue working overall and we're lucky that P is as big a many adults here so size was not a problem. Then we stop at Zara and bought a red long-sleeved t-shirt and the basic was done. In the local costume shop we founded the false moustaches and white gloves, but the hat remained the one thing we couldn't buy so we had to customise it somehow.
In the costume shop we found a plastic red bowler hat and "the husband" cut it and shaped it and they both designed and added the big "M".
Today P went to school dress as Mario and he said that as soon as the other kids saw him they all screamed "MARIO!" as they recognised him in an instant. They even didn't know who was underneath!! And he also said that the small children where all in total awe of him, some of them even asked him for autographs!!

Isn't he the cutest thing ever!!

Of course we're all going on Saturday to the local fiesta and P's going as Mario.

Reading again!

2008-01-25T17:28:00.000+01:00

When I'm sad or there's something wrong in my life one of the first thing to suffer is my reading, and it always makes matters worst because if I can't read I feel worse!
I stop reading when Darwin died and it was not until a few days ago that I pick up a book again. Appropriately enough it was a book about readers and the power of reading in ones life. Is Alan Bennett's "The uncommon reader". I never read any of his books before but i was tempted to give it a go when I saw it on the best sellers list in Amazon.
As it's a tiny book it only took me a few days to go through and at the end I felt that familiar sense of lost that I get when I really liked a book and felt close to the characters and sad that I'm leaving them behind.
There's no many book in English in the local library and whoever buys them has a penchant for crime and mystery, genres that I don't particularly enjoy. So, thank god for amazon! So far the service is good and fast and only once did a parcel got lost and they offered to send replacements or a full refund as one of the book was out of print.
Now that I broke the jinx more books are queuing up in my bed table and I feel that I'm getting back to normal after all the grieving. In fact the very next book is Cesar Millan "Cesar's way". This guy has a TV program that I watched both in the British TV and the local one and he deals with dogs with behavioural problems. So, I'm reading his book now to hopefully learn how to avoid having problems with the next dog. I want to be the best dog owner that I can be so I'm starting to learn (at least the theory) well before the dog is actually here.

Now that I'm back on the books I'd really appreciate if you tell me what are you reading or listening now, it may inspire me! And is always good to check on other's reading bag. thanks in advance.

Nice January

2008-01-22T10:54:00.000+01:00

So far I'm having a very quiet time this January. I knock on wood as not to jinx it, because I feel I truly deserve some peace and quiet.
We had a meeting with P's teacher and we're very pleased to report that he's doing much better. Now he's doing most of his homework and as he's actually revising for the exams, he's doing much better on the test. He also participated playing the piano for the whole school in the Santa Cecilia's concert and performed in a little play. However the teacher also reported that he sometimes forgets to bring the equipment for PE, that his hand witting is atrocious, that he's spelling in Catalan needs to improve and that he's still very shy and not play much with the other kids.
So, apart for the shyness, which I don't know what can I do (any suggestions are very welcome), I think that we did the right thing in taking away all the things that P enjoys at home (computer, Nintendo, Gameboy, TV time plus allowance.) and only given him some time to use them after he's done his homework and done some extra work. So now that he's back on track we're relaxing the rules a bit and we even started giving him some allowance as well and promised him an increase if (and when) he get better results at school.

We also gave a lot of though to the plan of getting a new dog. "The husband", ever the scientist, did a thorough research on every imaginable breed of dogs and their characteristics plus what we can realistic offer to it. So, after a while he found the Shiba Inu, a Japanese dog that's one of the oldest breeds in the world. I've never heard of them and thought that it was very unlikely that we were to find a Japanese breed here, but "the husband" was so taken with them that he managed to find a place where they breed them at just an hour from home. (for their web site click here).
So we contact them and went to visit their place on a very sunny Sunday. To start with they live in a such a small village that it's not even listed in the GPS so it took us forever to find the nearby village on the map that they send us, then we had to ask for directions to Alta-riba and after some driving we managed to get lost and arrived to a tiny village. It's such a small place that houses don't even have addresses and as it was siesta time (after lunch time where everybody goes to take a nap specially on Sunday) we just parked there and tried to phone them.
After 5 minutes a car arrived and as we approached them to ask for direction they told us they we just parked in front of their house and they were the dog's owners. As we arrived at the place by chance this is the closest thing to fate that I've ever seen.
They are a lovely young couple with two small children and theirs is not one of those awful dog factory but a house in the country where they have dogs that they obviously love. So, if you want to buy one dog from them you have to wait until one litter is produced, no fixed time, and they will give you the puppy only when it's ready to go, with all the papers, vaccines, etc. This may take time as their heat period is around spring time. They have 6 Shiba Inus and one rescued dog. I appreciated this as it shows that they do love dogs in general and are not dog snobs (in case there's such a thing!).
Of course the dogs were adorable and we all fell in love with them. The picture here is one of their dogs. They were smaller than I thought they'll be, more or less lighter that an adult Beagle. They've got more fur that I expected and we've been told that they shed it twice a year so they do require regular brushing and I can just imagine dog hair everywhere in our sofa! They're famous for being very clean, even fastidiously so, and very clever dogs, the owners said that they temperament is that of a big dog in a small body: calm and assertive.

Of course I do believe that we'd fallen in love with almost any dog and I'm not sure about the morality of spending a lot of money on a puppy, but "the husband" heart was set on the Shiba and this was his turn to choose (I did choose Darwin). So, after playing with dogs for a while and asking a lot of questions we decided that yes, we want one. I wanted a girl-dog, to even things out a bis at home, but "the husband" said that he always had boys and that he really, really wanted one and that it was, after all, his turn to choose. So, a boy it'll be.
We pay the first instalment (€250), meaning that we'll be the first to choose a male from the litter in summer. Then we pay a second instalment when the puppies are born and a final payment when we collect him.
We're looking forward to that.

I still miss my sweet and cheeky Darwin everyday. This is the last picture of us together. Nobody will ever replace him, but we do need some extra love in our life and a reason to get out and walk more.

bad bug and bad specsavers!!

2008-01-12T00:32:00.000+01:00

After the poor Japanese family, on Wednesday it was my son's turn to get the bug and he has a bit of temperature and diarrhoea.
P's such a healthy boy that when he woke up in the middle of the night with a "bad feeling here, a sort of pressure from the inside" as he put it, he didn't even know that it was nausea. So he just sat there for a while when I was half awake and trying to figure out what was going on. Then he just proceeded to vomit half of the dinner on my bed.

So we have to change the bed covers, give some comfort and paracetamol to a sick child and try to get everybody sleeping as soon as possible as it was the middle of the week and everybody had things to do.

The next day P stayed at home as he was still feeling poorly and had some fever and i don't want him to be at school feeling terribly and passing along the bug.

I went to work on Thursday feeling very sleepy. Luckily, as this is the first week after the Christmas holidays for most of my students they were as sleepy as me and I hope that nobody noticed that I actually had different colours socks!!

And today, Friday, it was my turn and I had a stomach ache all day long and finally diarrhoea. Luckily none of my classes today was longer than one hour so I managed to rush to the toilet between them.
Of course I couldn't stop after work as I had to take P to the optician as his teacher reported to us that his sight is getting worse and he's not able to see the board from his seat at the back of the class.
I was a bit surprised because P go glasses in Bristol and he never used them much. Anyway, I though that because he's young it was perfectly possible that his eyesight is worse now.

After a very thorough examination, the local optician told me that there's a discrepancy between her results and P's old glasses. Apparently the glasses have 0.5 myopia in the right eye and 1 astigmatism but according to her result the inverse is actually the case. So she said that is very unusual that this will reverse in such a way, possible but extremely unusual. So she suspected that when they made P's glasses somebody along the line confused the eyes and gave him the wrong correction.
Luckily he never felt the glasses were making much of a difference and we never insisted for him to use them so not real harm was done!!
That's really add another meaning to the add: "we should have gone to specsavers" as we did got them there.
At the end we're going to use the same frame as P loves them and have the glasses replaced, something that we thought it was going to be needed anyway. So, now we're €75 the poorer and the glasses are going to be ready by Tuesday.

Gone.

2008-01-09T18:29:00.001+01:00

The Japanese family who was staying with us left yesterday's evening. They finally managed to get their flat with running water, gas and electricity and it only took them 8 days to get it so... which for them is incredibly slow but not bad at all for Spain at the start of a new year as i told them before!

They all got a stomach bug that's going around Barcelona and they were really worried about their baby who has some fever on top of everything. I also think that is the water and food that they're not used to.
"The husband" took them to a local hospital to see an emergency doctor with baby Mebuki and they were surprised that everything was done fast, efficiently and free. The hospital was hard to find as we didn't know the address and when we tried to find it in their web page we found all sort of information about everything but not telephone or address!! This is typical of official web sites, they have all the blows and whistle. music and what-have-you but not any useful information!!!

I'm glad they've gone. First because now they have their own place finally. They were really good guests but it was getting uncomfortable to have so many people around the flat. You have to think that before their visit we never meet each other.
The good thing is that I feel that we've done a really good deed with them and they're going to enjoy their stay in Spain more thanks to us.

And there's also a bit more of good karma for everybody. A good way to start a new year!

Reyes Magos

2008-01-08T17:33:00.000+01:00

The reyes magos or wizard kings are the three wise men in the English version of the bible. In Latin countries we celebrate them on the 7th of January, which is their day. But the real event take place the nigh before, when children all over the (at least) Spanish speaking world leave their shoes outside on a window or balcony, (together with some water for the camels and drinks or biscuits for the kings). If the children behaved well during the previous year the kings would leave presents for them but, according to tradition, if the children behaved badly the kings would just leave some coal.
Here in Spain there also a big event called the cabalgata de los reyes or the kings' cavalcade, when there's a big parade when the kings with their entourage go around town and everybody get out to see them and cheer them. Some children take the opportunity to deliver their letters to the kings with their list of presents. This happens all over Spain, from huge parades in big city to small and humble events in small villages. In Barcelona the kings arrive by see, from Orient, and they step down their ship in the old port amid much expectation.

Here in Sabadell we have our own parade, of course, and it's a great one. Luckily they do it just around the corner from us. Along with the kings the parade has many other features that change from one a year to the next. In our local parade they have a sort of representation of the solar system with the star of Bethlehem starting the whole event. Lovely. In this picture you can see some of the planets.

Some local associations also take part of the parade and are a big part of the show as some people go there just to see and cheer their friends and family members. This year the local scooter association chose to dress their members in what I think is the most funny and politically incorrect dress ever. I think they're supposed to be some sort of Arabs or Palestinians, as the kings went from somewhere in the east to Israel to give baby Jesus their presents, but their headgear looked more like old tablecloths. Just hilarious as this one in the picture.

In the parade, the kings' entourage throw sweets to the crows and everybody scramble to collect as much as they can. Old people and young kids, everybody!! And the old people can elbow you out of the way as easily and eagerly as any small kid can throw you out of balance, plus the old folks had years of experience so they very fast!! It's war!

We went and took our Japanese guests with us, I don't know what they make of this but we had a great time and have enough sweets to last us at least until summer!!

At the very end of the parade goes a horse-cart carrying big black pieces of coal to remind children of the deal. As this goes by you can hear the kids taking their breath in and some whispered boos!

The next morning P found a nice Charlie Brown book on top of his shoes, a Catalan edition, which is great as he needs to read more in his third language in order to do well at school. Also he got a small bag of coal!!
I have to admit that it was me who put that as a joke and it was a kind of special sweet made of black sugar that he ate first thing in the morning and then spend the rest of the day in a state of sort of sugar and kings' induced high.

Big long-time project

2008-01-06T14:49:00.000+01:00

Since Darwin died I've been really sad and I cannot concentrate on reading or anything, which is quite unusual for me and a sure sign that I'm falling into depression.
After taking some time to mourn I decided to fight back and I'm doing it my way, with craft.

This happened before when I was at college and P was a baby and I was under a lot of (self-inflicted) pressure to do a good degree and rise a healthy and happy baby. During the second year I was quite fed up of everything and wanted to quit. But by that time I was very close to finish it anyway so, instead, I took some time off and taught myself to quilt and did a (bit wonky) but very pretty king-size bed cover that I still have. It took me months but when it completely took my mind of my worries and by the time I finished I was ready to go back to Uni and I graduated with a 2:1 and a prize for the best essay of that year.

So now that I cannot read I decided that instead of watch tv and get depressed I'm going to do something that I never did, something that it required learning new skills, concentrate and even design. And I decided to make a table cover with lace and fabric.

This picture from a sewing German magazine (Burda) is my inspiration and I'm loosely following their instructions. However, the fabric circles that I'm using are bigger than in the original and the thread that I bough is also different, so I'm going to need to adapt and design things as I go along.

Although I've been tatting for years, I've never done something that looks so complicated and sophisticated and it's a big challenge.

The first problem was that the magazine say to buy the fabric circles ready made and attach the lace as you go following their diagram. Well... I'm sure that you can buy them in Germany but not here. So I started by cutting circles that I previously draw in a very cheap fabric that I bought from the nearby Chinos where I also bought loads of white cotton thread.

(People here call "los Chinos" to the shops that are owned and run by Chinese people selling a huge variety of a motley crew of usually very cheap Chinese imports. You'll find everything there from cat food to clocks)

It took me a few days and many tries to figure out how to attach the thread to the fabric in an evenly way as I'm not very good at sewing and have none to ask. Luckily for me, there's a lot of people doing this sort of craft and publishing their works on the web so I found some ideas and finally one worked: I tat with the normal shuttle and pierce the fabric with it to attach the lace as I go.

This is the result. A circle with a round of 56 tatting circles and chains around. I chose 56 because is a number that can be divided by eight, meaning that each circle is surrounded by 4 others in a cross and then joined to them with 4 little doilies to fill the space between them. Does it sound clear?
The picture's a bit distorted by the scanner but the circles are quite even and the lace looks good enough. My idea is that any imperfection will sort of blend when the whole thing is finished and I can put plates and cutlery on top!

Now I'm doing loads of this circles in the same manner and when I have enough it'll be time to think on how to join them together and what sort of pattern I can use to fill in the gaps.

No idea yet about the size of the whole thing. It may be as smallish as the one in the original picture with only 25 circles or maybe bigger, I haven't decided yet although I'm aware that the bigger the project the longer it'll take and I don't want to finish this on time for P's wedding! (as he's just 10 years-old!).

So, I'll keep on posting on how this thing is developing. Which me luck!

Crowded but happy house

2008-01-04T20:59:00.000+01:00

The Japanese family arrived on the first of January. They're Itchi (short for Itchioka, the father), Mariko and baby Mebuki.
Baby Mebuki is adorable and cute as can be, she's 11 month old. She was a bit shy at the beginning with us, but we're getting to know each other and she's a joy to be around. Here's a picture of both of us. It's great to have a baby at home.

They arrived late, tired, stressed and with loads of luggage as they're here to stay. They had problems with their visas, as Itchi got his work permit and visa all right but they couldn't get the visas for Mariko and the baby before leaving Latvia, so they're here with tourist visas until they can sort their situation out.

They're very nice, interesting and ultra-polite as the Japanese are told to be, and they're cooking for us as a thanks because we refuse to get any money for letting they stay.

When Patxi was a few month old we moved to Cambridge for a year. For some bureaucratic reasons we had to leave England for a few months in order for "the husband" to get his working visa, and it was very stressful to find a new place to live in a city we didn't know. At least we spoke fairly good English by then and "the husband's" boss helped us a lot as we even stay with him and his family for a few days until we rented our own place. So I totally understand the situation this family is going through and I'm glad we're giving them a hand as they don't even speak Spanish. This is sort of a karma thing for me, as people helped us when we were in a similar situation and now we're able to help others out.

We're a bit crowded as the flat is not that big. They're using P's bedroom as it's the one with a small toilet and allow them a bit of privacy.
Itchi went to work on the very next day after they arrived, which was a surprise for us as not many people are working until the 7th of January, but they seem to be quite a workaholic group he's in.
Poor Mariko wasn't feeling very well and she's been sick. I think it's a mix of all the stress of a big move to an unknown place plus the new food and water that, although are perfectly safe, it takes sometime to get used to.
They've already seen the flat I saw and liked so they're renting it. Luckily the señorita who owns it speaks English very well. The furniture is already there and the landlady got the electricity connected in a record short time but they're still waiting for the gas, in order to be able to move.
After that they'll have to deal with the local bureaucracy in order to register as living in the city, then getting a GP and so on. As they don't speak Spanish, I'll help them as much as I can around my working hours. This is very good for me as it takes my mind of my own feeling of sadness and loneliness after Darwin's untimely dead. This is going to keep me busy.

Finished skirt!

2008-01-02T22:51:00.000+01:00

Last year I started working on this edging for a denim skirt and it took me a while to do it but is finally finished and look great (if I can say so myself).
I used to threads, one green to resemble the leaves and the other a variegated one in pink and white to resemble flowers. Then I sewed it to the skirt and added some sparkling beads. This was very fashionable last summer when I started it and it does add a lot of pizzazz to a boring and plain blue denim skirt.

Look at this close up.

New Year and guests

2008-01-01T13:45:00.000+01:00

We spend New Year's eve with some guys from "the husband's" university, we were a bit of a sorry bunch of ex-pats without a family, but we had a good time and the food was terrific.
As I'm always the designated driver, I only drunk a bit at the beginning of the meal, a heady and unexpectedly strong mix of cava (the local champagne) and crushed pineapple that we always have back in Argentina. But that was at 9o'clock, so by 2 o'clock I was perfectly ok.
As usual, it was all about the food and the host really made an effort and cook a full 3 course meal that included stuffed mushrooms, Spanish ham and assorted canapés for starters, a lovely roasted lamb with potatoes and vegetables and we provided one of the dessert, a great baklava in honour of the only other guest who wasn't Argentinian, a guy from Syria; and assorted turrons and other traditional sweet to give the final touch.

All I want for at least the next few months is a bit of peace and quite. So we'll try to take it easy until we go back to work on the 7th. Although we're having people staying with us for at least a week, and people that we've never seen before.

Tomorrow we're expecting Japanese visitors from Latvia so we're going to spend the first day of the year cleaning the house.
A Japanese friend of a former college mate of "the husband" contacted us a few month ago. He's also a scientist and he accepted a job at the other university in Barcelona, the Pompeu Fabra University. He and his family (wife and 11 months-old baby) were living in Riga (Latvia) and he was hoping to rent a flat on the internet. HA! No way, Jose!
They wanted to live in Sant Cugat, a very posh village near Sabadell (where Patxi's rugby club is), because there's a Japanese school and community there. But it's a totally overpriced place to live with small studio flat costing up to €1,000 a month. So they started to look at flats here where renting cost are less unreasonable. At the end they managed to contact one owner of a one-bedroom flat a few blocks away from us and they asked me to go and check everything and see the flat.
Of course, I obliged, and the flat is tiny but it has a big and sunny balcony, a big storage room, a garage and, the best feature: a communal swimming pool and garden. plus is very well located and brand new.
The owner was a local señorita in her twenties who bought the flat before they starting building (something very common here) it with the idea of living there, but by the time it was finished her company relocated her to Madrid, so she wanted to rent it for a couple of years (something not so common as people usually want to rent for longer periods). She was very keen to rent it to a Japanese family as they have a reputation of being clean and tidy, plus they're only planning to stay a couple of years. But she was also worried of closing a deal over the internet with people she never meet. So I did my best to create a good impression while trying to suss her out.
The bad side was that it was totally unfurnished and it didn't even have the electricity or gas connected yet. But it was all negotiable.
And negotiate they did, but because the Japanese family was arriving the 1st of January we really didn't think that everything was going to be ready as most Spanish people work very little if at all during this time of the year. So we offered to stay with us in case they need it until the flat was ready. Here people join together Christmas with New year's celebration and the party doesn't end until after the three wise men arrive (tonight), so there was no way that they'd have the flat ready until the second week of January.
And so it happened. Despite her best efforts the señorita couldn't get the electricity installed on time and the Japanese family was faced with the option of going to a hotel for a week or staying for free with total strangers (but friends of a trusted friend).

They chose us.

So, as I'm writing this we're all cleaning the flat and getting P's room ready for a family of 3. They're going to arrive around 8pm today. Wish us luck!

...and now I've been fired!

2007-12-29T14:20:00.000+01:00

Yeah. Although the tittle is worse than the actual news... I've been watched the tabloids' tittles for far too long not to get influenced.

The thing is that Steve send me an e-mail saying very briefly that we needed to talk, infamous words that usually means bad news, and then he sent me another mail asking me to bring the material I've been using, so I was prepared.
I was doing one hour a week teaching for him without a contract and he was paying me cash-in-hand, not social security, nothing. Plus, last month he forgot to pay me all the hours I worked (he sent me an envelope with 3 hours worth of wages instead of 4) and I had to send him a mail asking for the whole amount and he answer was "sorry, you're right, I don't how it happened". He also asked me a month ago to take more hours with him but I declined because that meant leaving my already established hours with the other company.

So, I went to see Steve and first he handed me an envelope with my money, plus the hour he forgot to pay me last month. Then he said that the students complained that I was arriving later and leaving earlier to the class. I did arrived later a couple of times but I never left earlier and I told him so so. He said "so, there seems to be a difference of opinion there" to which I simply reply (in what I hoped was an assertive way) "yes".
I think you either believe your employees and you backed them up when there's trouble or you don't, and maybe I should have told him so. He choose to believe the people who pay him. Fair enough as this is his business.
He then added that I failed to attend one class and I didn't call the students or him. That's correct and the reason was that it was the next day after Darwin died and I was in such an state of shock that I totally forgot. I explained that and added that I was sorry about it and that I did send an e-mail to him, admittedly, after the event.
I should have added that he forgot to pay me and that I didn't hold that against him as mistakes just happens. Of course, I only thought of that on my way home.
He then went on to add that we cannot work together like this, to which I agreed, and that he had to ask me to return all the material he gave me for the classes. As I only took the book that I was currently teaching, I said that I'll send then asap and that was the end of it.

It's never a good experience to be fired and I was a bit shaken when I left, especially because he could have been nicer or more understanding about the reasons why I failed to attend one class. I only once before failed to attend one class that I was doing for him and that was the day after I crash the car.
I think Steve's quite a shy and insecure man and to compensate he comes across as arrogant. He wasn't comfortable dealing with this and he obviously made up his mind well before our meeting, so I felt I couldn't have said anything to change his mind and I certainly didn't do anything to keep the job as I have enough hours and I'm comfortable working with the other company.
With whom, by the way, I did sign a contract, they do pay my national insurance and such taxes and they just raised my wages. They seem to believe that I'm a good and responsible employee and they trust me.

So, after a while, the shock of being fired vanished and I'm ok.
... although I have to say that I'm very grateful that the year is finishing really soon as New Year is a sort of clean slate and in my mind the one that's finishing is most definitelly my "annus horribilis".

I totally understand that Chinesse (?) curse "may you live in interesting times"* as this year made interesting reading, as some people told me about this blog.

I do wish we're going to have very uninteresting times for next year, very uneventful and peaceful. And, from my heart, I wish the same to all of you, faithful readers.

* May you live in interesting times is reputed to be the English translation of an ancient Chinese proverb and curse. It is reported that it was the first of three curses of increasing severity, the other two being:

May you come to the attention of those in authority
May you find what you are looking for

It is often argued that the word interesting is meant to be a synonym for turbulent or dangerous, while others suggest that no such similarity is necessary for the statement to be imposing. However, both of these theories miss the essential irony of the saying in light of the value Confucianism places on stability and constancy.

Peaceful Christmas

2007-12-26T23:21:00.000+01:00

We cooked for hours to get a great dinner on Christmas' Eve and we've got it.
"The husband" invited a guy he knows from his lab who was all alone as his fiancée is in Argentina preparing their wedding (they're getting married in Argentina in mid-January), so we were four at the table.
Dinner was magnificent. The turkey took longer to cook that I expected, Jamie Oliver's site said that you have to calculate 1 hour per kilo and I miscalculated counting the weight of the turkey without the stuffing, but I've been told that to have the turkey a bit later that expected is very traditional anyway.
However, when the turkey was finally done it was divine. We followed the recipe on his website and the result was great.
This is the web page in case you'd like to do it yourself: http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/christmas/
I couldn't find cranberries to make a sauce but all the rest was there, including wonderfully crispy potatoes, and we had a gourmet dinner.

I didn't drink alcohol as somebody needed to be sober enough to give our guest a lift back to his home in a nearby village.

Despite the food being delicious and me not eating as everybody else did, I had a bad tummy ache and I was pretty sick after dinner. I know is my way of dealing with stress as I bottled up all my sadness and in trying to look great on the outside I can feel my insides literally churning. Lately it's been happening after almost every meal so I'm trying no to eat much.

Christmas day was nice as went to Barcelona for a walk. This is one of those rare days when the city is not flooded with people and you can look around and up without bumping against busy passers-by or tourists.
Christa you're right, this city is beautiful and just strolling around in a sunny day is enough to make anyone feel better.

Crazy pre-Christmas time

2007-12-22T23:40:00.000+01:00

As soon as I finished getting my salary up I went to the supermarket to buy some food in order to avoid the rush during the weekend.
Patxi want a traditional British Christmas dinner so we watched Jamie Oliver on TV and decided to copy his turkey recipe as it seems absolutely delicious. Is funny as we never had a traditional Christmas dinner ever while we were in Britain. We keep the tradition of eating a big meal with friends on Christmas's Eve and then only leftovers on a very lazy Christmas day. More or less what they do here.
So, we'll mix and match. We're going to have tuukey with all the trimmings, Jamie's style, with Cava (the local champagne) with pineapple (my dad's own drink) , Spanish turrón and Italian tiramisú for dessert on Christmas's Eve.

Of course that after checking all the ingredients of Jamie's turkey we needed to go back to the supermarket today. Which I totally hated as half Spain is out and about doing the shopping. Luckily nobody eats turkey here so I've no problem finding a small and nice one and the trimmings were no problem, except for the goose fat that was nowhere to be seen. I'll try again on Monday if I can face the las minute crowds.

I've seen so down lately that I've not even considered buying any presents, Patxi doesn't want anything this year, the poor thing is as sad as me, but "the husband" was very disappointed when I suggested having no presents at all until the Three Kings night. So at the very last minute I had to go around and try to find something for him in the mist of a huge crowd of frantic shoppers... my mind is not working properly and I couldn't find anything to buy.
I'm going to try again on Monday, while I take a break while doing the cooking.

At the end of the day I'm all tired and cranky. Christmas' spirit, anyone?

wrong NLP tape?

2007-12-21T21:43:00.000+01:00

I'm starting to think that I've may been hearing the wrong NLP tape... as I still feel sad and emotional (I've go all mushy when I see any add on TV with a dog on it, even cartoon dogs and I still cannot walk near the place where Darwin died) but I've been behaving a bit out of character recently.

Judge for yourself:
A couple of days ago I sent an e-mail to my boos telling her that the other (the British guys') are actually paying me more and that they offer me some extra hours for January and I'm considering the offer, so that we needed to meet and talk.
Her answer was a brief text to my mobile saying that they have a present for me in their office and that she'd be happy to talk when I can drop in to collect it.
So I went today (my final day teaching until next year), after my last class (around 10 o'clock) to give her all my hours' sheets and pick the present up. She was very nice, as usual, and we chit-chated a bit about this and that and she gave a lovely box of chocolates. She then told me that they're still a small and newish agency, that they're taking only a small commission from the teaching hours I've got so they cannot offer me a lot of an increase on my hourly rate. However, she added that they're very happy with my job as my students' report that they're very happy with me and I actually have a queue of people wanting to join my classes in one of the companies I work with. So they're willing to stretch as much as they can to give me a raise and that we needed to talk with them before agreeing to take some hours with the other agency.

So, I think I was very assertive and we negotiated a bit until we reached an agreement that I'm quite happy with. I've got a raise on my actual pay that it means around €200 more per month with the same hours I'm doing now. We also agreed that I'd take some extra job translating, which means even a bit more money at the end of the month, and doing something that I can do at home while I'm checking that P does his homework.

Great!

So, now I think that maybe... maybe... I downloaded the wrong tape and got one of those motivational speeches with NLP where people learn to be more pro-active and assertive.
I've never before asked for a pay rise! And never, ever, imagined myself telling a boss that I totally deserve a rise as I'm very good at my job and I'm getting great results. And without blushing violently.

The cheek of me!!

So, now I'm going on a 2 week holidays that are not going to be the best ever, but at least from January I'd be earning a bit more and that's nice.

going through

2007-12-19T13:49:00.000+01:00

Well... No point of telling you again that we're all down. We are.
So, I'm going to try something to try and snap out of this black deep misery. I'm getting tired of it, of feeling miserable and having this physical pain in the middle of my chest. I'm not eating, sleeping or working properly, so, I soon as I loose a few pound I'll do something. Well.. the least I can do is to try to get thinner!

Have you ever heard of Neuro-Linguistic Programming or NPL?
It's a sort of fast approach to psychology. A bit psycho-babble plus some old-fashioned "get over it" attitude. An alternative to psychotherapy. The sort of fast-food approach to it. Quite new agey. A friend of mine who did a PhD in linguistic at Bristol University say that it's total quackery... but he's a devout Catholic so I always take his opinions with a bag of salt.
The basic idea related to trauma is to "create" a new mental link or association with the thing that is bothering you. The idea is that although you cannot change the past and how events affected you then, you can change your reaction to these bad things and your perception to them thus effectively changing your present and your future.

Allegedly, people get fast and long lasting results, and as is cheaper that paying a therapist, I decided to give it a go. After all, once I tried homoeopathy and it worked just fine.

So, I got myself a copy of NPL for dummies (it does exists, check it out in the link) and after carefully reading it, I decided to try to get try to get rid of the trauma of the accident. I don't want to forget Darwin, but I want to be able to breath again without this lingering pain in the centre of my chest or to remember him without getting all mushy and start to cry.
So I downloaded a tape with some exercise to get over trauma and I followed it and yesterday before going to sleep I did all that it told me to do. The idea was to re-program my brain so I may finally be able to get over the shock and maybe be able to go back to the same road without crying.

I'm suppose to do the exercises a few times during a few days. I'll try and then I'm going to write here if I feel any better.

Going through

2007-12-16T15:02:00.000+01:00

Well... the antidepressants are starting to kick in as I find it easier to go around now but I still feel a knot in the middle of my chest all the time. As a mum, I'm a sort of centre of the family and I have to keep P going so I can not afford to be a wreck. Sometimes I think that that alone keep me from crumbling bubbling on the floor!
As I have to work and keep cooking and everything going as normal, this actually helps not to think or dwell in my loss. However, when P cries or feels sad, we end up crying the both of us and he ends up trying to cheer me up saying things like "he's ok now, mummy", which made me cry even more!
I'm also finding very hard to concentrate on anything and I'm unable to read anything more complicated that a girlie magazine!! In me, that's a definite sign of depression.

P said that although there's no way that our beloved Darwin can be replaced, we need some other dog to love and take care of. At first I though no way but it may be a good idea as Darwin few months with us were worthy of the pain we felt with its departure. Grief is, after all, the price you pay for love.
So we started talking of maybe buying another beagle or maybe adopting one from the rescue centre in Barcelona. "The husband" is not very keen on adopting because he thinks that a older dog could be more difficult that a puppy, he believes that "you can not teach new tricks to an old dog" and I think that it may be a myth.
We need to do some research regarding adopting vs. buying a dog.
I suggested to P. that we could go to the rescue centre an do some volunteering, such as walking the dogs to give them some exercise. P gave a look and very matter-of-fact say: -"no offence, mum, but with your truck record... I don't think they allow you walk their dogs". From the mouth of babes!!! I didn't know if I should laugh or cry!

An old friend of mine, whom I know since we were in primary school and who now lives in Madrid travelled to Barcelona for business and stayed with us for a couple of days.
That was like a breath of fresh air as we took her sightseeing around here and to the park Guell (a great park designed by Gaudi) and I talked and talked and cried a bit on her shoulder.
Thanks Tutti!! You've been a true friend.

Grieving

2007-12-12T10:20:00.000+01:00

When your affective life is reduced to two other people and a lovely young dog, it's really hard to cope when one is gone.
We're all crying at different times of the day, when its absence catch us unaware and we notice that the flat is terribly empty and silent.
Patxi said that is unbearable to arrive home at midday and find the flat so empty as he was used to a very warm, tail-shaking welcome and to eat his lunch watching tv in the sofa bundled together with Darwin.
My heart is aching all the time and I find it very hard to teach this days. Even waking up is painful because he used to wake me every morning and now all there is is silence.

I started taking anti depressant because I was already low when this happened and I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to cope with normal life otherwise. I don't feel like working and even getting out of bed is a major deal.

Patxi was crying yesterday and we had a talk about dead and losing someone you love. I said that times heals everything and in a few weeks we'd be able to stop feeling this sad and able to remember the good times and remember Darwin with fondness. He then said "but... I don't want to stop crying because it's like start forgetting".
This is the first time that he had to actually deal with dead as when his grandma and granddad died they were too far away for him to really grasp the meaning of it all. I took him to the vet to say goodbye to Darwin as he was lying there. That was a shock to him, as to us all, and maybe wasn't the best thing to do. But I think that children should participate in the family grief and that was the only chance to say bye to Darwin as we don't have a garden in which to bury him and do a sort of funeral for him.

This is going to be a very sad and lonely Christmas.

feeling low

2007-12-10T18:44:00.001+01:00

I'm totally devastated. I haven't cried that much or feeling this low since my mother died. And even then I was sort of preparing myself for it and trying to get used to that. Also I saw her dead as a sort of liberation for my mother after suffering so much with dementia. I thought that as her mind sort of died before and her body was just lingering on. So I grieved for her for a long time before she actually died.
In this case I was totally unprepared as this lovely little dog was so full of live and so young. He was just starting to lift his leg for peeing, for goodness sake!

Today I took the day off work and I never do that but I don't think I can face talking to people, not now not ever. I didn't cancel tomorrow classes but I'm a wreck right now and truly don't know how I'm going to be able to face people tomorrow. When I was working in the library it was ok if I had a bad day (and I did quite a few) because I could sort of hide myself and tidy up the shelves when the low ride arrived. Now I'm a teacher and there's no escape as I'm totally swamp and overwhelmed by this, red-eyed and puffy-faced etc.

The house is so empty and silent. Darwin was always following me around checking everything or just lying behind me when I was working in the computer. If I was feeling lonely before now I reached new lows.

This is like a catalyst for many things that I was bottleing down and all the tears that I couldn't cry for my mum and those that I didn't cry since I started feeling low are flooding out and it's scary the deep of the sorrow. At times it seems that there's no way up. This is a heavy knock as I was trying to get some sort of balance and I'm feeling really down now.

Of course the guys are devastated too. "The husband" started crying the moment I told him. Patxi at first was in shock, I think he couldn't quite believe it, but he burst into tears the moment he saw Darwin at the vets, just lying there, intact but with loads of blood around his head. I took him there because I though it was important that we all say goodbye to this precious little being that brought us so much fun and love.
Now we're all crying and feeling miserable.

We're having a very interesting discussions with Patxi about dead, as this is the first time he actually experiment it close enough. As we're non-believers, we don't even have the consolations that faith provides, but we do think that someday, when we die we join him somehow.

We asked for Darwin to be cremated with other dogs, as he loved to be around his kind. But I do think that we need to do something to mark his passing away, a sort of ceremony meaning the closing of a chapter but I don't know what.
It's amazing how close you get to this little beings that became part of the family in their own right. I cannot start to imagine how people survive the dead of a child.

Thanks for all the words of support in this blog and in my personal mailbox. Thank for understanding that this is a big and unexpected loss and that we're sad. And, above all, thanks for sharing; even if you're not physically with us your kind feelings touch us a lot.

Darwin died today

2007-12-09T21:06:00.000+01:00

As usual I took him to the nearby park for his evening walk. There we meet a very young dog and they wanted to play so, very unwisely, I set Darwin and they were hapilly running all over the place. All of a sudden, Darwin darted away to the square opposite and crossed the road without looking and the other dog followed him.
In a total panick I run after them and i was running after them calling Darwin, ordering him to sit and wait for me. He was having a ball and was very checky, coming close to me and evading me at the last possible second.
Then he run back to the other square.
I saw that there was a car approaching and I just heard a loud and dry bump. The car stopped and when I arrived Darwin was lying there and there in a pool o blood and there was blood all over him. The driver was very upset when he saw Darwin and told me that he just didn't see him. It was all too fast, too close and it was very dark. It was not his fault.
I then picked Darwin up in my arms and his heart was still working, so I run with him to the nearest vet and banged on the door. They opened and took him away.
The vet came and asked me to go to another room and told me he was dead on arrival and there was nothing they could do.

I went back home to pick up the boys so we could say our goodbyes. The were totally devastated as I am.

Thanks my cyber friends!

2007-11-25T09:26:00.000+01:00

Thank you all for taking some time to write to me. I was inundated with mails from as far as Brasil, Germany, Argentina and, of course, Bristol. It's really moving to know that I do have many dear friends whom, despite being far away, love me and are more than willing to give me a pat in the back (or a kick in the backside when needed!).

After a few days feeling truly rotten, and after getting an upset stomach and bad sleep for days due to stress, I'm feeling a bit better. The weather here is so nice that is hard to be sad with the sun shinning so warmly.

My dad is back in Argentina and although I do miss him, it's nice to have the house to ourselves and to be able to walk around the house in my undies again scandalising only my son.

Did I mention you how conservative Patxi is? I don't know where does he get it from but sometimes he sounds as an old Tory gentleman disproving of everything.
A few days ago we were watching the local news about an 11 years-old girl who is pregnant in Almeria or another city in Spain. As Patxi's studying a bit about sex, puberty and the rest in school, I pointed the news to him as an introduction to talk about condoms, etc. I said: -"look, that girl is your age and she's pregnant" to which he looked up shaking his head in deep disapproval and muttered: -"and I bet she's not even married!".
He complains about women going topless on the beach to the rudeness of Spanish kids and everything in between. He's idealising England and I'm afraid that one of this days he's going to say he miss the England of "the village cricket team, warm beer and spinsters cycling through country lanes to communion" as in the John Major's silly speech.
I do miss Bristol too, not only my friends and colleagues but things like walking down Gloucester Road checking the charity shops, Indian food and even the rain! As my friend Miriam put in her mail from Brazil (after living 18 years in Bristol): - "I don't know what it is about Britain that it grows on you and you become quite attached to it".

A few days ago, after a lot of cajoling and negotiating, he accepted and invitation to play the piano in the school's fiesta de Santa Cecilia (the patron saint of music). He didn't want to do it as he was afraid that the children would boo him out! So we reached an agreement in that I'd allow him a lot of extra time in the computer in exchange of him taking the risk and performing. He played "Scarborough fair" and a shanty "What shall we do with the drunken sailor" and, to his surprise, the kids loved it and one of his classmate even suggested that they can form a band.
I hope this help raise his self esteem.
For my part I' m bound to feel better if I see him doing fine as he is my main concern.

feeling down

2007-11-14T19:39:00.000+01:00

I think I'm getting some sort of depression.
First, I don't feel like writing and that's very odd as I'm a compulsive writer.
Second, I do have some reasons to feel down as my father is going back to Argentina tomorrow, my son is not doing well at school and I have to pay through the nose to get the car fixed without any guarantee that I'll get my money back.
Plus I'm feeling very lonel

Plus I'm feeling very lonely lately with all this working in and outise the house and not enough girly chats. I don't have somebody who can listen me vent out and complain and then laugh about everything.
I do need a hug or at least a pat in the back..

General elections in Argentina

2007-10-27T18:29:00.000+02:00

Tomorrow is general national election in Argentina. I'm not even registered here in the Argentinean consulate so I've no idea if we're entitled to vote. In any case, I don't think is fair for me to vote because I've been away from the country for more than 14 years and I hardly know who's who anymore.

However, the stronger candidate seems to be Cristina Kirchner, the current president's wife and all political forecasts and polls are predicting that she'll be the next elected president. She's always been compared with Hillary Clinton in that she was as much involved in politics as her husband, was elected senator and was always pursuing a political career on her own right. She's also been called ruthless and accused of all sort of sins, from corruption to wearing too much mascara.
I meet her once in a party in London given by the Argentinean embassy when their were touring European countries as her husband was then the newly elected president. That was 2003. She was already a senator and I remember that I asked how it was the meeting with the then PM, Tony Blair, a few minutes before the party. She said the it all went well and that she dared (her word) to say that maybe protocol would not allow her husband to mention the problem with the Falklands (of course she said Malvinas) but that she, as a senator, couldn't let the opportunity pass to say that there should be more talks about it and all the rest. Then Blair as an answer muttered something such as they're were also a good a political team and that he knew a thing or two about that and it all ended in polite smiles. She seemed very chuffed with herself while telling this. I found it funny at the time.
I found her very clever, well spoken and very self assured and with that politician's easy charm that you can see is kind of fake but still work. She's petite but she was wearing the highest heels that I've ever seen in real life and was dressed and made up to the extreme. She was also very kind and all smiles when I asked to take her picture with me, as I explained to her that my late mum wanted to see me with the power couple of the times and was very exited about my meeting the then very popular new president and his feisty wife.

I remember telling them how much hopes people were investing in them and that I wished them both all the luck in the world.
The same now... I liked her at the time and I appreciate that to be a woman in that position must be really hard so I wish her all the best.

Rock chic

2007-10-25T18:07:00.000+02:00

"The husband" and I went to a concert. A very rare night out for us.

An Argentinean group that we really like very much is touring Spain and they're giving 2 shows in Barcelona. I think it's mainly for the Argentinean expats community altough you can find their cds in any local music shop.
They're called Bersuit Vergarabat and they have a very eclectic style, to say the least. Their music range goes from fun upbeat Argentinean cuartetos (salsa like music) to dramatic tangoish songs to furious riffs from heavy metal inspiration. So the whole concert was very interesting and one moment you can see everybody shaking their hips Ricky Martin's style and pogoing furiously at the next song... sometimes even in the same song.
The hall was packed, mainly Argentineans, and the average age must have been around 25 so I felt extremely old. Nevertheless I was dancing, clapping and all except the pogo bit which I cannot do, so I just flexed my knees with one hand in the air (and the other on the wall to keep me steady) in the vain hope that it'd look like a pogo from afar.

We had a great time and we sang our hearts out. My knees are still a bit sore and my ears are still ringing today as the sound was far too loud but I'm going to keep going to pop/rock concerts until I stop enjoying them or I'm wheel chair bound, whatever happens first.

It's nice to go out without much care or planning, knowing that my dad is at home to feed and just been there with my son when he's back from his rugby training. My dad's going next month and I'm going to miss him very much.
Not that we go out any often now... but it's going to be even less easy when he's gone.

The saga continues

2007-10-23T11:20:00.000+02:00

The saga to get the car repaired continues today as "the husband" finally got hold of the people from the insurance and the people form the garage so they can assess the damage once and for all. However, they could only do it today in the morning or in a month time so, I had to drop everything and take the car to the garage.
That meant cancelling my lessons without any notice something hate, but... no options there.

The only silver lining was that I could stay in bed a little longer that usual, something that I really love to do and that it give a well deserved rest as I've been working too hard these past weeks.

I'll treat Darwin to a longer that usual walk today.

Rugby overdose

2007-10-21T22:32:00.000+02:00

Well. The rugby world cup is over and we're very proud of the Pumas as they've reached new heights beating France twice in a very dramatic and colourful game that we saw on Friday (thanks that we have Sky tv as the world cup was not aired in Spain). Then it all ended in tears for England as we lost against South Africa. I feel as if they beaten us twice!! (that's the downside of having two nations).

Meanwhile life was going on and we learned that it's actually true that we may take up to 2 years to recover the money to repair the car as the other party was Hungarian and they're not even into the European Union yet. So it does make sense to pay for the repayments ourselves and then wait until (and if) we get the money back.
So now we're trying to find out how much the repairs are actually going to cost, how long it'll take and we haven't even started to think how are we going to manage to find the money. We don't even have a Spanish credit card yet... although this may be a good time to get one.

On top of that Patxi's teacher call us really worried because he's regularly falling asleep in class and when asked told him that he has trouble sleeping plus he's homework is not delivered on time if at all and his overall performance is falling recently.
After a bit of research we find out that the reason P couldn't sleep was that he kept on playing or surfing the net until the small hours. I was very much against the idea of letting him keep his computer in his room on the first place, but there's no room elsewhere. Regarding the homework and overall performance, I think the reason he's not doing as well as he can it is that there's nobody at home to really check as I'm working longer hours and I'm not at home to check what he's doing.
So we took immediate action. We dealt with the playing all night long night problem by blocking him access to the computer after certain hour. And I took the executive decision of cutting down my working hours in order to be at home when he arrived from school. That means less money at the end of the month (around 100€ less per week, which is a lot for us) and I didn't even check this with "the husband". I just thought about it overnight, then took the decision and informed the agency. All was dusted and done by the time "the husband" arrived home later the next day and he wasn't too please about it.
For me is a matter of priorities, and since I decided to have a child I've just knew that he was going to come first, always. Now I feel that he need his mum at home to coach him in order to learn how to self motivate and do homework without a coach. So, I'm going to be there.

My boss at the agency (the Catalan one) is a mother of 2 girls around the same age as mine so she was very understanding and made it very easy for me as I've just got to teach for one more week my afternoon classes and that's it.

Regarding the loss of money... well... we'll manage. For instance we were thinking of getting someone to clean the flat and now I'll have more time to do it myself. Great.

Any money saving tips are going to be very much apreciated.

Another one SO cute!

2007-10-20T00:35:00.000+02:00

Great rugby add from Argentina

2007-10-20T00:04:00.000+02:00

B****y garage!!

2007-10-15T22:40:00.000+02:00

I'm still going around with the car looking like a wreck. The insurance send me a letter asking me to take the car to a garage to have the damage assessed and an estimate of how much it'll cost to fix it so they can charge the other driver insurance. That's supposed to be free of charge.
So far so good.

The problem now is that when I went to the garage that they recommended me, the people there say that they need to dismantle the car to check if there's any internal or unseen damage.
OK.
Then they say that once they dismantle the car they may not be able to put it together again (Humpty Dumpty style). So they say that it made sense to do everything together, the assessment and the repairs.
Of course, in order to be able to do that they need me to pay upfront for the job and then wait for the other insurance to refund me. They hastily added that it's the best option for me because as the lorry was foreign it may take up to a year or a year and a half to sort everything out and get my money back. So to do it at once will save me time and money in the long run as the car will get worse if it has to wait for a year to get fix.
Plus they are not able to tell me how much the repair will actually cost without taking the car apart! But we may be talking of anything from 1,000€ to 2,000€.

I hate garages. Is it only me or are they really out there trying to get us women to pay extra and/or do unnecessary work?

I tried calling the the insurance office to hear from them that it really may take a year to get the money but there's nobody at the other end of the line who can give me advice! They didn't know and promised to call me back asap which means never in Spain.
Tomorrow I'm going in person to their office in town to try and get an answer because if I must pay to get the car fix I'll have to take a loan or pay with the credit car and nobody will pay me back the interests on that.
And also is the matter that while the car is in the garage I'm not going to to be able to go to work. Here the concept of courtesy car is that they have a car available for you to hire at actually worst rates that hiring in Europcar or the local Pepecar!!

A total rip off!

The dream is over

2007-10-15T00:24:00.000+02:00

The Pumas lost to an unstoppable South Africa tonight in what was the first time the Argentinean team reached the world cup semi-finals. The final score was 37 - 13.
We're just so sad that the dream is over... My son couldn't even watch the whole game and just went into his room well before it ended. We were not in tears but I can totally understand why the Argentine's captain was crying at the end as you can see in the picture here.

However, I'm very proud of "our" guys.For us a third of fourth place in the world cup is an achievement. First: rugby is not played professionally in Argentina, most of the players played most of their life as amateurs. 2- Argentina doesn't play either in the south hemisphere Tri-Nations nor in Europe Six-nations and is in fact the very first country to reach that position without being in one group or the other.

The only down side was a bad tempered finish which saw yellow cards shown to and Juan Smith and Felipe Contepomi, but it could not spoil either South Africa's party nor the Pumas achievement.

Now, if you thought of England as the underdog in this rugby world cup... spare a though for the brave Pumas!

And now: GO ENGLAND!!!!

It ended! (phew!)

2007-10-10T23:09:00.000+02:00

Today was the last time I had to go to San Llorenc Savall, the place up in the mountains, to teach. And it wasn't a second too soon. I was really looking forward to finish this one as the road was giving me a lot stress and I was then late to everything else.
I was very professional and I did finish my commitment although I was very tempted to ended right there after the crash.

So I wrote my report for the course and at the end I wrote (this is an actual quote):

I believe that they are keen to continue with lessons in November and they are going to need some more translation work in the future. However, I do not think I am willing to drive to San Llorenc as the bendy and very busy road was too much for me. (sorry)�

I'm not good at all at saying no, so that paragraph cost me a lot to write!
Why I'm not comfortable saying a plain old no? Not a clue.
Here in Spain is part of the culture so sometimes you have to guess that people actually mean NO when they're mumbling all sort of perhaps and then simply just don't do it. It's like we're told is just not polite to refuse. It's just in the culture so beware if you ever visit Spain or Latin America.

Pictures of Paris and the Pumas

2007-10-08T18:43:00.001+02:00

The guys had great seat next to the action and they enjoyed the trip very much. Of course, they were also happy for the results, but they also said that it was sad to see the Scottish guys go home with very sad faces.
For me, it was the result that I wanted, a great memory to keep forever.

Rugby day (again)

2007-10-07T19:24:00.000+02:00

I took my guys to the airport feeling totally sad and full with envy to see them going with a spring in their step and Puma's T-shirts on. Well... nobody said that being a very good and generous mum doesn't go together with feeling sad!
I think that it only counts as a generous action if you really value what you're giving up... Then this one is really and truly generous and it should earn me a place in heaven. Pity I'm a atheist!

Then, in order to cheer me up I drove to the nearest beach in Casteldefells with my dad, Darwin and we went to have lunch in a cafe and for a long walk.
It's a very nice day, sunny and warm and there were loads of people down the beach.
After that I drove back home just in time to watch the South Africa vs, Fiji match. I was cheering for Fiji because they were the underdogs and they play with such heart that is a joy to watch (more than half the people in the stadium thought the same as they were cheering like mad). They lost but fought valiantly. A great match! Now whoever win the game Argentina vs. Scotland will play South Africa.

They guys just send me a text saying that they're actually entering into the stadium in Paris and the atmosphere is totally thrilling.

Of course, back in Argentina everybody is talking about the match and there are several adds on tv regarding the pumas. While I'm trying to figure out how did I do to post a video here, please take a look at this link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HD3Dfr_9sPY&mode=related&search=&v3

Quarterfinals

2007-10-04T10:32:00.000+02:00

We're following the rugby world cup this year and we're truly enjoying the Argentinean performance so far. The fact that they managed to beat the host and favourite team, France, in their home turf in Paris on the first match did wonders to boost the morale of the team (and the fans!).
Well, life has a way dealing bad and good cards, sometime even on the same day.
A few days ago and through the rugby club mailing list, "the husband" received an e-mail offering to sell 2 good seats tickets for the incoming quarter final match Argentina vs. Scotland. Those tickets were sold out ages ago, as everybody assumed that they'd be for the match between France and whoever was second in the other group. Now that the Argentines relegated France to the second position on that group, loads of French fans are trying to exchange their tickets to be able to go to Cardiff and watch France vs. All Blacks. (and they're furious that the match with the host has to be done in another country). (for their part, the Argentineans must be delighted that they don't have to play against the almighty kiwis, plus whoever wins is bound to end up dead tired as it's going to be a tough match).
Of course, those tickets are never cheap, so "the husband" asked my opinion. I said that this was once on a lifetime opportunity as we'd always wanted to see a world class event like this one and that we work hard so we can afford to do the things we want to do. So, we agreed that if the price was reasonable, we'd buy the tickets and go to Paris.

Then, more or less around the time I had my crash, "the husband" sent and e-mail buying the tickets.
So, despite the bad blow of the crash, we also had the good news that two of us are going to Paris for the weekend to see a world cup quarterfinals game!! So exciting!!

Then, after I thought it trough, I realised that this could be a great chance for "the husband" and our son to go together and have a sort of male bonding shared experience. You know... one of those things that people remember for the rest of their life... "the time when my dad got tickets to the quarter final world cup rugby match and we went together". So, very generously I decided to give up my place and let the boys do it.
When I told Patxi that we had 2 seats for the match he looked amazed and pleased but he assumed that it'll be the parents going. So when I said that I really wanted to go but if he wanted to go too I was willing to give my seat to him... well... he just went berserk and started jumping around the kitchen and hugging me and crying how much he wanted to go and that I was the best mum ever. Then he said that this surely count as his birthday present (his birthday is on the 31) and that I could scrape his birthday's present list or return any items that I've already bought.

So, that settled it, I'll watch the match on TV and try to find them in the crew.
We bought Easyjet tickets to Paris for them. They're flying on Sunday morning and arrive in time to go to to the match latter that evening, they´re flying back on Monday. Patxi's going to miss one day at school but I think that the experience is well worthy.

I'm a bit sad because I really wanted to go but there's no way we're going to find 3 tickets seated together, so let's them enjoy this one.

CRASH!!! Why I'm shaken AND stirred.

2007-10-03T12:04:00.000+02:00

I had a crash with a big lorry. or better said, the big lorry crash into me.

There's one intensive course that I'm teaching in San Lorec Savall, a little village up in the mountains, around 45 minutes from home and bang on in the middle of the national park of the same name. The road is very bendy and goes through a national park, a very beautiful pine forest where we go for walks on Sundays. I took the job despite the distance because they're paying me twice as much as other classes and it was schedule to last only until the 10th of October.

I didn't like the bendy and small road with heavy traffic and I always drove extra carefully there as visibility is not great and there's many big lorries that takes up more than their fair share of the road.
I was counting the days to finish this course.

Yesterday I was going back home after I finished the class, driving carefully and slowly as usual on a very clear and lovely day. All of a sudden, as I was approaching a hairpin bend a lorry appeared and I stopped quite close but with a good meter or so between us. I put the handbrake and the reverse gear and when I was actually looking over my shoulder to reverse to give the lorry a wider berth... he just went into second gear and I heard the horrible scratch of metal against metal and left the car move while the big shadow of the lorry invaded my space.
My reaction was to press the horn and only then the lorry driver stopped, when it was few inches from my actual nose.
Once he stopped I was able to go in reverse and take myself out of it grips.

My neck was hurting badly and as the lorry went ahead and parked a bit far away I just sat there in the car in total shock.

Somebody came and opened the door, helped me out and asked if I was ok. Many other cars were there too and it felts as if everybody was shouting at the lorry driver who came down to check that I was ok, speaking total gibberish (the lorry driver did although probably I was doing it too)
I tried to talk to him but he didn't know Spanish, not English or French or Italian or even Romanian!! (I know a few words on that language and as he was Eastern European looking I thought that it was a good chance that he was from there). He couldn't (or wanted) to speak any known language. (bloody globalization!).

While I was trying to put myself together and call the police, take his papers or whatever, he just turned, got calmy into his lorry and drove away!! I was dumbfounded! People around me were outraged and screaming at him but there was nothing we could do. He just left.
It just happened that I had my mobile on my hand so I took a picture of the lorry before it disappeared. Then I realised that there was no coverage there and mobiles weren't working, so a gentleman told me that he was just behind the lorry and saw everything and he gave me his car an case I needed a witness of the accident and told me that he'd go ahead and call the police as soon as his phone started to work.

Just by chance a van with park rangers were passing by and they stopped and help, so when they realised that the guy was going away, they used their radios to call for another rangers to stop the lorry in the next petrol station and they called the police. They managed to describe the lorry thanks to my phone picture.

One of the rangers stayed with me and helped me to place the triangles on their place and he diverted the traffic. He said that I shouldn't move the car until the police has a chance to see it, even tough it was in a very bad place. So we spend the next 40 minutes diverting the cars and telling people that help was on its way. Every car that passed us stopped to stare, but one in every 4 was kind enough to ask if I needed something.

After a while I really wanted to call "the husband" so I started to move around the place trying to catch some phone signal. Finally I half climb a pine and was able to call, but "the husband" went off to have lunch and left his mobile on his office! Typical!!
I left him a very dramatic message, something along the lines of " a lorry just crushed me, call me", and went back to sit next to the car. Then I though than after listening to that message "the husband" could panic and call me, get no answer and call my dad and scare the hell out of him. So i half climb the pine and called my dad.
-"I'm all right" was the first thing I said, rather stupidly and rather out of breath after the climbing.
He took a deep breath and cautiously said: "ok.. .then... what happened?"
I explained the situation and asked him to call "the husband" and ask what needed to be done regarding the insurance.

The local police, the mossos de escuadra, arrived 45 minutes after the crash when I was fed up of waiting. In the meanwhile, the ranger was told that the the other rangers did manage to stop the lorry but couldn't understand him and that apparently he didn't have a driving license or any personal papers.
The mossos took a good look at the scene of the accident, the road, searched for marks on the roads, check my car and asked me questions about what has happened, they did ask me to get all my papers ready and to go with them o the petrol station where the lorry was.

The lorry was waiting with the rangers van in a petrol station around 10km from us. I arrived followed by the 2 police bikes and they went straight to talk with him. When the driver saw me he made a beeline towards me and started talking rather agitatedly in whatever language he used. The police took him away firmly to talk to him while I gather my papers.
After a while the police came back and told me that when the driver realised that they were the police and not the park rangers, he immediately produced a valid driver licence, insurance and he has even able to communicate ok enough; plus said that he didn't mean to run away, only to park a bit further in a safer place. (yeah, sure!)

That's the power authority has over citizen of the former Soviet Union.

The driver even described the same events that I did plus he added that he invaded my space and draw a little picture showing what happened adding that it was his fault. So the police filled an "amicable accident agreement" form, we added our personal details, insurances and so forth and we all signed in agreement.

Then the lorry driver was very happy to go his way and he managed to convey that we all should visit his country and take the water there in Budapest. Then I realised that he was Hungarian! That's why I couldn't even guest which language was he speaking. I thought that I was in shock. But the Hungarian language is one of only two languages in Europe without any Latin roots (the other is Euskera, the language of the Basque country), all other European languages belongs to the so called IndoEuropean languages and at least I'm able to identify them. Well...

Then I called the, by then rather worried, "husband" and explained the situation and said that I was going home to take a shower.

The car has several rather worrying looking scratch in the front left all the way from the front light to the back door, but it was working fine, (except for a bit of noise when I take corners). So I was able to drive myself home where my dad was waiting and he looked quite relieved as he didn't totally believe me when I said I was fine.

I'm going to add the pictures that I took with mobile phone as soon as possible.

Then it was time to call the insurance company. They took all my details and asked me to fax or e-mailed the form that we both signed with the police reference number. Then we have to take the car to the local office so they can assess the damage and the, with a bit of luck, their insurance company will pay for the repairs. The problem is that it's a foreign lorry, although the insurance is Alliance which are a pan-European company... so let's see.

From now on I'm going to my classes in a rather poorly looking car and I'm not able to take Patxi to his rugby training sessions on Tuesdays because they're in the evenings and my lights are not working properly. At least I'm able to keep on earning a living!

Let's hope that Alliance will sort out everything fast and we can take the car to a garage as soon as possible or the car will deteriorate even further and I don't really know if is legal to go around without my lights working. Keep your fingers cross!!

little act of kindness

2007-09-28T22:47:00.000+02:00

I have to add that when "the husband" saw the car parked inside the closed car park instead of laughing at me and tease me mercilessly (as I'd probably done give half a chance) he just shrunk his shoulders and said:
-"Well... at least it's safer there than in the street!"-

So, "the husband" is also very kind and forgiving.

Set the record straight

2007-09-28T10:47:00.000+02:00

"The husband" asked me to officially record an incident that happened today. He said that I'm always portray him as the air-head of the family and conveniently hush under the carpet any of my wrong doing. Then he forgets them and have no chance to tease me back when I tease him. He said that he always suspects that I'm as forgetful as he is but that I keep track of his incidents an he's to busy to do it with mine.

Well. here is one, on the records.

When I'm back from work I park the car in 2 or 3 places, the usual spots around the flat so I more or less know where the car is.
Yesterday I was extra busy with everything plus my dad's flue and I couldn't find any space in the usual places. So I went into the parking space of the supermarket opposite to our building and left the car there. Did some shopping and went home, thinking to retrieve the car later and park it on one of the usual places latter, when the roads are more empty.

Then, at around 11pm, while we were walking the dog and happened to pass in front of the , very closed, supermarket parking lot... I saw the car, safely parked inside the then closed and locked parking lot.

I'm very grateful that we didn't need the car yesterday after the supermarket closed at 8pm. I do hope they don't call the council to take the car away early tomorrow!!

I do confess. I'm officially another air-head!

Poor Patxi!! Genetically or not, the poor kid doesn't stand a chance!!

Flue!

2007-09-27T10:39:00.000+02:00

My dad's got a flue that's going around Sabadell.
He's a bad patient and not used to get sick, so he's a total pain to live with right now.
So, on top of everything, I have to do his share of the chores around the house and take care of him, bringing meals and drinks, thermometers (to his great disappointment; no fever whatsoever) and a million other thing... plus listen to his detailed and often gory descriptions of cough and chest blockages.

"The husband" found out that the Italian travel agency charged us twice for the hotel and wrote to them a month ago to ask them for a refund. They acknowledged the double charging and asked for our bank account number to refund the money (on the 4th of September) and then... total silence and no money.
We're very short of money right now, as this left us 600€ shorter that we should at this time of the month.

I woke up today with a very red eye and the blackest mood on earth. I do hope is not an eye infection or a road-rage incident later today.

No time anymore!

2007-09-19T18:26:00.000+02:00

Since we have a dog I've no time whatsoever!
On top of my usual payed job and non-payed stuff: cooking, shopping, doing the laundry, cleaning, ironing, giving orders to everybody (that's called organising the family), driving people around, etc, now i have to take Darwin for walks, clean his pee and poo, feed him, play with him and cuddle him.
So, no more time to write much, and no much things to write about anyway!!

Darwin is a dear dog, very clever,but still a puppy so he's not house train yet and that's a hard and full-time job. I imagine that is like when we were potty training P. in that at the time we could see no end to it and all of a sudden, it was done and over.
Now we take turns in taking him to for walks, "the husband" does the first one in the morning before going to work, then at midday is P's turn as he came home for lunch from school and finally I do it after supper. Most days I also take him for walks at 5 or 6pm, just to keep him entertained so he doesn't need to chew all our stuff. And at weekend we all take him for very long walks. On Saturdays it around the rugby club, plus he plays with all the children there. And on Sundays we go for long walks at a National park nearby, where we all get totally wasted at the end of it.
If one of the ideas behind having a dog was to walk more, well... we're all doing that thanks do Darwin.

But that left me with no time whatsoever and nothing very interesting to tell. Sorry. Life is complicated that way. However, you may be happy to know that I'm very happy to have him around.

The air-head scientist sterotype is true

2007-09-17T09:22:00.001+02:00

Totally true. I know because I'm married to one.
Yesterday "the husband" needed to travel abroad for a few days, job related short trip to England. He prepared all his things himself, of course, and at 8:00pm I took him in the car to his campus so he'll meet the his boss, who's taking her car to the airport. So far so good. He even managed not to over pack as he usually does and this time he hoped that he'll be able to take the small rucksack with him in the cabin.
(I'm not sure that Easyjet will allow that as he has some toiletries and the policy on liquids in the hand luggage is quite strict).
Anyway, when I arrived home, my son told me that "the husband" just phoned in a panic estate as he forgot to take his passport with him.
So I have to take it and go back to give it to him.

How can someone forget the passport, of all things?
OK, I did it myself once, but I was 14 years old at the time and never again!
It's "the husband" after all who's always telling that the 3 essential things for any travel are the 3 ps: passports, tickets and money (at least they're 3 ps in their Spanish translation: pasaporte, pasaje, plata), I wouldn't be surprised if he also forgot his credit card!

At the same time he's a brilliant researcher and scientist. So he does have a brain and he know how o use it, at least partially!

As my American friends would say: Go figure!

Burnt

2007-09-14T21:27:00.000+02:00

As I was wondering a couple of days ago about how many burnt people do they have every year at the local fiestas... well... I've got my own burnt at home while frying something and later at dinner I burnt my dad when accidentally the content of a plate that I was about to serve him slipped away of the plate and on his lap. Is not that bad, just a few bits on my left hand and some sort of boiled eggs for my dad, but this remained me that most accident occurs actually at home and that the health and safety rules in Britain are going too far and they're stopping the fun.
Here they're totally mad with bulls out on the streets and stuff like that. but the firework exhilaration is well worthy of the risk. And it should teach people to be more careful at home!

Fiesta mayor

2007-09-12T11:37:00.000+02:00

Now it definitely feels a year since we moved to Sabadell, as I remember (and you can check the corresponding entry on this blog) that we were already here last year by the time of the fiesta. As it happened last year, the whole city took a few days off to party on the streets.
Now I'm more blase about all this fiesta time, the fireworks, the street shows, the diables with their dragon shooting fire, the trabucaires and so on but for my dad it was his first time and he's never been in a local, small town, fiesta; so I went with him and we had a great time. My dad is amazing in that he never loose the childish ability to crave and enjoy new stuff. He really made an effort to stand there for hours to make sure he didn't miss a thing. And later on he went on watching everything again on TV, as the local channel broadcast the whole party during the following week. From the mayor opening the part from the council balcony, (in Catalán so we couldn't understand much) to the last Castellets on the last day, my dad tried hard to see as much as he could and was sorry that he missed a few of the shows as they were scattered around town and nobody could possibly see it all.
And when all was over, he asked me to send the pictures by e-mail to his friend and my sister so he could share it all.
The thing I liked the most and left my dad duly amazed by was the castells made by the local group Castellers de Sabadell (see picture of a Castell in front of the council house, check the flags on top: from right to left, EC's blue flag, the one of Catalunya, the Spanish and finally the town's own). It never fails to amaze me that triumph and show of union power that this castells are. I think that my dad loved most to see people dancing one of the local folk dance the sardana.

I wish my British friends could see this, as I bet they'll be amazed by the lack of health and safety as diables dance in and out of the crowd brandishing their spears with their burning fireworks at their end. Just in case, there's always an ambulance or two nearby but it still shocking to see how close to the sparks people gets, and that includes small children, even babies, old people who could not jump if needs arises, etc etc. I wonder how many burnt people they have each year; obviously not enough as to stop the fireworks.

2007-09-10T11:20:00.000+02:00

Luckily, I'm only starting to work fully on the 17th of September, as Darwin is a hell of a job and need full time attention. We still have a long way to go in order to house train him.

On the day he arrived he was obviously terrified and almost didn't move from a blanket that we put on the floor for him. He ate meekly whatever dog biscuits we gave him and we started to though that he was mute as no sound came from his mouth. He even slept in the living room without any sign of distress.
The next day we took him for a walk and he was a bunch of nerves. Then I realised that he was totally institutionalised, the poor thing lived in the pet-shop kennel probably for months before we got him and he was totally used to not being special or loved. Poor darling!

Well, to make a long story short... by the second night he was adamant that he wanted to sleep with us in the room, if not on our bed, he wanted to eat at the table with us and he most definitely will not take less that 3 walks a day. He would pee and poo wherever he wanted to and he barks for England every time he wants us do to something. Plus he hated to be left on his own.

It was really amazing how fast he realised that he's loved and it seems that not a second later
he decided to push us to try and bend the rules to his advantage. He's very clever and he's going to be a challenge.

I wish Glynnis was here to give me some tips as how to house train him!!

Some nice pictures

2007-09-08T21:27:00.000+02:00

I love this picture of my dad. I took it while he was slowly going down the stairs in the parking lot outside the walls of Sienna. He walks very slowly, specially when he's on his way down and it just struck me as a sort of a visual metaphor on age. An old and somehow fragile man against the hard and angular concrete.

This one is just funny. Taken in Arezzo, near the church of San Francesco. Both faces look like they've been actually tortured frozen into the metal.

The last one for today is also a very curious detail of a big building and it was taken in the old part of town in Genoa, Italy. The building was very old, 1500's but the face looks very fresh and too humorous to be that old. What do you think? A modern take while remodeling a portico's details? Or a truly Renaissance piece of irreverent art?

Good start for the pumas

2007-09-07T23:43:00.000+02:00

Being Argentinean brings very few moments for joy or celebration, and today we just had one of them. As is often the case, is sport related as Argentina defeated France in Paris at the Rugby World Cup opener in the very same stadium where France won the world cup some years ago. The score was: 17 - 12!

My cousin in France, Marie Pierre, just today sent me an e-mail asking me if i was watching the match... ahh, mon dieu! If my French was any better I'd call her right now to gloat!

I knew that the Pumas were good, but I have to admit that I though that France, being the locals and very good, had just the right edge, so I truly enjoyed seeing the Pumas fight like, well... pumas against Les bleus!

At least 2 of the Argentineans player played in Bristol, the captain of the team Agustín Pichot (surprisingly short, left, when he played for Bristol) and Felipe Contepomi (cute, right) and I was introduced to them once in a party at the Argentinian embasy in London.

The Argies still have to play Ireland at the end of the month, and in any case this is going to be a tough tournament no doub, but... what a way to start!!

My birthday

2007-09-05T16:18:00.000+02:00

I spend my birthday in Nice, France. Sound very posh, isn't it?
On our way back from Italy and at my dad's suggestion, we stayed a couple of days with our cousin Michelle who lives there with her son Pierre Alain.
This is my dad's side of the family. My grandfather left France to emigrate to Argentina at the beginning of the XIX century and he left his sister there, to which he was very closed. She married and had children, her children had children and so on, but the family keep in touch as my grandad took my dad and his brother to France several times. As far as I know my grandad even helped them economically during the war when everybody had a bad time there but life was easier in Argentina.
Whatever this is actual true or family lore, the fact remains that we're still in touch after a whole century, half a world of distance and two different languages. My granddad and his sister would have been happy about this, I think.

Michelle is really lovely but she's terribly deaf and sort of lip read people. That's a big problem for me as my French is basically crap, so although I'm able to understand her (most of the time)but between my nonexistent grammar and terrible accent, she cannot understand me at all. Luckily for us, her son speaks a little English and that helped because he could then "translate" what we said to her.

For my birthday we took everybody to a very nice restaurant at the Promende des Anglaise (see picture here, from left to right: Pierre Alain, "the husband", Michelle, me, P. and my dad) and then they had a great chocolate cake with a singing candle waiting for me at home! I even got some presents, such a Zara voucher from my dad and a perfume form L'Occitane from the very dear "husband". This finally proves that he does listen to me occasionally as I love their lemon perfume and it's impossible to buy it here in Spain. Do check their UK site, click on the name of the shop, as you can buy their things there.

P. kept on saying that he had some very special present waiting for me at home in Sabadell and he said that it was something that I was pinning for for years and that it was going to be the best present ever.

Then, a couple of days after we arrived back from holidays I came home after work and found P. and "the husband" extremelly exited and in the living room there was the most gorgeous little Beagle I've seen!!!
P. called him Darwin ("get it? ...." - he said - "he's a Beagle and Charles Darwin actually travelled around South America in a ship called The Beagle"). Isn't he totally adorable?
P's right, of course, Darwin is the best present ever, even though I know it's going to be hard work to keep him happy living in a flat.

Arezzo, Tuscany

2007-09-04T12:30:00.000+02:00

We spent more or less 10 days travelling to and from "the husband's" ECVP, the annual vision science conference he attends every year. This time it was in Arezzo, Tuscany, one of the most beautiful areas of beautiful Italy. (Tony Blair and his family used to spend their summers there).
You can just get a glimpse of "the husband" here in a green shirt in front of the San Francesco's church.
For "the husband" was all work and no play but we had a great time, specially because this year we went by car, so we (the rest of the family) were free to go to different towns and just drive around one of the most beautiful countryside I've ever seen.

Arezzo is a smallish town, famous for having one of the best, and I think the biggest, frescoes by Piero della Francesca in its main church. He's not my favourite Renaissance artist (that'd be Leonardo DaVinci, of course) but the frescoes were indeed worthy of a visit as it was his pregnant Virgin in the nearby village of Monterchi, the only picture of a pregnant virgin of the period.
Here you can see a close-up of the beautiful severe, regal face of the pregnant Madonna much aware of who's son she's carrying...

I was waiting to go to Florence with "the husband" but he never had any time, so we missed that glorious city this time. A good excuse to go back, because Florence deserves a few days to get just the art. The famous David is there together with many other priceless pieces.

So, we spend our time visiting lovely medieval villages and just driving around in the countryside which was a great. even my dad, who's not the most artistic minded person in town, marvelled at the beauty of the countryside and remarked that it's no wonder that so many works of art has it as a subject. He said that it even inspired him to give it a go and paint! God forbid!!
Mere pictures, specially my own, cannot do justice to the beauty of the rolling hills at the end of summer, but here you a have my favourite.

One of the highlights was a day trip to the gorgeous town Sienna. I've been there once, very briefly, and felt in love with its unique square and the feeling of the old town. And if anything, it's even more beautiful than what remembered from nearly 25 years ago.
My dad walks with a cane (the result of reckless flying in a balloon once, not merely old age), so he found it hard to get up and down the old towns, so I try my best to take him as close as I could with the car to central piazza. I may have gotten I fine or two on the process, I'm not sure, because only residents are supposed to get into the old part of town, and I did it twice, once to drop him there and another to collect him.
Here you can see Sienna's majestic and unique piazza in the shape of a shell, taken from the Internet, of course.
I'll try to find a picture that actually have me on it... I don't think there's any, as I was always the one with the camera.

At the end of it we all have a really good time. I visited lovely places and seen some art that I never saw before, my dad enjoyed mostly the grand views and he loved Sienna, a town that was new for him, P enjoyed Italian ice cream and even "the husband" said that the conference was great and he didn't miss missing the touristic part of the trip.

Catching up

2007-08-22T11:05:00.000+02:00

After the party in Bristol we went for a couple of weeks to a lovely camping in the Costa Brava, called L'Anfora. We loved it. All of us, which is a rather rare event this days, as P.'s going into teenagerdoom and thus trying to make a point of not being in the same "vibe" as his old folks.

I took my newly acquired Harry Potter book and devour it in more or less a week. Of course I'm a fan and it didn't disappointed me; J.K. Rowling's not a subtle author and everything is spelled out for you, unlike more sophisticated books such as my beloved Phillip Pullman "His Dark materials".
I spend a lot of time reading, which is such a bliss for me!! reading by the pool, by the sea, by the tent... wherever!
The weather was really nice and it even rained once so we had a break from the heat. Just perfect.
We took our old tent, bought in Argos for less than 80 quids a few years ago and never used much. We were by far the poorest sight in the whole camping, as the other people had lovely caravans or state-of-the-art tents withe every imagined accessories.
After the first day we went out and bough a cheap gazebo to shelter us from the sun, and underneath it we had a small table, and chairs. We also rented a small fridge and microwave and that made all the difference as we were truly at home with really cold drinks and some warm food. Bliss!

It was such a relaxing time, just a short stroll to the most beautiful blue sea, 2 swimming pools to choose from, restaurants, a nice cafe, small supermarket and so on. They even have a little show, different every night, with things such a 80's disco, Disney's nigh of music, etc. And that was just the campsite, outside it there was a whole little summer town with everything else you may want to make a nice time.

It had a nice mix of people as well, loads of German, Dutch and French with some British, Scandinavian and even some Spaniards. Plenty of kids for my son to play with too and the language was mainly English or Spanish so we felt right at home.

Our neighbours were a family of 4 teenager girls and their parents from somewhere north of England. The poor dad was craving male company and totally fed up with going shopping, so he used to come by and go playing pool with my guys. It was their first holidays abroad and they were a bit lost with things such as food, but they were delighted with the weather and with all the facilities at their disposal. I think they were truly surprised to find that Spain was also a sort of civilized place!! And the ladies were delighted with how far their money went. Spain is at the moment very cheap compared to Britain.

After the camping we went back home for a few days so "the husband" prepared his poster and himself for the conference in Italy at the end of August. I took the opportunity to take my dad and son to the beach or the local swimming pool and just to keep on having a nice time. Is great to have a whole month of holidays, specially when the weather is so great and you can spend most time outside and the outside is good anyway!

Me in Rockery farm

2007-08-17T23:15:00.000+02:00

This is me, holding Melissa and trying hard to befriend her... the poor thing cried every time I tried to hold her!
Is a picture taken during the weekend in the farm in the south-west of England. As I said before, the sun was really, and incredibly, shinning and all was green and beautiful but still very, very, wet. Mind you the thing behind me is a natural pond and not part of the floods!
Please note the Glastonbury's touch of my tiger Wellies, borrowed from Rossana, as is the top, most other clothes were kindly lend to me by Esmeralda. Thank ladies! The hair, accessories and make-up (as if!) are my own.

The hair may be totally white now, but at least I'm trying not to put on wight despite the many temptations to be found in Barcelona.

The picture was kindly send to me by Lili, who took it. I really appreciated it because we don't have any other picture of the event as our camera was in the lost suitcase.

I'm back

2007-08-15T14:21:00.000+02:00

After a few very relaxing days at the Costa Brava, we're back home.

So much to tell so little time!!

First, our Bristol weekend:

Background information:
Every year at around this time we organise a weekend party at Martín's farm for the people of the Latin American group that I started many years ago. The idea is to get together with old friends and meet new ones, all somehow related to the Latin American living in and around Bristol. A few of us used to do all the organising and we all shared the expenses, great value for money as we had a big ball and a great barbecue. This was our fifth party.

We went to Bristol for our annual barbecue at Martín's farm near Weston-super-Mare. We traveled just for one weekend and had many plans to visit friends but Easy jet managed to make our brief holidays far more complicated by loosing our only suitcase.
That meant that we were left on a cold Friday night, stranded at the airport without anything just after we arrived.
Our plane arrived from Barcelona quite late and by the time we realised that our suitcase wasn't there, we find the appropriate desk to complain and we filed the complain about the lost bag and everything, the people at the car rental office were already gone and we didn't have the car we rented. Plus we were very cold as we arrived wearing shorts and T-shirts. Damn!
Luckily, our friend the farm owner, lives quite closed to the airport and is an insomniac so he rescued us and took us to his place were we slept in borrowed t-shirts.

Next day, instead of visit friends in the morning as we had planed we spend most of it at the airport trying to locate our luggage and getting a car, by the time we sort of gave up on finding the luggage... it was time to start preparing the farm for the party!

We not only had clothes in the suitcase but all the Latin American music for the party, some ham and cheese, again for the party, mobile's chargers, camera and, this is the worst, we had my son's Teddy, Winnie, in it. That was a disaster for him as it meant sleeping without Winnie for the first time ever. I think I can survive without clean knickers for a few days, but the poor child couldn't sleep in peace for most of the trip and he lived in a state of fear that the suitcase was lost for good with his beloved Winnie. I truly think that this totally ruined the return to Bristol for P. And this was a real pity as he was looking forward to go back home for a long time.
Luckily we have many good friends in Bristol and as soon as they knew they rally around us and brought us all we needed, from clean undies to Wellington boots for us all! That was really kind and it warmed my heart a lot.

This is the first time I organise this huge event since I left Bristol and on top of that, Miriam, the person who always do more than half the job, moved to Brazil for good, so I was more or less left on my own. On top of that all our previous notes and lists were in Miriam's computer, which was somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic going to Brazil, so I have to trust my memory. So I had to do a lot before, during and even after the party. This was hard work this time instead of partying as it was all the other years and I only wish I had taken more days in Bristol. (This is the fifth year we do this party).

It was harder that ever. So many thing to take care of, from food to toilet paper; so many request to accommodate... Ouch! We had around 80 adults for the barbecue on Sunday, plus around at least 20-something children and I managed to organised it all. We had so many people wanting to attend the event that I had to reject a few and of course they now hate me. Tough! If they didn't like they can try and organised it themselves! I even received hate mail about this !!

We solved the music problem because "the husband" shares the DJ's duty with Alan and he brought all his Brazilian music. Of course you can have many parties with just Brazilian music, but we did miss the other Latino rhythms, at least I did.

I tried my best to delegate all that it was required on to as many people as I could so nobody had a big burden, but that meant that I had to check everything and follow people as they were arriving and then coordinate it all. All that plus organising where the tents should be, where the cars should park, all this a new problem as the ground was very spongy due to the heavy rains in the area and we don't want to ruin Martín's fancy farm.

And it all worked pretty well. People started arriving to the farm after lunch on Saturday we shared a buffet (without our Spanish ham or cheese) and danced until very late despite the sometimes torrential rain. The motto of the party was "Think Glastonbury's festival" and it worked just right as we ignored the rain and had a great time.

On Sunday the sun came up pretty strong and it was all soon very dried and nice, by the time we had the barbecue it looked as lovely as any other summer day in the south of England.
Martín and "the husband" worked overtime to cook and serve the most delicious barbecue that you can have this side of Argentina.
Sadly, I don't have any picture because our camera was in the missed suitcase.

We run out of many things, from plastic glasses to toilet paper, but every problem was solved with the help of everybody. Special mention to a Brazilian lady, Cirlei, who lives locally, so she knows where to go and find things at the last second. She was invaluable help. But she was not the only helpful person as everybody did his or her best to help with many details. I also forgot to ask somebody to bring potato salad, and we almost run out of meat!
But all in all was really great, although I'm not sure if I'm going to organise it again next year as I finished totally exhausted.

Then on Monday, instead of going shopping and visiting friends as we planed, we had to go back to the airport and then to the farm where they finally delivery our suitcase. On Monday!! 3 days after it was firs lost!

By the time I managed to drive to Filton library, it was closed and I missed seeing my former colleagues. And the next day, in the morning we flew back to Barcelona.
Sorry ladies, I really wanted to see you but life doesn't always work as we plan it. Now I really have to go back somewhere again, as I missed doing many things that i wanted to do and I missed many people I wanted to see.

Busy bee and vacation's break

2007-07-26T14:07:00.000+02:00

This week has been very busy indeed as we're going on holidays on Friday.

My dad is doing a lovely job and my balcony now has loads of plants and flowers, even a small perfumed Jasmine, and even some tomatoes! Not a proper garden, but a bit of green is always nice. He and "the husband" were busy trying to figure out a device for watering the plants while we're out during our holiday. They did create a complicated looking system that, in theory, will keep the plants moist until we're back. Let's hope it'll work fine.
Also my dad is getting ready to go to France. He's going to stay with our french family there and I can only hope that he'll be careful not too eat too much cheese.

I was wrapping some classes and writing loads of reports and courses plans for next year classes. I've told my boss that want to work around 30 hs a week staring in September. I want to be able to save enough money next year to go to one of my dreams destination: Petra in Jordan, maybe a camel ride to reach the place? That takes at least 3 days of riding camels and sleeping in tents in the desert, so it's a sort of organewsed adventure, but it doesn't come cheap.
I'm also trying to keep our son amused and entertained in a more physical way because he's enjoying his holidays a lot but he spends far too much time watching TV or playing with his PlayStation. So I try to take him at least 3 times a week to the local swimming pool or the sea, where he does a lot of exercise. The local pool is really great,big enough for 3,000 people and with plenty of room to do whatever, swim, slide down on any of the big slides, play with inflatable toys, have a picnic, go to the cafe or just relax under s tree. That's what I do, I take my book, some nice and cool coca-cola and my very comfy beach mat (Ikea-designed, you can see it on the left here, and you can lay or sit confortably enought to read) and just read and relax, when is too hot I take a dip in the pool or a shower and go back to my book. That's the life.
On top of all that I'm organising a barbecue in England... this weekend... in the middle of one of the worst rainfall ever... I'm really worried. But as I bough my tickets, there's no way we're cancelling, so... think Glastonbury!! Fun in the mud! (wish me luck)
I order my Harry Potter book ages ago, and amazon said that they send it on Saturday but hasn't arrive yet. If this doesn't come until tomorrow, I'll buy one in Bristol anyway.

"The husband" also was busy trying to wrap up some projects he's been working on before the dead month of August.

So, starting tomorrow I'm going to take a break from this blog until we're back on the 11 of August. I'll try to write an entry about the weekend party and to include some pictures, before going to the camoping on the 1 of August, but I don't promise enything as I really need a rest away frommy desk.

See you soon and enjoy whatever the weather brings you!

bleeping fiesta!

2007-07-23T12:53:00.000+02:00

I never thought that I'd hate a fiesta! This is truly a first for me.
This weekend people in my neighbourhood had their annual fiesta. As I told you before, everybody and everything has a fiesta here in Spain. And far I thought that it was very nice to keep the tradition, great that the community joins together to celebrate that we're alive yet another year, very quaint to keep the tradition going and all that "foreign" crap.
Now, a party is all very nice if you can leave it and go home at any time you wish, but when they force you attend the party like it or not... well... not that nice.
Now I understand while local people just leave the town in certain dates in order to avoid a party. For instance, a few weeks ago the city of Pamplona in the north of Spain has its famous San Fermín's encierros when people dressed in white with a red faja run in front of the bulls throughout the city. This year was particularly infamous as some idiot run with his 10 years-old son. While that party sounds great fun with plenty of folkloric and religious meaning, the actual party meant hundreds of very drunk people running amok. Not much fun if you happens to live there and have to see your doorstep pissed and vomited every night for a whole weekend.

Well... people on my neighbourhood had their annual fiesta during the weekend and that meant that I couldn't watch TV or even sleep until late at night when they finished the noise. And the main party was around the corner from us!
Really it wasn't that bad, just really tacky and noisy, not elegant and folkloric. And the worst part was that I needed to go to work very early the next day so i really needed my sleep and didn't fancy listened to loud pop music from the 70's.
The weather was also didn't help me as it was a hot night, so if I closed my window that cancelled the noise but it was too hot to bear.

I think I start to think as a local! This has to be good! hasn't it?

A very sad departure

2007-07-19T14:05:00.000+02:00

In Argentina one of the most popular and talented artists died recently. His name is Roberto Fontanarrosa, and here you can see his portrait surrounded by a few of his many characters. he described our political reality and the Argentinean culture (if such thing does exist) as nobody else did, with amazing acuracy and great humour. He was also a gifted writer.

And he was one of my favourite living artist in the whole world.
I still keep a caricature he draw for my in one of his many books presentation. He dedicated it to me and signed it and it is one of the very few things that I always carry with me wherever I happens to live. I treasured it for years and I will for years to come.
I keep his books in my home waiting for my son to be a bit older so he can appreciate and understand his sense of humour and thus understand and appreciate his Argentinean inheritance. As he's doing now while he discover and enjoy another great artist: Quino.

Roberto Fontanarrosa touched people in many ways and he always managed to make me smile and sometimes even to laugh out loud with his cartoons. Now this news managed to make me feel very sad, as I lost somebody near to my heart.

Here it goes my humble homage to a great artist. We will miss you dearly, maestro.

More visitors and reflexion on female friendship

2007-07-16T23:40:00.000+02:00

To think that I ever worried thinking that nobody was going to visit us!

Another friend, this time from Bristol, arrived. She's in Barcelona interviewing people to fill the job of junior language assistant in the department of Spanish of one of the universities in Bristol, and she kindly stayed a few more days just to spend some time with us.
She arrived just a few days after the young French cousin left and, again, my son had to surrender his room to guests. He didn't mind as she's like an auntie to him and as family to us all.

We took her around to visit friends and to the lovely beach in Villanova i la Geltrú, one of the nice beaches a bit south of Barcelona. It was vey full as more and more people are arrivng for their holidays in the sun. The flow of people increases a lot here in summer, with more and more tourist arriving, luckily the prices are not followint that trend but are staying more or less the same. To eat in a chiringuito by the sea doesn't need to cost a fortune, but we need to buy a cooler so we can take our own cool drinks.
(A chiringuito is a place by the sea with some sort of shade, where drinks and some food are sold, usually they also have music, sometimes a DJ and are open very long hours. See picture)

We chat and chat and, by god, how much do I miss just talking to women!
We do talk in a different manner than boys. I believe that we women sort of think while talking... we just chat and the exchange of words help us make our mind when something trouble us. Men are more goal oriented ad take conversations more as the way to reach a goal. We women just go with the flow and analyze thing while we're at it.

Does this make sense to you? I'd appreciate comments on this.

One of the areas where I need to work, now that it looks as we're going to stay here for a long while, is friendships of mi own, specially female friends. I need to work on that.

Au revoir little cousin

2007-07-13T22:16:00.000+02:00

My young cousin left yesterday and, yes, she was really nice and sweet and yes, it was a pleasure to have her as a guest. As much as I moan, I do love to have guests. I hope that she managed to improve her Spanish and English
Of course, this being my life, things never go smoothly and simply, there has to be some drama to everything and this was not the exception.

I did promise my dad that I'd take her to the airport despite my quite busy schedule and the summer heat that made a nightmare to drive for 2 hours on the motorway. I don't like driving on the motorway as the people here simply don't know the rules and do whatever they feel, it's very stressful. I used to hate driving on it but now experience and the GPS help a lot and now is bearable. But to drive to Barcelona airport and back in the middle of a working summer day, though, is not something I was looking forward to.

I went to my early class at 8am in a local industry park at around 20 minutes from home. I'm replacing the usual teacher in a multinational company's factory. Because this was my first class there I arrived a bit earlier and parked my car in one of the many places there. I went to reception but had to wait until the receptionist arrived.
Here when it says that the opening time is 8am it actually means that the employee arrives at more or less that time, but first goes to say hello to somebody, grab a coffee and only then actually goes to his/her desk. So I waited for the receptionist to arrive and tell me where my class was and so on.
Let's just mention that also my students are always late for classes, I know this but I'm very professional and I'm always on time, don't know why I bother. Even when I go to their own offices, they'll still find a way to keep me waiting. It's not rude but is just the way things are here.
Anyway, eventually my class started and then the phone run and the receptionist ask for me. She asked me where did I park the car and when I told her there was a long silence on the line and she said that there was a huge crane blocking my car and that she didn't know how long that was to stay there.
OK. I told her that I needed the car but that I'd finish the lesson and we'd worry about it latter.

When the class finished I went back to the car park and, yes, there was a huge yellow crane there totally blocking my car, which was nicely parked behind it and with no way of getting out. I checked everywhere for signs to make sure that it wasn't my fault and then I headed to reception. The receptionist was truly apologetic and told me that it was really her fault as she supposed to warn everybody and she did... by email and in person the day before. She didn't even put a sign there.
As the situation was sinking in, I became more desperate. By then it was 10 o'clock and I was expected to pick my cousin and take her to the airport on time, then I there were 2 more classes on the afternoon.

I was aghast.

The receptionist apologised and told me that she had already called a taxi in. I was about to burst into tears thinking of the expenses. Then she added that as it was all her fault the company will put the taxi at my disposal to go to wherever I needed for the rest of the day if necessary and that she'll call me as soon as my car was freed so I can go back and collect it. In fact, the taxi was already waiting for me.

With great caution I told her that I needed to go to the airport, to El Pratt, and back and then to different places. I just wanted to make sure she knew that the bill was going to be huge. She said not to worry about distance or time, the taxi was mine for me to use it as I had planned to use my car.

All of a sudden the situation wasn't as bad as I thought.
It was actually pretty good.

So without much ado and before the very nice and, all of a sudden, very eficient receptionist had the chance of changing her mind, I jumped into the taxi. The driver was very pleased to hear the whole story as he was going to get a lot of money out of it. As he said: "some body's misfortune can be the good fortune of another", taxi drivers are usually very philosophical here.

Then I went home, the taxi waited until we were ready and my little cousin and I chat all the way to the airport in the comfort of the air conditioned taxi, I think there were some traffic jams on the way but I didn't care a bit. It was the most comfortable and relaxed ride to the airport ever!
After I boded farewell to the young cousin I bought a coke and went back home. Nice.

Then at noon, the receptionist called to tell me that the crane was gone and my car was free, and she offered to send me another taxi. I asked to send the taxi at 1:30 pm so I could be on time to my next appointment.

I finished the day extra relaxed as I didn't drive as much as I expected.

It's really great that what started as a disaster turned to be my lucky day. Great!
I choose to think that this was good karma.

"The husband" is a star!

2007-07-11T11:44:00.000+02:00

Great news.
"The husband" got awarded a very prestigious fellowship called Ramon y Cajal. This means that he got money to establish his own laboratory here in the Universidad Autónoma, equipment and all, a 5 year contract to keep on working in the department where he's now, money for travel to conferences around the world and the promise of a fixed permanent contract at the end of those 5 years.

This is the more stable we've ever been. Amazing!

On top of that there's only a handful of scientist awarded with that here in Spain, plus "the husband" was chosen number 5 in the whole project. Thousands of people from all over the world apply for this and very few actually get it.

The fellowship is named after Santiago Ramon y Cajal, one of the few Spanish scientists to be awarded the Nobel prize for his discovering of the neurotransmitters.

So, first and foremost, this means that "the husband's" work is recognised and appreciated it, which is great. Second, and in a more practical level, means a new found stability for us all. Means that he's going to stay put for as long as he wants to, unless they cannot, for some reason, offer him a permanent contract at the end of the 5 years.

This is a fab news but after a while I find myself being totally in shock I still don't fully know what this means for me.
P (our son) wasn't particularly happy and couldn't even understand what all the fuss was about. In his heart of hearts he expected us to go back to Bristol, where he was born and lived happily.
So far I lived and worked within just 2 more years in Catalunya in my mind. To keep my sanity and my worries about the future under control I refused to think long term. So all my projects were confined to up to 3 years. My job, for instance... do I really want to teach EFL for the rest of my working life? What are we going to do with our son high school!

I'm going to spend this summer time thinking about what I do want for the next few years. It's a good time to think, because now I'm busy and there's no time. I need to re-set my priorities and goals. So far I'm more or less where I wanted to be in life, but is time to re-think.

As I took a few extra hours replacing teachers that started their holidays in July (wisely, as I know realising) , I still work around 20 hours a week and I need some extra leisure time to myself.

I'm thinking along the lines of this poem by William Henry James (a total character, as you can read if you click on his name):

"LEISURE"

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

By Wm. Henry Davies.

Bristol's weekend party

2007-07-09T22:26:00.001+02:00

Every year, since 2002, at around this time of the year, I organise a weekend party for friends in a lovely friend's farm near Tauton. (both the friend and the farm are lovely, although I suspect that my friend will find it terribly funny being described as "lovely", I think he'll prefer a more macho word).
A "fancy " farm as I described it once, to my former colleague Glinnys' amussement, amusement, because it's not a working farm in the traditional sense. My dear friend Martin, the owner, works a lot and he does it there in the farm, in fact he's the one and only workaholic I personally know, but he work in computers and cannot be described as a farmer by any stretch of the imagination even when sometimes he looks like one.

Anyway.... Last year I promised that I would try and organise the party from here and that we'd all go back and, hopefully, will gloat about living in the sun.
We arranged the date well in advance and the time has come to do the do. (oh, I love the English language but really most of my puns are unintentional).
The date is the last weekend of July. As usual, we're going to have a buffet meal on Saturday evening, followed by a ball (mainly Latin American music) until we're all tired, there's usually a nice bonfire in one corner of the farm, where people sit, chat and drink mate until even later. Then on Sunday we have a great barbecue, South American style (you have to see and try this to believe it). At the end of the day we all share the cost, so it's not a big expensive deal for anybody and a great time for all.
We take our tents so we can go stright to sleep after all the dancing and nobody needs to worry about driving.
There's usually plenty of children playing together somewhere, the place is big and pretty safe so they can go amok and nobody notices it. And it's great to be able to catch up with old friends and meet new ones, because every year there's some new people.
We always have a few marquees, just in case, although we only really needed them twice, once because it rained (but we keep on dancing, so nobody really noticed it) and the other time to cover us from the sun, believe it or not.

We already bought our (easyjet) tickets and will be in Bristol from Saturday 28th to Tuesday 31th.

This is a sort of invitation, you can go the whole weekend (highly recommended) or just one day. Thinik about it, contact me and I'll send you more details, such as a map.

I'd love to meet with the ladies at the library now that I'm droping in Bristol, so maybe we could organise to go for lunch on Monday 30th to the pub near the library in Filton? I'll ask them.
At least I'm going to drop by to see who's there on Monday. How nice to see the old place!
mmm... maybe I can even convince them to let me borrow some books as I'm starving for new stuff, specially on CDs.

Girlie shopping

2007-07-07T21:55:00.000+02:00

I haven't realised that I live in a very male house. Well.. my dad is staying with us, then I have "the husband" and my boy who's starting to grow into a young man.
This just struck me when I planned to take my little cousin out and the guys ideas were totally daft, so after the usual visits to sight see Barcelona and to see Gaudi's houses I took her to the biggest shopping area in town and she totally loved it. In fact, I loved it too. So, while the guys (my dad and my son) stayed in a shady part drinking something and dying of boredom, my lovely little French cousin and I went happily skipping around, comparing prices and stuff. Even the part of shopping that I truly dislike, trying on the clothes, was fun as we compared things and laugh at trying some obviously stupid fashion faux pas.
(as you can see I even managed to improve my French)

The last time I went shopping here was with my friend Esmeralda, but this time was even better as this is sale season. I don't know why, but they're selling all the summer stuff as if we're heading into winter. And the summer just started and it does last until September!!! So, plenty of time yet to wear the stuff that I bough a half price.
So, ladies, if you like shopping, this is the perfect time to visit Barcelona. You can shop 'till you drop and then drop in a lovely sandy beach where you can get a 20 minute massage for €10 (aprox. 7 pounds). I'm not joking, as well as having people on the beach selling cold drinks and cheap jewelry you have people going around crying "masages". The people selling stuff are usually black young men and the masseuses are oriental looking women. I heard that they're illegal immigrants, of which, apparently, there are many.

Of course the truly lovely stuff is still expensive even with a 50% discount. A 50% discount of a €1,000 pair of shoes is still €450 too expensive for me. But I love cheap stuff anyway, so I bough a nice summer dress in H&M (of all places!) for €12 (less than a tenner), shower gels at half price, 2 blouses for working and trousers and underwear for my guys. I'm still trying to find a nice pair of comfortable sandals that I can use to go and teach. There's many to choose from as one of the few industries in Spain, apart from tourism, is making shoes, but I'm very picky.

Summer's here

2007-07-06T00:13:00.000+02:00

You don't have an idea how lovely the weather is here at this time of the year, my son said that he likes it here "because everyday feels like summer holidays" and it's totally true. It's a bit uncomfortable if you, like me, have to drive everywhere and work in different places because the car feels like a sauna. But it's lovely to be able to have tapas down the road from home after the work is done and when the nice breeze starts to cool everything down.
We're also able to drive to the sea if we feel like it. We have to check the time as not to be in the middle of the motorway in rush hour, but I feel is such a luxury to be able to drive 40 minutes and be in a lovely sandy beach in the Med!!

The little cousin is totally adorable and really beautiful. I mean model-like beautiful and she doesn't even know it with only adds to her very Gallic charm. She looks like one of Asterix and Obelix's lovely young beauties.
Of course, I'm more busy than usual as I have to cook and take care of more people, plus take her places and help her with Spanish and English, but P, my son, has been really helpful and he helps her with the languages and also helps a bit more around the flat (although he does need to be remained it a bit).
It's nice to have another girl in the flat as I'm living with 3 guys and I'm totally used to it by now. But she appreciate girlie things like movies such as "Sleepless in Seattle" or Mika singing "Grace Kelly".
I think I'll love to take her shopping to the big discount place called La Roca. Is a big outlet village where all the big labels sell their pass seasons goods with discounts up to 50%. Of course, 50% off €1,000 is still far too expensive for me to even think of buying, but it'll be nice to go and look around, and there's no way any of my guys will go with me.

More visitors

2007-07-03T23:57:00.000+02:00

My dad invited a very young French cousin to stay with us. She's 17 and just finishing her Bac (the French equivalent of English GCSEs) and want to improve her Spanish and English and my dad though that it'll be good for her to stay with us a few days.
Nice idea in principle, and I'm all in favour to keep the ties with the French branch of my (very) extended family, but now I'm all tied up, busy and trying to get some rest, the flat is too small and well... I'll have more work added to my already busy life.
She's arriving today and I cannot pick her up from the airport because my car is in the garage, a problem with the brakes. So my dad have to go all by himself (by bus), collect her and bring her home.
At least I hope she'll be as nice as her sister, who visit us a couple of times in Bristol and was lovely.

Maya Angelou. I love this one

2007-07-02T17:10:00.000+02:00

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ...

enough money within her control to move out
and rent a place of her own,
even if she never wants to or needs to...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ...

something perfect to wear if the employer,
or date of her dreams wants to see her in an hour...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ..

a youth she's content to leave behind....

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ...

a past juicy enough that she's looking forward to
retelling it in her old age....

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE .....

a set of screwdrivers, a cordless drill, and a black lace bra...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....

one friend who always makes her laugh... and one who lets her cry...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....

a good piece of furniture not previously owned by anyone else in her family...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ...

eight matching plates, wine glasses with stems,
and a recipe for a meal,
that will make her guests feel honored...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ...

a feeling of control over her destiny...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...

how to fall in love without losing herself.

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...

how to quit a job,
break up with a lover,
and confront a friend without;
ruining the friendship. ..

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...

when to try harder... and WHEN TO WALK AWAY....

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...

that she can't change the length of her calves,
the width of her hips, or the nature of her parents.

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...

that her childhood may not have been perfect..but it's over...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...

what she would and wouldn't do for love or more...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
how to live alone... even if she doesn't like it...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW..

whom she can trust,
whom she can't,
and why she shouldn't take it personally. .

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...

where to go...
be it to her best friend's kitchen table...
or a charming inn in the woods...
when her soul needs soothing....

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...

what she can and can't accomplish in a day...
a month...and a year....

Writting plans for next year

2007-06-30T11:53:00.000+02:00

As soon as I finished my reports I've been told that I have to write somehow detailed plans for next year classes. It feels like the job will never ends. One of the good thinks of my job was not having to mark home work and exams, but now I've got to do this and I don't even know where to start!
I'm going to try and Google this. I hope that other teachers did publish their plans so I can take some inspiration or downright and shamelessly copy theirs. Students do this, why not teachers!!

See you when I finish that. Wish me luck.

Writing reports

2007-06-28T10:17:00.000+02:00

I was very naive because I though that this week was to be more relaxed already, I didn't know that I have to write my students' reports. Teacher's work feel like the proverbial icebergs as there's much more to it than it looks for afar.
I hate to write reports. I don't know what's worst, to write them in English or in Spanish. In the first is stressful and time consuming, in the latter is just plain boring.
The expected reports are not long or complicated, but there's a set of EU rules and standards that they have to match and to read it all took me at least one whole afternoon. At least I don't have to mark exams!!!
One of the agencies also asked me to write a plan for next year's classes, one for each group.
The deadline is Friday but I started on Monday and it looks like this is going to take some time.
Wish me luck.

Finishing my classes

2007-06-26T10:02:00.000+02:00

Most of my classes are about to finish for this academic year.
(This is one more reason as why the party the other day felt like New Year's eve, most people take January off in Argentina as people here take August).
I'm still going to work and teach few special classes during July, but it's down to 15 hours a week so it'll be more relaxed. Good enough to get some money and quiet enough so I can start to relax and have time to think. I need to take stock of this year, check where I am and what do I need to do from here.
(another reason why it feels like New Year's eve in Argentina, as that is usual the time when one thinks about the past year and what the future will be like. Not to mention New Year's resolutions).
For most of my students I prepared the same kind of lesson, something related as how to learn for themselves, because if you don't practice an acquired language you soon enough start to forget it. The easiest thing to do is read articles using the Internet, but I also mentioned other resources such as listening to podcast, watching movies in English with English subtitles to help them, and so on.
I hope they do it. However, the demand for English teachers is such that I know I'm going to keep on working on this area for a as long as I want to.

BANG!

2007-06-24T09:24:00.000+02:00

A day latter and my ears are still ringing.
They told us that it was going to be noisy and it was.
What amused me the most was that all the plans made a week in advance were changed at the last minute. This is so Latino!!
Remember that the main food was to be a giant paella? Well, the paellero said that he doesn't bother to cook a paella for less than 150, so the main course was changed to a barbecue. And, of course, Spanish people know that the best barbecue are made by Argentineans, so they called us and another few of my people to organise a barbecue for 80 on the same day.
Of course, we Argentineans are at our best when under pressure, and they managed to produce a fantastic barbecue, on time and without much of a fuss. Barbecues in Argentina are a men thing, so "the husband" and my dad were very involved but I did nothing, just socialised and got to know other parents.
The club is a great place for this sort of parties as it's in the middle of nowhere and the kids had plenty of room to play with their rockets and bombs. The older kids (teenagers) were mainly at the front with their big rockets and very noisy stuff, the younger kids (and the girls) were at the back, closer to where the parents were.
The lack of health & safety issues is liberating on one hand, but a bit disturbing on the other as the kids run amok and there was at least two instances that I saw myself that were really worrying and it was close to a miracle that nobody was hurt. The first one was a flying think that came directly to us (the parents) and a piece of something actually hit a dad on his head, even though he ducked most of it. The second was when the kids were trying to use a glass bottle as a support for a rocket and the thing fell into the bottle by accident after they lighted it. After a second of hesitation somebody shout run and they did... just in time as the bottle exploded and there were pieces of glasses flying everywhere. Again, the fact that nobody was hurt was incredible.
After a delicious barbecue, the adults danced to 80's music while the kids burnt all their things.
The club is in the countryside (well, as countryside as you can have in over-built Catalunya) and you could see a lot of the fireworks in the Vallés.
Despite, or maybe because all that, the kids and the adults alike enjoyed the evening and we return home well after midnight. At the entry of Sabadell, as usual on this occasion, the police were stopping people to check the alcohol levels. My dad and "the husband" drank sangria and cava, but I was driving so we were ok.

For us the night felt and even smelled like New Year's Eve. Let me explain. In Argentina the New Year's Eve is when summer just started, so it's usually a hot day followed by a bit colder nigh. We usually eat dinner outside with friends and family and then, at 12:00 o'clock the sky gets alight with fireworks and you can hear the bombs well into the night. The balmy air carries the smell of barbecues and gun-powder. Just like Sant Joan's night in Catalonia.
This feels like home, maybe for the wrong reasons, but is like returning home in a parallel universe, one where the economy went well and Argentina is still a rich country. Weird.

Thank God it'is Friday!

2007-06-22T17:37:00.000+02:00

I do need a rest! The work and the heat is killing me, summer is definitely here and although I work in very comfortable offices, my car is usually parked under the sun and it feels like a sauna this time of year
Although it looks like there's a big party this weekend as it's la fiesta de San Juan, one of the biggest in the country. Basically, it's about celebrating the summer solstice although they have a catholic explanation for the fiesta, as usual, and we're expecting big and very noisy fireworks, bonfires and, of course, a special cake. We're even invited to a paella party on Saturday's evening at the rugby's club with all the kids. The club hired a special paellero, one of those guys specialised in preparing those huge paellas like the one in the picture.
A paella is a traditional Spanish dish, basically rice with seafood and sometime chicken and saffron (thus the golden colour). Really delicious.
A full meal here is a serious affair with at least three separate courses. So the club told the parents to bring some food and drinks to be shared as a buffet and they provide the main course, a mighty paella, and all the cutlery, tables, and so forth. They also asked everybody to bring in their fireworks so we'll have a good San Juan.
I still remember the spark inside my sandal from the the local dragon and my ear ringing from the trabucaires a couple of weekends ago, so this time I'll make sure I'm as far away from the kids as I can possibly be.
Of course, there's no way of stopping my son. Two days ago he came from school and told me that as he was walking home he saw a bunch of (slightly older) kids making a hell of a noise in the local square, he just stop to stare and they kindly invited him to give it a go and through some himself! He was very pleased as how friendly Spanish children are and how noisy the bombs were. There and then I started to miss the health and safety regulations from over-cautious England. Well... almost.
So, we're going today to buy some fireworks and bombs in a nearby shop. they just left their catalogues in our mailbox and it looks fantastic. I'm sure that some of this stuff is totally illegal back in England!!

During the whole week we've been hearing bangs and booms all over the place, as people cannot wait until tomorrow to use their stuff. Judging by the very long queues today in one shop near our house that sells all sort of this things... we expect something really big, very loud and maybe even some colour too.
I'll try to take pictures and post it here tomorrow.

Thinking of taking a holiday?

2007-06-20T21:12:00.000+02:00

This is a bit of an advertising.
Our friends Gavin and Francesca are British expats living in Alghero, a town in the beautiful island of Sadinia in the middle of the Mediterranean sea.
They now bought a small flat next door to where they live and they want to rent it out to holidaymakers.
Now you can flight to Alghero from Bristol using Ryanair. It's not expensive.
My friends have a webpage advertising it in English, so please check it out (just click on the link):

http://algheroflat.ning.com/#scrollTo

Everything important, such as availability, prize (very affordable) and so on, can be checked directly with them by e-mail, which youĺl find on the webpage.

Nice weekend!

2007-06-18T20:57:00.000+02:00

Friday was crazy. I arranged all my classes to finish before midday so we could leave to the Costa Brava as soon as possible, because we book a mobile home for the weekend in the lovely L'Amphora camping.
But things are never easy, not matter how well you plan things, so the day before I've got a text message in my phone saying that we needed to sign my son in his new school at 13:30 on Friday. It took us a whole hour to fill the form and give the school all the papers they need, things such as copies of parent's ID, all his vaccinations (we've lost P's red health record book so we have to go and ask his local GP for a certificate saying that he seems to be as a healthy as he looks), pictures of the kid, previous schools reports, etc etc.

Whatever!! After that we did manage to be at the campsite by 4pm and after downloading the car we all went straight into the sea. We stayed there until 9pm. Lovely!!
The caravan was small but comfortable, with one double bedroom and another with two small single beds, a nice loo, shower (cold and hot water), small but well equipped kitchen (we only used the fridge) a sort of small living room area and a patio surrounded by hedges and cover by trees where they have a table and chairs. Very nice and cozy.
We didn't do much and it was so nice!
We ate mostly sandwiches at a nice table outside the caravan and we once we went outside the camp to a lovely restaurant just opposite us.
Just a short walk from the caravan (5 minutes?) we had the see, warm and with a nice, long, sandy beach. Also we had a big swimming pool.
We played pool, swam, talked and walked, and I read almost half a book, something unheard off since we're in this flat as I'm always busy.
My dad was deeply impressed as he said he's never seen such an organised and clean camping. I think he expected us to take him to the wilderness, as one does when camping in South America, and was pleasantly surprised by the 'civilization' of it all.

This was like a pre-view because we booked a place for us all to go, this time with our tent, for the first 10 days of August. Now we can plan our trip better and we're all looking forward to that!!
And we all came back really relaxed, half tanned and ready to go the final few days until the holidays.

Sunday night, as we were trying to sleep we were woken up by a terrible racket, fireworks, bombs and people driving around blowing their horns very loudly. All after midnight! Today we learnt that all that was the celebrations of the Real Madrid's fan because they won some cup or other. I couldn't care less but it surprise me that people celebrated it here and so loudly because the Real Madrid is the eternal rival of the local team, the Barcelona, and most people here are Barza fans.
Of course, you may have heard of this and seen the pictures because it was the farewell game of David Beckham, who's going to L.A. after this. And because Victoria, the former Posh Spice girl, is now blonder than David.

Desisions, desisions

2007-06-15T20:22:00.000+02:00

This week I'm working a lot and my stress levels are quite high.
Because I started working almost at the end of the year, I've got just a couple of groups were I started and I sort of inherited most groups in the middle of their classes. To change teachers in the middle of the year is never easy, not for the students nor the teacher, and I've tried to make the best of a not-so-good situation. I'm taking this as paying my dues. you know, being the new kid on the block. I also took most classes that I've been offered in order to achieve my financial goal of earning €1,000.
Luckily for me, most of the classes finish at the end on June, so there's only two weeks to go and then I can relax, take stock, analyse the situation and establish new goals for the next year. Plus sleep until late, take time to go to the swimming pool and the sea with my dad and my son, read, and wear crappy t-shirts and shorts. Just holidays.
The only downside was the lack of income for 2 months.

As you may know by now, I'm working with 2 agencies. One belongs to local people, the other to a couple of British ex-pats.
I'm happy with the local one. They're very professional but very flexible as well, and they've been very understanding with me during the couple of times where I wasn't able to teach (because my son had a tummy ache or when I needed to take time off to pick my dad up from the airport).
The British were very professional as well but communication was never as easy as with the Spaniards (they're always busy and don't always took time to answer my queries on e-mails) and I feel a bit on my own with them. They also expected me to keep their website going and up-to-date for free and I've just don't have the time to do a lot of extra work ad honorem. Plus I've got more cancellations with them without payment for me than with the Spanish agency. Now I've just been told that one of the owners, Steve, is going to be P's rugby coach starting anytime now. And I'm not completely comfortable with the idea of working for the guy who's P's coach.
As for now, I'm working 6 hours a week for the Brits and 22 for the Spanish. The Brits pay a bit more but not much.

I'm thinking of staying with just one agency for the next year (starting September) but don't know how to tell Steve. Any ideas will be very welcome.

My friends are back

2007-06-13T13:49:00.000+02:00

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After spending some time in the south of Spain visiting their cousin, my friends are back here until Friday.
It's very nice to have them around, specially their little toddler. Isn't it amazing how much space this little people fill in any home? They're the centre and the heart of any home and little baby Esmeralda was not exception. We've all took turns to play with her, talk to her and teach her little silly performances to amuse us. P's did the best one as he tough her to dance as the dog in a funny little video we found on youtube. So when the music sounds she puts her hand on top of her head, then on front of her and so on, as does the doggy. She's so funny and cute!

As usual, having friends here is great but also a bit sad as it does highlight the fact that I still don't have friends here. What I miss the most is the chance to share my thoughts and everyday life with, to just talk and laugh. Of course, I'm talking all day long as part of my job, and I do write mails and share my life here as well, but, of course, it's not the same as to do so in real time and face to face.

In many senses we've moved to Barcelona to be downshifters. Downshifters are those people who voluntarily made a long-term change in their lifestyle (other than retirement) which result in earning less money, reducing their work hours or quit work to study or stay at home. People who decided to quit the rat race in order to have better quality of life.
In our case, my work was just right and I loved it, but "the husband" wasn't happy, life for him in England was too much work and not enough "life". So, we thought that things would be different here.
In a way they are, or better say: they have the potential to be. We knew that to achieve the way of life that we wanted was not just a matter of moving countries and I knew that in order to achieve what we wanted we needed to work a lot at the beginning. I'm under no illusions and I'm totally conscious that the first few years are going to be tough and that we need to make sacrifices and make things work for us.
So, I miss my friends and right now I'm working far more than I did in Bristol and God knows I need a holiday, but we seems to be on the right track. Only time will tell.

Fiesta season's back again!

2007-06-12T19:30:00.000+02:00

As the weather is getting better more and more people are going out into the streets and this mean that the street party season is back.
The fist one was Corpus Christi, a religious festivity (I'm not very Catholic myself so I don't have a clue as what's going on) that is somehow related to first communions. You could see children everywhere dressed beautifully, girls dressed in longs white dresses and boys dresses as dwarf admirals or Victorian style kid/sailors as you can see in this picture of one of the Spanish royal kid on his day.
There's been some debate in the media as how much money people spend on the whole thing and how what is supposed to be a spiritual event is now a new way to keep up with the Joneses. According with some surveys, people spend in average €5,000 in total, including the dresses for the kid and his/her parents, the fiesta, etc etc.
During the last weekend we had in Sabadell the fiesta de la tradición a party to celebrate all things traditional, and we saw the local two-headed dragon called Antonitot (picture here with his accompanying diables (devils), The dragon's mouths are fill with fireworks and he's taken into the street scaring people away. Here the guys from Health & Safety still don't rule the country, so the dragon goes around spitting real fire and loads of sparkles and people run away from him. One little spark came to rest inside my sandal, and believe me... it's real fire and it hurts!But is was worthy.

We also saw a most fantastic creature called the burricornio (a mix of the words burro, donkey, and unicornio, unicorn, something like a donkeycorn). Instead of spurting fire, the burricornio splash everybody with water from both ends and, of course, the children love this even more than the scary dragon. I do think that people run away faster from the burricornio and his cold water that from the sparkles of the dragon. Only it was so warm that the children run towards this funny creature with the most silly faced you can imagine, and they got soaked wet, of course. Pity that I was running and laughing so much that I don't have a single good picture of it!!

There were also the trabucaires. This is people dressed in traditional costume with the red berretina, the Catalan hat, carring a big old-fashioned gun (see picture) and actually shooting blank and very noisy shoots. From time to time they take some black powder and make a small pile on the floor and then shoot their guns at it, thus creating a small fire and a big white smoke. They even let some of the children pull the trigger of the guns when they finished, so they can see how the mechanism release the fire to fire the gunpowder (told you, no Health & Safety here to spoil the party). P was very impressed on how hard wast to pull the trigger and to think that people actually used to go to war with this things. In any case, it was VERY noisy,even though I tried to cover my ears, from time to time they caught me unprepared and my ears were ringing for hours afterwards.

After all that we all went to have some tapas and a nice ice cream before returning home. My dad even had a sangria with his tapas! My stomach was still not well, so I had neither the tapas not the ice cream but I enjoyed the day a lot.

I love my new town, we all do. Loads of things to see and do and not a tourist in sight.

My health

2007-06-10T14:17:00.000+02:00

For the past few days I've been feeling rotten. It's the same old thing that bothers me from time to time, somehow related to my blood pressure (too low) and my digestive system. For years I've been taking a daily medicine that was supposed to raise my blood pressure to more stable levels. On top of that I was taking another drug that, in theory, helps my system to cope with the ups and downs of life, stress and that sort of thing can alter my pressure and when that drop my system get all confused and it takes hours to self regulate, hours when I feel really bad and then I'm left totally drained.

During the past last year my life has been very eventful and, of course, stressful, but I agreed with my doctor in Bristol that as my blood pressure was more stable, I should start to reduce the drugs ever so slowly. Now I'm not taking the blood pressure regulator anymore and the other one I take once every other day and the idea is stop it altogether as soon as possible. Ideally, I'd like to live without taking medicines. The logic behind this was that as people grow older the blood pressure usually increased and that as life gets into a routine there's less reasons for stress.
So far that was working. But when I last talked to the specialist in Bristol (around January last year) he did say that hot weather could also cause the blood pressure to drop and that I should be careful with the hot weather in Spain. To be honest, I totally dismissed that on the basis that as I grew up in a very hot climate anyway, so that shouldn't bother me.

Well... now I've spend almost a week of feeling terrible. I'm eating very little (that's no bad for summer, so I'm not complaining about that) and whatever I eat causes me pain, discomfort and, finally, diarrhea. I don't sleep well and I'm feeling generally bad, bad, bad. I even cancelled a class last week because I couldn't get out of the toilet!! And I always made a point of not letting my feeling sick stop me for doing whatever I need to do.

I've just soldiered on until now, but this is taking longer than I though and now on top on feeling bad I do feel hungry and that's the final straw. I hate to feel hungry.
I'm going to see my Spanish GP next week. I was dreading that this will happen, as it took ages in Bristol until a specialist found out more or less what the problem was and I'd hate to go through all that again. I'm not looking forward to test how the Spanish health system works.

Wish me luck.

Movies and books

2007-06-09T12:23:00.001+02:00

As I mentioned before, movies here are almost always dubbed into Spanish and sometimes even to Catalan, so I just don't feel like going to the cinema anymore.
The last one we saw was the latest Garfield and the poor cat sounded totally stupid with a strong accent from Madrid. Now I'm dying to see the latest Pirates of the Caribbean as I love Johnny Deep as the captain inspired by Keith Richards. Here, his voice sounds totally gay and suave, more akin to the guy who thinks he's a lady in Little Britain!! And, of course, it changes everything!! Hideous!!
However there are at least 3 of those multiplex cinemas in Barcelona where they show movies in their original language, they're just far away and we'll have to plan a night out. Also local theatre near our home always have at least one movie a month, pity that is usually a very arty German, French or Chinese film that I cannot understand anyway. Mainstream movies are always translated so we're downloading loads of movies and tv programs lately. Thanks goddess for the Internet and piracy!

We've recently watched Little Miss Sunshine in video and totally loved it. If you, like me, missed while it was in the movies, go and get it. It's a gem of a movie and the best one that I've seen so far this year. Totally uplifting.
For me this movie challenges the way that American society defines en equate success with external things such as wealth, fame or beauty, and thus who the winners and losers are. I also think that whatever trend they have will be here in Europe a few years latter, and that one is already here challenging the way that success was traditionally equated with more intrinsic goals such as better relationships, self-development and participation in community.
A wonderful movie that deserves all the prizes it got and more.

The book that I'm currently reading is Ayaan Hirsi Ali's memories and reflexion on Islam, culture and living in the west. I'm reading it in English and it's called Infidel. She first came to my attention as the woman who wrote the script and provided the voice for the Dutch film Submission (click on the tittle to see the short video in Google video), which condemned the treatment of women in Islamic society. Its director, Theo Van Gogh, was murdered by an Islamic fundamentalist in the streets of Amsterdam and she was forced to go into hiding. She was a refugee and became an MP and a controversial figure in Holland.
I've heard about her and the book in an interview earlier this year in the BBC's Women's hour (which I hear from hear using my computer) and the book doesn't disappoint at all, on the contrary: is totally griping and I cannot put it down even though sometimes it make me feel sick.
The book, the experiences and opinions of Mrs, Ali is making me review my views about tolerance for other cultures and for religious believes, culture relativism and all that.
For instance, should we respect and accept things such as women circumcision just because some groups have been doing it for centuries and they believe that's ok?
Do we have any right to impose a western culture and believes in other people who came to live in the west?
Should diversity mean total and blind acceptance of other people ways and a separation between different groups of people, with different rules/school etc for each?
This are times of turmoil in the world and people are being forced to take sides, so this book is extra valuable because it's making me me think about what are my own convictions, believes, where do I stand and what I want to teach my son.

What a week!

2007-06-08T16:31:00.000+02:00

I'm so glad is Friday!
First: Thanks, Anja, for the book's suggestions for my beginner student. I try to buy both books in amazon as I usually do, but one took ages to arrive so I downloaded using e-mule. (I mean the student's book and the teacher's). That saved me a tenner and a week, not bad. The book is a good one I did made a copy for my student and he's slowly, ever so slowly, starting to get a grip on the crazy language. I do feel sorry for him because it's very hard to learn a new language from scratch but the poor guy is struggling so much... I'm sure can teach him but I'm doubting very much if he's going to learn something at all!! After all, learning English was not his choice in the first place. Well... I'll do my best.

My other classes are going fine. After all this months I'm finally getting the hang out of teaching and my classes are running much more smoothly and I don't get all stressed out for little things like being asked how to say something and forgetting the word in English. I used to totally freaked out if i couldn't remember something, specially if it was something silly. Now I don't fret anymore, I do my best to squeeze the word out of my brain and if that fail, then I write the question down and bring the answer the next class. That's far better than try to cheat and then live with the fear of being found out.
I still try and do my own homework with the classes, in particular with the grammar that I'm going to cover. To forget one unusual word is bad enough, but to get the grammar wrong would be too much. So I still take some time before every lesson to check what I'm going to do.

Now I agree to take 2 more students from next week. This time I'll be teaching them Spanish. This are the wives of 2 foreign employees at one (Finish) company where I teach a lot. I think one is British and the other from Finland. As usual with me (by now you know my "never good enough" attitude) , I'm not totally comfortable with this as I'm not a native Spaniard. When people go to England they want to learn their language from a real English native (whatever that means) not an Australian. So, I don't really know if this ladies will be happy with my Argentine's accent. At least I can emphasize with them living in a foreign country and trying to learn the new language to deal with doctors, teachers, etc etc.
... being there, done that, got the t-shirt.
On top of the language I can help them with the foreignness of living abroad and the pitfalls of a different culture. Native teachers take their own culture for granted and sometimes find hard to explain things that are totally puzzling for a foreign. I'm sort of in the middle as I'm not totally local myself and I've lived so many years in Bristol.
I hope.
I'll let you know how does it goes.

All this work will take me closer to my financial goal, which is to earn €1,000 a month. of course, I'll give myself a whole more year to achieve that because this is the last month of teaching before the holidays and I achieve enough and I do deserve a rest.
School finishes here just after the Sant Joan's fiesta, in 2 weeks time and with that all teaching seams to end too, mine included. I do welcome that as it's getting increasingly hot and I need a rest.
In actual fact schools are almost over and the kids only have half day work since the first Monday of June.
P. goes to school at the usual time in the morning but after lunch they don't have any teaching whatsoever, they can choose to stay at school mostly playing or go home. I'm very glad that P. choose to stay because that means that he's having fun with his classmates and I do prefer him running around there than sitting at home watching tv or playing with the PlayStation by himself. He arrives home at around 4pm, tired, hungry as a wolf, all dirty and sometimes with torn clothes but happy as Punch.
Today he just came back with a red bandanna with Chinese characters up on his head. looking as if he's part of a rapper's gang.
Is a pity that next year he'll go to yet another school!!
(I feel guilty about this too)

Now I'm off to try to find an optician to get new glasses. My eyesight changed in the past few months, even before I left England, and now I have to take small print an arm length away from me to be able to see it. I'm definitely and officially old.

Driving over lemmons

2007-06-06T17:30:00.000+02:00

I took my dad and my friends to the Park Guell yesterday. I just drove them and dropped them at the entry to save them all the long tube rid plus the longish walk, and then went back to work. For my dad the walk in the park was going to be be tiresome enough and I didn't want him to arrive already exhausted and my friends were kindly taking him with them, so it was only fitting.
It was actually my first drive in the city in peak time, as I'm always driving home after we've been there dinning, usually late in the evening, because I don't drink, and by that time the city is almost empty and a pleasure to drive.

A foray with a small car into Barcelona in working hours is totally mad and something to be avoided if at all possible.

The city is mad enough and really busy, as you'd expect a big city to be. However, on top of that: this people are mad!
They drive like maniacs, they don't know or respect the rules and they do park whenever and wherever they feel like it.
Luckily for me, I've got a GPS who tells me where to go and it works beautifully, so I could concentrate in avoiding parked vans and lorries, trying not kill the British tourist when they try and cross the road looking at the other side and other pitfalls like these.
What I couldn't avoid was to literally drive over a bunch of lemons that felt off a truck that was parked on a zebra crossing, while the guys were downloading fruits and veg's for a shop. It was just a few and the guys didn't even noticed they felt, but as I squashed them I was immediately reminded of Chris Stewart and his beautiful book on living in the Alpujarras. The experiences are a world apart but somehow I felt the connection there and then.
If you haven't read the book yet, please do it, as it's lovely.

My friends are going tomorrow for a while and I'm going to miss them!

Lovely things

2007-06-04T18:16:00.000+02:00

On of my favourite thing here in Barcelona is the availability of beautiful, unique designer stuff that you can find around.
What can you expect in a city where even the park benches are as beautiful as this one in Park Guell.
centres just to check beautiful or way, I just enjoy looking at these things. After all my favourite museum in London is, by far, the Victoria and Sometimes I've got a couple of hours between classes and I drive myself to the shopping'sunusual things. It makes sense to me in a purely aestheticAlbert with its many eclectic pieces.

Look at this bed!!
I always liked four posters beds but I wouldn't have one, never, because I think will collect dust and be a pain to clean. But this one looks more like a sculpture.

And look at this one!! Even tough it may be a pain to keep clean, I'd love one, but the price is just crazy and what else can you put in a room with the bed?
The accompaning booklet says:
After two years of researching common sleep problems, German-based Cycle 13 has introduced Lomme -- a platform bed designed to awaken the senses and relax the mind.
The egg-shaped bed is outfitted with light therapy (in a variety of colors), an iPod sound station, muscle relaxing system, and storage compartments.
Lomme claims to have created an atmosphere in which the senses are enhanced, making relaxation, meditation, and peaceful sleep attainable"

I'm not planing to have another baby, but I love this pushchair.

And look at this way of showing off the olives for your tapas. Altough this one was quite unexpensive, I did not buy it because it's hard to clean and I don't have enought storage space as it is.

But there's one item that I'm forever looking, the old phone that was in the house where I grew up, it was state-of-the-art when my mom brought it and now is, of course, an antique. Is called the Ericofon and it looked like this.
(if you see one, please let me know, I' love to have one at my desk).

So much to do so little time...

2007-06-02T17:46:00.000+02:00

We have friends staying at home with us, a whole family of three. So life is busier than ever (and crowded as well!) with loads to to, so much to share and piles of shoping and washing up to do (not that i'm doing any of that!).
They're staying with us while they need to get out of England for a few weeks, you know, visa matters. So, I'm teasing them that they're my own private refugees.
We're terribly crowded but at the same time it's so nice to have them here that I know I'm going to miss them terribly as soon as they're gone. Specially the little dear toddler who calls me "tia" (aunty in Spanish) and goes around the house smiling.
They're close friends, so we treat them as we treat family, thus we ask them to hoover the flat, do the dishes and stuff like that. So far, they're not complaining. I think they like my cooking.

Also I went with my (she) friend to the biggest shopping centre in Barcelona, La Maquinista, and we had a ball. One of those ever so girlie days, shopping, trying everything one, comparing tips, eating ice-cream, and so on. The only girlie thing that we didn't was to go to the toilets together for a bit of gossip!! I finished the day totally exhausted but I had my fix of "girlieness" to last me a few months.
I didn't expend much money as I only bought a white shirt and a bright pink skimpy top.

I did check on swimsuits, bikinis and what-have-you but couldn't find anything that I really like. The one-piece swimsuits shows to much cellulitic legs and the 2-pieces shows too much saggy tummy on top of the legs, and I'm not even mentioning the bottom or the flapping upper arms...
That got me thinking...

Maybe there's something to be said in favour of going around topless as people do here. You see? All fashionistas and what-to-wear consultants agreed on one thing: one should show off one's assets and hide the bad bits.
There's nowhere to hide on the beach.
So if you think about it and follow the logical path... then the best way to hide something is to show off something else that will attract all the attention. Even if my boobs are not that great, at least they'll manage to divert the attention from my tights, tummy and upper-arms.
In the worse case scenario people will avert their eyes from me and that's not bad either!!
It works both ways!
That's why most topless ladies here are not models! I've cracked the secret!!

Now I've got to gather the courage to do it on from of my dad.

Reflexions on ageing

2007-05-30T11:06:00.000+02:00

I'm working like mad and I don't have time to think, let alone write this blog!
Not only payed work, although that also counts, but the free, unacknowledged and unpaid job that most women do to keep the home running smoothly and everybody happy.
The fact that my elderly dad is living with us adds a lot more that I expected to my daily chores. He aged a lot in the few month he's been in Argentina and now he really looks elderly.
Age's taking its toll and he's clumsier than ever and a lot more work than he used to be. Not only do I have more laundry or extra dishes to clean but because he's at home almost all day long, there's more tidying up to do, more trips to the supermarket to get food and so on. His present also limit our range of activities as a family because he cannot walk a lot (he walks with a cane and his knees give him a lot of pain) so we have to plan things around him. I also have to help him register with the council, find him a GP and so forth. In theory he can do most things by himself as there's no language problem but with age and physical actual loss of mobility, of hearing and poor vision also came a loss of self confidence and he's less able to do things by himself.
He's also less bothered by appearances and dress appallingly bad. I don't mean that he's not coordinating his colours but that he doesn't see or mind stains on his clothes and things like that. Also his table manners are atrocious and he need to be remained to use the napkin or to stop talking with a full mouth. My son started to use his Grandpa's behaviour on the table as an excuse to eat like a pig himself and I cringe every time we go out to eat with friends because my dad is spilling half his tapas down his chin and on his shirt.
He's also doing that thing old people do when they seem to live of past memories and that the present is somehow boring and colourless compared with their past. He keeps on telling the same stories over and over and when we have company he always talk to much and make up this fantastic and widely exaggerated stories in which he's always the hero. This is not new and this uses to make my mum who was an extremely private and discreet person, cringe. Now it's my turn to cringe when I hear the old stories but with more bombastic details.

(well... now you know where I come from with my own storytelling!! It just run in the family)

"The husband", who truly loves my dad, is very gracious with him and the situation and keep on telling me that I have to recognise that at his grand age of 80-something he's allowed to be clumsy and people don't mind. He said that in fact, my dad is extremely entertaining and make people laugh and wonder with his ability as a storyteller and that the stories are truly great when you hear them for the first time. He adds that people sort of expect old people to be like that and I that it made me cringe because I want my old young and strong dad back.
I think he's mostly right but I cannot help feeling bewildered by this old, weak, clumsy man being the strong, active and resourceful dad that I remember.

It looks as if life make people go around the full circle and in old age they need to be taken care of and protected in a similar way to young kids. Is a biter-sweet feeling to be taken care of my father. On one hand I'm glad he's still with us at all and I love to have him here, but on the other hand... I want to be forever his daughter and don't like to see him going downhill.

In Latin societies old people are expected to live with their families for ever and is considered a sort of betrayal to send your parents away. It's very nice to see whole families strolling down the Ramblas or having an ice cream on a Sunday's afternoon here in Sabadell, that something you don't often see in England. And I'm glad that we can do that with my dad and that P. has a chance to live with his colourful Granddad.
But... I'm also glad that he's gone half of the year!!
After my mum died, we had a family meeting and decided that the best course of action was for my dad to spend half the year in Argentina living at my sister's house, and half a year with me in Spain. As we live in different hemispheres, it's always spring and summer for my lucky dad!
This arrangement with my sister is going totally great as it keeps my dad active and entertained and it's not a huge full time responsibility for neither my sister or me. There's always somebody missing my dad and he's always looking forward to whatever comes next.

Finantial goals

2007-05-26T16:19:00.000+02:00

In rich countries today, consumption consists of
people spending money they don’t have to buy goods
they don’t need to impress people they don’t like.
——anon

For the first time since we moved into Spain it looks very likely that I'm going to achieve my goal of earning €1,000 a month. I'm not totally there yet as the true goal is to make €12,000 a year (our mortgage payments) and that will take longer as I'm not going to be earning during the school holidays (july and August here in Spain), thus I still need to make more money on a monthly basis.
This is just my short term goal and not very ambitious as that!! But I'm still happy with it. Part of the secret of happiness surely must be to set one self achievable goals and to enjoy and celebrate our successes.

Until very recently I worked mostly part-time because I wanted to be a mum, to take care of my son and all that. Now he's 10 and I can start thinking of working full time and steeping up the pace of my earning years. Setting new financial goals.
So I started to think how much do I need to earn, what do I want to achieve financially, and all.

I'm not considering myself particularly ambitious and I don't share or even like the need to have it all and the love of trade marks.
Of course, since very early in my life I knew about the concept of "keeping up with the Joneses", as even in the third world there's a need to be richer than and/or to have more or better goods than others. I remember my friends in high school diing to own whatever was fashionable in our little town and sure enough, from time to time I did feel that way too. Not often, I have to say, as I grew up in a relatively affluent middle class family and I did have all my needs covered and most of my wanted.
Now that I've been living in the consumer fuelled Europe for a very long time, I do want more "stuff" and I find myself lusting over things and wishing I could be able to afford to live in a more expensive place, a house by the sea, for instance.
However, I don't think that quality of life is the same as the quantity of things in my life. And I certainly don't want to spend my life working solely to achieve my financial goals, there's much more in life than money and stuff.

However, it's much easy to find and try to get material goals that all other sort of more elusive things that together gave us "quality of life".
For instance, how do you get to know and develop new friendships?
It's much easier to say: I'll try to earn XXX a month or I want to pay the mortgage in 10 years.

Maybe that's one of the reason why people in Europe are so concern with financial success and having all sort of material goods. The problem is that after people achieve their financial goals they're not a bit close to achieve true happiness. So, they increase they wants and kept on thinking that when they finally get the Mercedes car, then they'll be happy.

Now I'm chuffed because I reach one of my goals, but I know that any happiness derived of material goods will be short lived.
There's still so much I want to do!!

Yesterday we met a dear friend who lives in a farm near Bristol. (the one who lives in a fancy farm not in a working farm) He's been a friend for long time and he's visiting Barcelona with his lovely (and very new) girlfriend. It was great to seem them both and we spend a lovely evening chatting and catching up with the news. They look very happy together and as he's been single and lonely for many years, I'm really happy for him.
It's been so nice to be around friends!! That's one single thing that I still need and want in my life.
My dear friends, I do miss you all!!

Pop concerts

2007-05-25T12:05:00.000+02:00

I must have been 6 or 7 years old the first time I went to a pop music concert. It was in my home town in Argentina and my mum bought the tickets for herself and a friend but at the last minute something happened and they couldn't go, so she sent me with either my nanny or the maid, I'm not sure who I went with.
(It's not that we were very rich but that in poor countries is quite common for people to have nannies and maids. One is not particularly posh or rich, for instance one never had a butler).
Anyway, I do remember the experience quite vividly, the people, the buzz of expectation and, above all, that the singer/song writer was the most beautiful guy I've ever seen, the music was totally amazing and I was hooked forever. His name is Joan Manuel Serrat and up to this day he continues to write and sing song that never fail to move me or made me smile. It also happened that he's born and bread here in Barcelona and I always hoped that one day I'll have the chance to see him sing again here.
He's really big in the Spanish speaking world and everybody knows at least a few of his songs. The actress Penelope Cruz was named after one of his earlier songs "Penélope". And in my own family, on of my nieces was named Lucía after another song of his.

Now he's just announced that he's starting a new tour in Spain and some Latin American countries together with another singer/writer called Joaquín Sabina, whom we also like a lot. So as soon as I saw the news yesterday on tv I sent "the husband" to buy tickets online.
Everybody had the same idea and the site was almost collapsed by the volume of people trying to get tickets. In fact, the 2 shows schedule for October at the Palau San Jordi, a huge venue in Barcelona
are already sold out. Luckily for us there's also another couple of shows in Catalonia and we've got tickets for the concert at nearby Terraza.
I'm delighted!

Now I don't mind that much the fact that I couldn't find tickets to see The police when they'll be here. They were totally sold out in the first few hours. and I'd love to see them live, they were one of my favourite bands in their time and I stilll fancy Sting!!!

Busy again

2007-05-22T11:43:00.000+02:00

Sorry for not writing for a while. I've been terribly busy since my dad arrived but nothing to write home about, really.
I've been showing my dad how the house works, where everything is in and around the flat. He's a darling, but age is taking its toll and everything need to be explained/demonstrated at least twice as he has a tendency to forget it all.
My dad also desperately wants to be useful and he tries to help with the chores around the flat with mixed results. For instance, he's been here for a week and yesterday we needed to go and buy new glasses because he broke them all, not in one go, of course, but every time he wash the dishes or set the table... you get the idea. Now we don't dare walk with bare feet around the kitchen anymore in case he broke yet another glass.
The devil finds work for idle hands, or so they say. So, after a bit of debate with "the husband" I asked my dad to plan and make me a garden in my balcony. I want flowers and foliage plus some vegetables. That will keep him busy and entertained and give us something beautiful that we really miss from the Horfield house.
Well... the guy is 82 years old and I feel lucky to have him!

Work wise things are going well. I've more teaching hours than ever and I'm finally started to get the hang out of it. I'm currently using a couple of books and loads of material that I find on the net. I couldn't live without Internet connexion or without my MP3 player, as I use them every single day, both for work and relax.
I've also bought the books that my friend recommend me on this blog for my absolute beginner and they should be here by the end of the month. (Thanks, Anja!!). In the meantime I'm doing what I can with teaching him the basics. He's more work than all my other students put together, as we have 4 hours a week and we're starting from 0, there's loads of preparation for each class and I always finish them with a ringing headache.
There's a long road ahead for us but now he's really motivated and he's even starting revising some lessons at home with his wife, which helps a lot. Learning a language is all about motivation and practice, so I've got high hopes for him as he's determined to learn.

Last Sunday was a lovely day and we took my dad to the beach in Casteldelfells, just south of Barcelona. It was a sunny day but not too hot, P was the only one brave enough to go swimming on the sea, but he stayed there for 3 hours. We had lunch by the sea, my dad and "the husband" had octopus, P's grilled sardines and I had pinchos, grilled marinated pork in a skewer. Delicious.

It's been raining in almost all of Spain, but here we just had a few showers and the weather is just perfect, not too cold and not too hot. The only downside of Spring is that since last week I'm having terrible hay fever due to all the pollen in the air. I keep on sneezing. There's loads of people with the same problem and no weather report on tv is complete without an "allergy forecast" at the end. They say this is expected to last until mid June. One of my students gave me some of his hay fever medicine and it worked really well so I'm going to ask my doctor for a prescription.
Here people share medicines as if they're sweets. As soon as I sneezed in class my students started a debate about what should I take and they immediately produced some pills for me to try. That happened not just in one class but in all the classes where I did sneeze.
There's a big culture of self medication and despite a big advertise campaign against it from the Heath Ministry, there's no sign of this stopping anytime soon. People often go for advice directly to the chemist instead of a doctor. Even when medication with a prescription is far cheaper than the one you buy without one, people still buy them off the counter if they can. There seems to be more chemists here in Sabadell that wine shops in Bristol!

Well... I'm of to work.
Enjoy Spring!

My dad arrived!

2007-05-16T12:24:00.000+02:00

My dad arrived yesterday.
I went to pick him up at the local airport and I arrived very late as it took me 2 hours and a half to make a trip that usually takes not longer that 1 hour, at most! It was rush hour in the morning and the motorway was totally packed. I choose to take the expensive motorway, the one where you pay a toll, thinking that it'll be easier but no. At times we were locked in a standstill and it took for ever.
Luckily my dad didn't mind, but but the time I arrived I've got my knickers in a twist (I do love this very British expression! so graphic!). So, by the time we went to get the car from the parking lot I couldn't find it!! It took me around half an hour until I finally find it!
Then I drove home and everything went fine and I didn't have to cancel any of my classes for the day.
My dad was totally exhausted after such a long trip. It's more or less 12 hours from Buenos Aires to Madrid (an overnight flight) and then he waited in Madrid airport a few hours to flight to Barcelona, All in all, I think it took him more than 20 hours from Buenos Aires to our flat in Sabadell. So as soon as he arrive home he went straight to bed.

It's very nice to have my dad here. We all get along very well and I don't mind him taking over the room were I used to have my desk and things. I'm just glad that he can stay with us and that he's fit enough to enjoy Barcelona.

Rugby encounter's report

2007-05-15T11:56:00.000+02:00

P's rugby encounter in Valladolid was a great success.
He really enjoyed the trip, the sleepover (although he sort of complained that the kids were chatting until very late, being an only child he's not used to having anybody else in his room). The kids were kind and they didn't mind Winnie-the-phoo at all and they all got on really well.
He also loved the matches, although he said that he totally hated the referees because they didn't know the rules and kept on stopping him. I was very doubtful about this, to say the least, until his coach told me that P's was actually right because he was playing by the rules, the real game rules but the refs were applying a sort of special rules for children which are slightly different. So P had a point there.
The overall idea is that everything was great fun, and he doesn't mind the fact that most of the kids came home with several bumps and scratches and half of their legs covered in black and blue marks!

Also the coach reported, that P behaved very nicely and that he did fought bravely and kept on running (his weakest point as he gets tired very easily). The poor coach lost his voice completelly after a whole weekend of screaming!

Here's a picture of the whole team. P's not, in fact, the tallest of the team, as he appears to be, is just that some guys are pushing forward for the picture.This was a national encounter but there were only 36 teams from the whole country! There may be a few more but not many, as rugby was until now an almost unknown sport (people keep on confusing it with American football) but apparently now the popularity of the game is on the increase.
The teenagers' team from our club (St. Cugat rugby club) won the first place in their category and came back with the big, shiny cup. Some of the kids are already being earmarked for the national team as they're really good and they are an inspiration for the younger players who all want to follow their steps and being the next big team.