Sooooo

An Aussi, a Brit and a Canuck sit down in a cafe...

Sounds like a joke, it isn't but it was a big fat laugh!

Friday I got to meet up with Kate and Tiffany, two other expats living here in Catalonia.  It was FUN.  We all got a chance to talk about our individual challenges and communal challenges (noise, bureaucracy, language)

We started at one cafe, too noisy (pneumatic drills), moved to a second, no service (weirdness) then finally a third which actually had pretty crappy service, but what the heck, we had time.

A treat!

We ate, we drank, we chatted and laughed...they walked me down to the metro when I had to go, I dragged them into a bookstore cause I am jonesing SO bad for the new Murakami, IQ84....no go.  I have asked at a local store here to see if they can get it in, if not I have to WAIT till I go to BCN again!  AUGH!!!!

Lovely lovely lovely!  I learned new vocab too!  Gotta love an Aussi!

Gonna have to do that again, if your up for it ladies!

Weird virus?

Felt odd and yucky and vile Friday night.  In bed by 8, slept till 8 when I got woken up.

Napped that afternoon in a hammock in the mountains after a wonderful meal among friends.  Ahhhhhh

Got home, went to bed weirdly exhausted and somewhat nauseous about 6pm, dozed on and off till about 11 and then slept through till 8am when I was woken up from a sound sleep.

Felt much better today!

You might think so, no?

Youngest and I went on an orienteering training session, which was a three hour lovely walk in the mountains then when we got back, instead of following the pattern of the last few days, I DIDN'T go to bed!

Instead I started painting!

Four started and three completed.

You can just make out Eldest's finger and feet!  Largest of the three, 151cm x 151 cm.  Acrylic and marker on paper.  'How do you see me?'

'I can't even find the box' Acrylic, paintmarker, marker and pencil on paper.  70 x 50 cm.  Immigration series.

Finally, ' Facing Canada'  Marker and watercolour on paper. 56 x 57 cm

Then a big delicious dinner.  Mmmmmmm

Channel James Brown with me here, OK?

I feel GOOD!

Ahhhhhh

I was bad the night before last.

Didn't paint, didn't draw, didn't study Catalan (much), didn't read in Spanish, didn't - well, I did do some work - and then....

I watched a movie!


It was very good.

Anyone else out there seen Juno?

Good flick.

That was fabulous

Dangers

Youngest made me think a little about danger.

When I got home for lunch, she solemnly (THERE's a word that deserves it's very own spelling bee - goodness)

Anyway, she solemnly (that would make my English students just keel right over and die - actually they have this great gesture where they pretend to stab themselves on the stomach with a sword...I know, not too new, but then they drag the imaginary knife in a sort of catholic blessing cross fashion, so you stab it into your solar plexus, slice down hard, come up towards the left - your heart pretty much, than then slice horizontally across to the right.  Just like if you were to cross yourself, samuri style.  It is quite graphic)

Anyway, she solemnly - (you just KNOW this word is going to show up in a class I teach tomorrow, just to see if I can get any of them to use this gesture!)

Anyway, she solemnly very seriously informed me that the sharp kitchen scissors are beside the sink as she didn't want to put them into the soapy water as someone might hurt themselves.  I thought that was delightful.

Then she told me that she had used them to take the toast out of the toaster.  Can I just say what you know I am going to say?  She didn't unplug it, OK?  I kissed her after she told me this.  She didn't smell singed at all.  I was glad.

We had a wee conversation about elecTRICity and what it can do to smallish much-loved people if they stick a pair of metal scissors into a 220V toaster without unplugging it.

She solemnly agreed not to do it again.

We are all glad.  Not solemn.  Glad.

RUNning

Can I just say that I ran today (finally!)

It was pretty pathetic, as one might expect.

Can I also say, that it was great?

And my butt only hurts a wee little bit!

YEAH

Oof

Say what you like about Mondays,

Tuesdays can be pretty darned long and hard too, no?

Sorta low on inspiration and hig on exhaustion.  You know those kinds of days...

Yup.

Know something else?

I look older really late at night...or should I say really early in the morning.  Then again, maybe many of us do.

Green goes up! Nothing like daylight

Immigrations series, acrylic, pen and paint marker on paper.  56 x 77 cm. 3.4.11

After the delight of yesterdsay

Today my halo is grimly glowing.

I have spent HOURS wading through a series of long dreaded tasks...tinc el cul quadrat.  Directly translated as my butt is squared off, or as we would less graphically put it, my butt's gone numb from sitting....

However I got a ton done, even some taxes...urgh.  We get to do it twice, one month for Canada and then the next for Spain, the fun never ends!

I did however finish THREE books today, which definitely perks things up, and finished two paintings!

Not bad, no?

I'm putting up one photo, but the camera simply cannot manage the second one, it is green and the camera is completely freaking out and it is coming out either grey or a weird pustilating yellow.....

maybe tomorrow in the daylight, it is such a lovely green.  When I look at the wood in the background, one side is a lurid red and the other yellow...how can that be?

Here's the other one, easier to solve any issues with the lighting as it is almost all black and white.

Immigration series, acrylic on paper, 3.4.11 56 x 60.5

While it's not my favourite kind of day, a getting stuff done day isn't all bad.

Food.

We've been talking a bit lately about how the Catalans LOVE food.  LOVE food.

LOVE.

Today was a great example.

We had the good luck to be invited down to lunch on a boat with a whole bunch of other folks we know....all wonderful.  Lunch started in theory at 2....for a variety of reasons we all arrived at around 1:30...no problemo, out came the pica pica, which is nibbles basically, beer, something else (coke this time) chips, olives, sliced meats, yadda yadda yadda....we brought wasabi peas...they met with mixed results, some delight, some spitting.

Lunch itself formally arrived at around 3:00.  We started with an empanada, which is like a flat dough pie.  Home made, of course. This had tuna, veg, boiled eggs and I know not what else inside and was gorgeous.

Then came the grilled veg: taters, mushrooms, eggplant and zuccini....

Then came the meat (this is now the third course after an HOUR of chips and nibbles.  There was:  chicken, rabbit, ribs, morro (pig snout) sausages, shishkabab (how DO you spell that), pork loin, wings, and something else or 2 that is escaping me, all in giant mounds.  We ate about half to two thirds and there were 10+ hungry people there so you can imagine the quantities!  This was accompanied by 7 litres  of Basque cider (the hard stuff).  The stern was about a foot undwater once we all got aboard.

Then we went onto a flan, bread-pan sized, homemade...and delicious, everyone but me and the minors had it with orojo (spelling is wrong) which is some kind of distilled liquer made from the left-over grapes from wine pressing, which our host had altered by putting coffee beans into a half-full bottle of the stuff. This was warmly received.  They thought the bean idea wonderful, though I think folks do know about this.

I would like to point out that almost all of this, with the exception of the empanada, was made by two guys on a 31 foot boat.  You have to LOVE food to make so much so well with such limited resources...

Then a homemade cake, which was delicious.....several folks put some rum on this. I would like to point out that there were some people who weren't drinking at quite the same level, as they would have to be driving, but the other thing to remember is the LENGTH of this lunch....

Then coffee, or one of about 16 types of tea.  (No decaf and I bailed on the tea..two worst cups in my life were made by Catalans, it makes me a little wary)

By now it is closing in on 6, and a couple of the guys are wanting mojitos.  Now I don't know about you, but not many people in this day and age are willing to go to the kind of effort that they all did.  The owner of the boat had a mint plant, two of the women started picking leaves, the mortar and pestle came out and mint leaves were pounded with brown sugar for ages to make a paste, meanwhile someone else took a bag of ice onto the dock and used a bottle to crush it, this was put into the glasses, then mint/brown sugar mixture was dosed with rum to liquify it more and make it easier to share out into the glasses.....

and we were gone.

I figure that most people didn't even think of leaving till 8pm, and there are probably still a few folks there now.

OM GOODNESS!

I think I'll still be full tomorrow.

*burp*

*Whew*

Today has been long and hard.  In WAY too many ways.  I got a lot of blog fodder anyway.  Not helped by going to bed at 4am.  Why?  That's another blog post.

Bad stuff, I'm not tallying that up right now.

Let's count the good stuff.

1. I got some really important work finished today, against considerable technological odds.  YEAH!  Only needed one break sitting outside in the sun breathing deeply and reading a good book for a few minutes.
2. It was another beautiful sunny day.  I sat out in the sun at lunch AGAIN and life was good, especially when the man had mercy on me and made me lunch, and brought it all the way to the terrace for me, and the paracetamol kicked in and the tea was ready all at the same time.
3. The teens I taught today were HAPPY!  IncREADibly loud, but happy.
4. I read to the kids and they brushed my hair.  Bliss
5. Nomad and I are talking about a collaborative installation work for the summer that would also include TRAVEL!!!!  Long shot, but SUPER exciting.... I've been cracking grins all day, just thinking about it...(thanks JG for bringing the idea up!  Made my (otherwise kind of crappy) day!
6. I whipped out two, count 'em two paintings that I am in LOVE with.
7. I'm thinking I'm going to show.

My eyes are burning out of my head.  NO Catalan homework done today and that's just TOO BAD!

HA!

Here they are:  I ain't measuring today, too tired.  Biggish.

Both acrylic, watercolour and marker on paper.