FOOOOOOD, and some other stuff

No time no time no time no time.......



This is a lightning fast post...I went and had lunch at the fancy place with a bunch of the ladies from work, the youngest was with us, and had an interesting perspective of the event....



I had arros negra, black rice...this is a kind of paella, with squid cooked in the squid ink so it is black black black....it was very good, and is one of the more traditional Catalan dishes that I have been looking forward to as I had read about it several years ago. It tasted excellent, but not really all that different than what we often eat....

I had this for starters,



The youngest had this,




Some of the others had this,



Then the little one got creative with the camera, so here we are....

No, that is not my tongue, but the little one took the pic....


........later............

the little one asked me a question that struck me as pretty fascinating....

She asked me what I thought of most often. I have to confess, I haven't a clue. Not one clue....it would make an interesting statistical challenge....

so

what do you think of most often?

Trees and Chocolate and Field Trips

I walked up the mountain a little way yesterday afternoon, it was such a beautiful day, and it is one of my favorite spots, there is a lovely view of the town and the sea, and it is comfy, there is always a breeze and it is shady....so lovely....

These trees are pinyon pines, so we have also gathered pine nuts here in the fall, and further down the hill there are many cacti, from which we have picked prickly pears. yummmm.

Last night after the younger one got home, she announced that the nice young substitute teacher would not be going away on this field trip, despite previous announcements to the contrary....that was the nail in the coffin for me, the proverbial last straw, and my Mommy worry meter moved firmly out of the yellow-orange zone into the flashing red lights screaming sound signal zone.

We tucked sweetness into bed, and after she went to sleep, I mentioned this fact to the husband, both the teacher's absence, and my ever increasing alarm about the situation. Turns out that the man was also sitting firmly in the red zone. Seems to me, one of the advantages of having two parents is you have a base mark if one of you is over-reacting. When both of you are thinking that something is an extremely bad idea it seems like time to listen.

We decided last night that whatever youngest said, she was emphatically not going. We both twitched all night, although my side of the bed would have been much much worse if we had not made this decision. Sweetness climbed into bed with me this morning with a worried expression and a command that we were not to think of her while she was gone. (Yeah, sure....) She was worried and doesn't like to think that we might be worried. When informed of our decision, she had a little weep, we talked about it and mostly why she wanted to go was because her sister was going, and for the inevitable sugar....I agreed to a trade, more sugar, a trip to the zoo on Friday - she was really hoping to see animals on this trip - and some movies.

I have now spent the morning with a Very Cheery Little Person. We went to my work. I taught, she watched Asterix and Obelix. We went to the market. I shopped, she ate pastries. We went home, I sorted groceries, she drank water and ate strawberries. We went to the grocery store, she came home and ate sunflower seeds, and shelled and ate fresh peas.....

Then we made these out of her cook book for some of the ladies at work who she quite likes...............

Ok, the photos don't do them justice...melt dark chocolate, mix in corn flakes, and let it cool. They are very good.

This afternoon we're going to go to the library and get a movie, then she will come to work with me where we are doing special workshops...I will be cooking chocolate goop, and then the man will pick her up and they are planning on eating sandwiches in front of the Rocky Horror Picture Show while I work, and before she goes to bed. Should be fun.

You know one of the things I love about Spain? The lunch in the fancy restaurant that I have organised for tomorrow for the women I work with and me......well, I mentioned to some of the them that little one would be coming with us. In Canada at best, with the vast majority of people, you would receive a tolerant smile, and it would have the potential to be a real problem. Here, they looked quite pleased, really genuinely pleased, and when they saw her, they all mentioned that they were looking forward to having lunch with her.

So nice.

I will never be the same here.

Jennifer over at Between Pee and Kimchee has a post up about her child being embarrassed that they are different than the Korean kids where they live, and that they are English.

This set off about a thousand nerves for me, and I left a comment that was a little long, and still did not feel finished with the issue. This is one of the things that I have had to think about a great deal for a lot of years now. My eldest has been embarrassed about me since she was four years old, blessedly not all the time, but definitely some of the time. This comes with the territory, although usually not so young. It can be hard to be the kids of a strong willed and determined Mom. This has however been exacerbated by the life that we have chosen to live. Going travelling on the boat was something that she loved and still frequently wishes we were doing, but she found the reactions of everyone around us profoundly difficult. The kids thought she was nuts, or they felt sorry for her, or they just didn't understand why we would like to raise our kids knowing that there is more to the world than southern Ontario and brownies. Even if some of it is uncomfortable.

My sister and I frequently hassled our parents that they used to drive us through the slums of wherever we went. They didn't do this on purpose, but the simple fact of driving through a new city is that the map doesn't show which are the crappy neighbourhoods and which are the nice ones. In retrospect, I think that this is a good thing that we did this, although I remember a stretch of Washington D.C. that was distinctly scary.

Growing up in Southern Ontario, or any reasonably affluent part of the western world, lets you think that the whole world is just like your world. Although this is alleviated marginally if you ride the subway in Toronto, especially outside of rush hour, when you rapidly realise that English is the minority language being spoken on the car....

It lets you think that skating lessons and brownies and school and whining that you have peanut butter not salami in your lunch is normal globally, that this is how everyone lives and how everyone thinks.

I digress.....these differences in the children's upbringing are difficult for my kids. Here we cannot get it right, we had the same problem in Toronto as well, they were always a little different. At swimming lessons they were undoubtedly the most capable swimmers in the class in the sense of handling themselves in the water. They could manage snorkels and masks, getting in and out of boats, swimming with lifeys and without, managing waves, up to three feet, they knew about currents and drift, they had swum with sea turtles, and fish and barracuda and sharks, yet they persistently failed their swimming levels because their flutter kick wasn't olympic class.

They are in a bind because they are proud and pleased with who they are and what they know, they have enjoyed it and do enjoy it and are aware that they have skills and knowledge that the other kids do not, yet, they also just want to blend in. To not have to explain themselves.

I also refuse to blend in, this is no surprise, I never have tried. But I think that it is important that I do not attempt to blend in, if I were to try to hide who I am and where we are from and what we have done and are doing, I would be doing my kids a disservice along with myself. I will not have them growing up feeling that there is anything to be ashamed of that we are different, nor will I state in any way, either in words or dress or behaviour that being different is bad. It is not. It is profoundly important that we humans are diverse, therein lies our strength.

That doesn't always make it easy though.

This whole issue was illuminated when the eldest was packing to go off on this field trip, she wanted only one bag, because all the other kids will have only one bag. Do we bring sleep toys or not? We decided not, but today all the other kids were hugging theirs as they walked down the street. To wave her off at the bus or not? I was instructed to see what all the other kid's parents were doing, and to do the same. Eeeh gads.

We are probably going to have the man drop the youngest off at school tomorrow, and we will not see the bus off, it is too difficult, and she finds it easier to say goodbye to him than me, she is more used to him going off to work....

Finally at the same time I am reading the blog updates of two people on their boats in George Town in the Bahamas, and the family the husband met briefly have written about leaving BCN and sailing out into the Med. You can read about their trip here. I miss my boating life so much. Shit.

Determinedly cheering up here, Festa Major is this weekend which will include a 10 or 15 Km orienteering race which the husband is planning to do up and down the mountain, also there will be gegants which are giant ambulating puppets, castellars, people standing on each others shoulders until they are nine or ten stories/people high, and a giant paella cooked for the entire town, in a pan that looks like it will be about 15 feet across. And the ladies from work and I will be going for lunch on Thursday...

Photos coming to a blog near you....

St. Jordi's Day, booze, Romans and emus....

Happy Saint Jordi's Day!!!! This translates as Saint George's day...either way he is the patron Saint of Catalonia, along with England, and his day is a biggie.... Traditionally all the women receive a flower and the men a book. My husband, when he remembered, used to give me both as he knew I would far prefer a book, and don't really care for the slight insult to my gender's intelligence that is implied.

The placa is filled with stands selling roses and books...I even received one myself from one of my students...it normally is the tradition that it is only done between couples and mothers and their sons....but this is changing. Indeed this morning as we saw all the kids heading off to school with the roses with the little Catalan flags tucked into them for their teachers I figured that once again we had missed the boat on the local events and were going to be the ONLY ones who didn't bring a flower for the teacher, but no, only some of the kids brought them...*phew*



That's the flower I got from a student...isn't it lovely? From his garden, and it smells faintly, but very nice. I have it in a very stylish plastic water bottle. Vases haven't made it to the top of the to do list yet.

More about the Romans, after talking to the man, who understood much much more about what was going on, partially because he understands the d*mn language, but also because he managed to score a spot at the rail without either the kids or the dog, and so was able to concentrate....a couple of interesting things he passed on were that the tents that the Romans used were made of goat skins...seems inefficient, it would take an awful lot of goat skins to make one ten...the smaller ones would fit a good sized SUV...but....the skins are lighter than others...a serious consideration if you are walking from Paris to Barcelona....

Another interesting fact is that each legion was given a symbol, the statue of which was carried, gilded, on the top of a standard that was brought into battle...if this standard was lost in a fight, or presumably in any other way, the legion was disbanded, and would never be reformed, struck from the roles, and the soldiers would be divided up and put into other groups. There was presumably a lot of shame attached to this....the standard was supposed to be a representative if Jupiter, one of the gods, and this is presumably why there was such a serious consequence to it's loss.


I was talking to one of the ladies at work, and she was saying that it is normal here for people to go out on Sunday morning and have a vermouth and something to drink...it is so common that there is a phrase around it, "fa vermouth" make vermouth...so you could say, let's go make vermouth when you wanted to do this, like our, "let's do lunch"....this also explains the menu in some of the restaurant/bars locally....there are lists of tapas, and then there are vermouths, but under the list are cheese, and other appetizers...these would be things commonly eaten on Sunday morning with the vermouth. It seems strange to me, puritanical North American, to be drinking liquor on a Sunday morning, but by the same token, they don't get thrashed here the way North Americans and Brits do, there is no such thing as a lager-lout here...they drink, but seemingly always in moderation. I am sure that there are alcoholics like everywhere else, but as a general run of things, they all drink just a bit, though regularly. It seems healthier than this tendency to get completely wasted, and then with some folks, to brag about it the next day, like getting sh*t-faced and barfing is a great accomplishment.

For Dorky Dad, and anyone else who is interested, here are EMU pictures, I walked over this morning with the lady who wants English practice. They aren't as cute as they used to be, they were like perambulating humbugs, but still kinda sweet. The Catalan lady thinks that they are going to be eaten...

OH! and I startled a PHEASANT into flying away this morning...amazing, eh? The Catalan lady I was with didn't even know what it was....It was lovely. Here's the emus....

Romans and lace and a walk

I am glad that the camera came in time as it has been a very exciting weekend.

I mentioned in the last post that they would be some folks doing some re-enactment of a Roman legion that would have served in Spain....here they are....although Blogger is loading these strangely, I am pretty sure I asked to have them all loaded small down the left side...this is kinda funky though I suppose.....


These guys looks straight out of Asterix and Obelix...just waiting to stuff parsley in his ears before he gets beaten by those Gauls AGAIN....

The fellows all in a row are displaying how the Roman infantry would have fought, side by side, stabbing their swords out between the shields........






























...and these are the stages in putting on a toga...the first shows the miles of material needed in what would have been a fairly humble ordinary citizen and it seems to require the assistance of at least two slaves.

This entire event was to celebrate the opening of a museum that they have been working on for several years. Turns out that some Roman forns...or ovens, I think they really mean kilns, on an epic scale to make those giant amphoras....

It was fun, lots of folks we knew were there, and the Catalan was somewhat comprehensible, although I was being distracted by the kids, and the dog, and trying to take the pictures....we got to go in as well, it is open for only two days a month...it is a small place. Although the rep from the Generalitat, the provincial government, was impressed as most towns don't go to the effort of excavating and studying the entire set up, they usually simply bury it all again.

Today, we went down to the placa where they were having a lace makers fair...a very traditional Catalan as well as Castillian activity. It really was amazing, and one of the artisans, who lives here and works with the man, has offered to teach me. I will confess that it is not really my sort of thing, but any offer to meet local folks and learn the language seems like a good plan.









The work was incredibly beautiful, and intricate, and the ladies were having a blast, although it was pretty hot. There was one man working, although I am told there are more, and there were several children, boys as well as girls working on the pieces....

As you can see most of them work on large cushions like bolsters with masses of different threads. Most of the women work in cotton, although sometimes for very fine work they use silk...there were pieces in black, green, grey, gold, and silver along with the usual white and off white. A very friendly crowd.

After this we went up into the hills for a walk and lunch, there is a flat area filled with flowers that the youngest wanted to go to, knowing that her parents would not make her walk further, so that is just what we did. Lunch and play and the dog got all hot and dug himself a hole to lie in....we all took lots of photos, I will stop posting so many, but for now it is kind of fun.

It was a beautiful day, and I definitely should have brought my hat, I embarrassed the eldest by tying a shirt around my head to ward off some of the sun...but then I have been embarrassing her since she was about 4 so, she should be used to it by now...

We are attempting to have a peaceful afternoon, but the kids have decided that this is THE moment to try to pack everything they are going to need...all with plenty of angst and argument. As I was not even sure that I wanted to do this right now, indeed I am quite sure that I DIDN't want to....

ah well

we are having a lovely day.

Tomorrow is going to be insanely busy...whew.


So here are a last few photos.....

..........later..............Chuck is blowing his coat, I just brushed a smallish grocery bag of fur off him! That dog can SHED!

Taxes and bad taste...

I was working on my taxes today. Good grief. The eldest went by and said it looked like the worst math homework ever. She's about right, and we don't even have to factor in the Spanish thing yet. *gulp*

The kids are absolutely camera crazy....we're going to have to work on the delete idea a little more, but I managed to get a hold of the machine for a bit, and took these....they are, well not ALL over the town, but reasonably common.....

and oh so UGLY!

Happy,




and grumpy,

and dopey,

sleepy I think,

no, maybe this is dopey...what does that make the other one? Or is he sneezy?





Um, what's in his pipe?
Is there a stone-y?

The John Lennon dwarf

I've no idea AT ALL....

Pontificating dwarf?

I saw these early on in our travels and was well, startled by their ugliness. you can find bad taste anywhere it seems. The man had to go into work today which is kind of a shame, but we are going down to see a re-enactment of a roman legion by some roman ruins in town, ya know, just over the road. Weird, eh?

Tomorrow we may go into BCN to the science museum which is supposed to be excellent. We'll see.

We went over to a friends house last night, it was quite an international group....a dutch fellow, who speaks Catalan, Castillian, English, Dutch obviously, and a smattering of German, his catalan wife who speaks Catalan, Castillian Dutch, English, some French, and can probably struggle in German, then there was another woman who is a native speaker of Dutch and Spanish and has workable English....she is studying Catalan now, and then me. English with a touch of Catalan, and a tiny touch of french. I find endless opportunity here for feeling ignorant.

We had a lovely time and they are fantastic people, we are so lucky to have met them. She is the lady who interprets the school for me....it was a treat to go over to someone's house and see them there. I did get espresso at 5:30 pm, so I probably lay in bed and twitched all night, I didn't think I would sleep at all, but that wasn't too bad.

Roman's ho....

Food and photos and well, food.

As you can see, I've managed to upload a couple of photos.....




The end of the wisteria season...................

A part of a doorway..................

The local lemon tree...............

Chuck.................

All photos by the youngest.

I have managed a few fairly uninspiring photos, chiefly because I am having trouble having a turn on the camera, you see it also takes videos...short ones and not such great quality, but enough to excite the wits out of the girls.

We have now viewed several videos of them giggling madly.

I am going to try an upload something, and I had planned on experimenting more with it today, but both girls managed to convince me this morning that they were sufficiently ill to stay home. I had some doubts, and they are at school this afternoon, but it meant that my available time was more limited.... also the computer and I are having a bit of a disagreement about where and how the photos are stored and how they are uploaded to blogger. The Lumix software doesn't want to talk to the Picassa software....I will have to adjudicate more firmly.

Baby emu photos should be coming soon.

On another note,
While I was at work today, one of my fellow teachers asked me what you call "pels de porc". Pig's trotters I answered. Not a frequently used word in English. Especially since the only people I know in N. Am who eat it are French Canadian or Cajun....

Turns out that she was doing a translation into English of a Catalan recipe for a local magazine, so I had to explain to them how we Anglos are rather squeamish about our food. We don't really want to know that it came from an animal. You would be hard pressed to find a chicken in the stores with it's head still on and a fair number of it's insides still in place, so when she described the recipe, it led to some cultural exchange.

"Pigs feet with cracklings, and aioli with almonds and half-cooked liver" would be the exact translation of the name of this dish. I mentioned that this would make a fair number of people want to throw up, so we altered it to..."Trotters with crackling and almond "aioli" served with "foie mid cuit"

Sounds a bit more appetizing to the pallid Anglo palette....I am of course making broad generalisations here, but......this is a land that deep fries pigs ears, and folks will happily float a pigs snout in a stew. A lot of Anglos have trouble with tongue....

Aioli is a,... well a garlic mayonnaise is a weak description. It is a classically Catalan sauce, although of course the French claim it also. Ideally, according to the Catalans, it is made by pounding vast amounts of garlic in a large mortar and drizzling in olive oil until you have a white creamy emulsified sauce. Pound too long and it will break and turn yucky looking. The French, according to loyal Catalans, have corrupted this, and add a raw egg yolk or two, which makes it much easier to build, and much less likely to collapse....but that is not the pure goods....

la dee da

On that note, while the kids are away next week, I am already planning some of my activities...there is a restaurant in our town that is supposed to have VERY good food, and they have fixed menu plates during the week at lunch that are very reasonably priced. 11Euros if you are feeling basic, and 16 if you want to live it up. This includes a first and second course, wine, coffee, and bread. Pretty good deal. Well, the man's lunch isn't long enough for this sort of an extravaganza, and going with the kids, well, it's a white table cloth kinda place, so I thought I would go while the kids were gone....but by myself? I'm game, but food is also about sharing. So then I talked to one of the ladies at work and she was keen, so we were on. Then I figured we might as well make it a bigger do, and stuck up a note at work, giving the time and date....we'll see who comes, at this stage, there are three of us I think. If no one shows, I'll dine alone.

Finally, I think I have cemented my English-Catalan lesson trades, it looks like we will meet on Tuesdays and Fridays from 4ish to 5ish, one day English, the other Catalan.

I am so excited.