I owe.. I owe.. it´s off to work I go.

I´ve recently changed jobs. I always hate doing that because you´re jumping into the great unknown, but I have to say that I am not a job hopper and every time I´ve done it, it has been the right move.

I´m not going to talk about my work though. This blog is sooooo not about work. I like to keep the two separate, but I thought it would be a good idea to let people know just what it means to work in Gibraltar. It´s very different from Toronto, New York, London etc. For starters, there is no subway.

When I leave the house every day I go through the regular routine of checking that I have everything I need. But since starting work in Gibraltar the most essential item that I check for every day is my passport. I don´t think much of it now. I mean I imagine myself in Toronto, getting ready to go to work in the morning and thinking “Oh, don´t forget your passport” and I think yeah, it´s kind of weird. My passport like many others, stayed in my drawer until I decided to take a holiday or something. Now? I show my passport every morning to border guards crossing from Spain to Gibraltar and again when I leave at the end of the day. I take my passport everywhere I go. JR´s too.

My path to work also involves crossing a runway. Every day after I cross the border, I cross an actual live runway used by airlines like EasyJet and British Airways. It takes about 3 minutes to cross on foot. It is usually very windy because it is open on both ends looking out to sea. If there is a plane coming in or leaving, the barriers go down, the gates are closed to pedestrians and the cars and people start to pile up waiting for the plane to land or take off. I have to say that it is very cool to be that close to a commercial jet when it is taking off. It´s pretty loud and it takes about half a second for it to pass by you. It´s even cooler when you get the military jets taking off. They ascend at a ridiculous speed.

The next big difference that I can think of is the local animal life. In Toronto there were so many squirrels running around, gathering nuts and running up trees. I knew one girl who thought of them as rats with furry tails. Then there are the Raccoons which you don´t see as much of, but I do remember once seeing one frantically trying to figure out how to get off the top of the moving garbage truck it had managed to somehow get on to. I watched all this from our second floor balcony. It´s still not as interesting as seeing monkeys hanging out in the garbage bins though. Or hopping over car roof tops. Yup. Monkeys. Barbary apes to be exact, except that they are actually monkeys because they found out later that they have these itty bitty tails that are hard to see. They still call them apes though. Ape, monkey. It´s still weird to see a family of them when you´re looking for a place to park your car before work. It doesn´t happen every day, but it does happen.

So next time you wake up and start getting ready to take the subway to work imagine yourself making sure you have your passport to show to the border guards, stopping at a runway and watching a plane take off before you have to cross it, and seeing a few monkeys along the way to work. And welcome to my life.

Olive season has arrived in Spain

Things have changed a lot since we moved to Spain in 2005. Some things never change though and are worth preserving. The first winter we lived in the farm one of the coolest things I got to do was make my own olives. My neighbours took me out to their olive fields so I could pick a pail full of olives, taught me how to crack them, wash them and then marinate them with their own family recipe.

Four years later, now living and working on the coast, I was able to grab some time out of my busy work and family schedule to make them again this year. I thought I would document it this time. Olive making is an annual tradition amongst Spanish famers leading up to the Christmas season. By the time the olives are ready it is very near to Christmas day.

Two weekends ago, I went to the farm and met up with our neighbour Juan. Farmers generally have hundreds of olive trees that they need to pick closer to December when the olives have turned black and are ideal for olive oil production. Olives are only picked green in early October for consumption; usually just enough for the family for an entire year. With harvesting of hundreds of trees in mind, most farmers use netted tree skirts to pick trees quicker than it would take by hand. You put the skirt around the bottom of the tree and either shake the tree (they have a machine for this actually) or in our case the trees were still quite young and short that we were able to strip three trees and use the net to pour the olives into a container in about 30 minutes.

Once the olives were picked I was able to use a little contraption that my neighbours use to crack the olives. The olives need to be cracked so that when you wash them the oil is released and they become more tender and eventually absorb the marinade. When I did it 3 years ago my neighbours did not own this handy contraption so I had to hit each olive with a little wooden mallet one by one. It took me about 3 days and about 2 months of finding delinquent olives around the house. Some times they get away from you when you go to hit them. I have twice as many olives this time around so I am quite thankful for this simple and yet effective tool. Thanks guys! (They never read this, they don’t speak English or have internet, but I thought I would say it anyway).

So after 2 hours of cracking the olives, with a nice paella lunch in the middle, I was back on the highway driving to the coast. After arriving home my next step was to begin the washing process. Olives take some time to wash. The way to do this (outside of an actual olive factory) is to fill the container with water twice the height of the olives and change it every day until the water is clear. Again, because I had twice the amount of olives, I had to split them into two containers. After 10 days of washing it is time to marinate.

Everybody has their own recipe for olives. In fact every country has their own recipe. All olives are the same until the marinade is made. If you went to Greece you would have a different recipe than you would in Italy. And going further than that, every family has their own derivation of these recipes. I love our neighbours recipe so I did it again this time around.

It’s hard to say just how much of everything you need for olive marinade. I can tell you that there are some ingredients that are mandatory. The biggest one would be salt. In my batch I put in an entire kilogram of salt. Yes, an ENTIRE kilogram of salt. Salt is integral to making olives for two reasons. Olives are very bitter to begin with. A lot of salt is needed as olives don’t absorb very well to make a noticeable difference in the final tasting. Salt is also a necessary ingredient for curing. To a certain extent you are curing these olives just like you would Jamón Serrano or even Smoked Salmon. Even if it makes your batch too salty, you can always add more water to your olives before eating them. So don’t skimp on the salt. Too salty is not a concern. Not salty enough is.

For this recipe I also like to add:

Garlic – 4 heads all pealed and lightly crushed in a pestle and mortar.
Pimentón – also known as Paprika; 2 regular spice jars bought at a grocery store.
Oregano – 2 regular spice jars bought at a grocery store.
Thyme – 2 regular spice jars bought at a grocery store.
Black Pepper – ¾ of a regular spice jar bought at a grocery store.
Bay leaves – whole and about 20 of them.
Red Peppers – 3 medium ones diced.

These all need to be mixed in with about 24 litres of water (for about 20 litres of olives). Make sure everything is stirred in and be sure to stir the olives at least once a day to ensure that all olives get marinated well. Olives take at least 6 weeks to marinate. The longer you leave them the less bitter they will be and the more flavourable. It’s always best to keep a cover on them as to keep out bacteria and other things like dirt.

Y ya esta! In 6 weeks time leading right up to Christmas season you will have your own home made olives ready to serve to guests. You can always make different recipes. Put the olives in several smaller containers and put what you like in. It’s always fun to experiment. Just don’t forget the salt.

This goes out to my Peeps (Beck) - Porra

I have just had a request for the recipe of a derivation to Gazpacho. It's called Porra and is very well known in Inland Andalucia specifically the area of Antequera. This is where our farm is. It tends to be thicker than Gazpacho, but is still blended and usually garnished with cut boiled eggs, tomatoes, tuna or jamon serrano.

Porra (you roll the RRRRRrrrrrr)

4 tablespoons Olive Oil
4 tomatoes
1 large green pepper (or 2 small ones)

Blend all of these together until completely blended.
Then add:

4 cloves of garlic
Salt to taste

Finally you need:

Soaked day old bread (make sure that the bread is completley soaked through and then squeeze to get out as much water as possible)

Add as much or as little bread as you like. The more you add the thicker it will be. I prefer it as thick as possible. Make sure to blend all of the bread though as you will get chunks of wet bread if you don't mix well. Don't put too much in. Your blender will only take so much.

Place in bowls and garnish with whichever you like (cut hard boiled eggs, tuna, tomatoes or jamon).

Make sure to chill for at least 45 minutes.

You can eat it with a spoon or you can do what I do and scoop it up with bread.

(picture to follow, but wanted to get it on the blog.)

Enjoy!

Gazpacho - Salad in a glass

Gazpacho comes from the region of Andalucia in Spain and is known throughout the world as a cold soup. You can order it at some top quality restaurants and it will come to you in a bowl with a spoon.

Often times the locals here in Andalucia simply serve it in a glass and you drink it with the rest of your meal. It's fantastic for hot summer days when you want something light and it still tastes just as good in a glass. Even better if you ask me.

Gazpacho has become a household regular here in Spain out of practicality. In the summer your garden produces so much (300 days of sun a year) and often times it is impossible to eat so many vegetables before they get a bit soft. It's a perfect way to avoid wasting them. Spaniards do not like wasted food.

Gazpacho:

2 tablespoons of Olive oil
4 ripe tomatoes
1 small green pepper
1 1/2 small cucumbers (peeled)

Start by mixing all of your vegetables in the blender with the Olive oil.

Then add:

4 medium cloves of garlic
6 tablespoons vinegar (you can adjust this if like)
1/2 bar of old bread (you need to soak the bread in water and then squeeze the water out; a perfect way to get rid of old bread)

The next step is to add water until the blender is full. Make sure to leave a little room so that it will not spill when you turn on the blender. You can add some ice cubes as well to chill your batch immediately.

The next step is to add salt to taste. Make it as bland or as salty as you like.

And the final touch is to add some cubed pieces of cucumber from the 1/2 cucmber left over.

Spanish cooking is often to taste and preference so adjust any ingredients to your liking. If you prefer it to be thicker add more bread or use less water. If you like the bite you get when you consume Gazpacho increase your cucumber and garlic.

Disfruta!

Summer Heat = Cool Salads

Two weekends ago it was 48 degrees outside. It gets pretty hot over here. When you go outside in heat like that and the wind blows it's like a blow dryer on your skin. There is not much in the way of escape besides air conditioning (which we don’t have) and the pool (not much use after 9:00 pm).

One thing that becomes quite popular in the sweltering Andalucian summers are salads. It's too hot to cook and you're not that hungry anyway so enter salads. There are different types of course, but I can tell you that Spaniards certainly come up with interesting and colourful ways to present raw vegetables for consumption.

Over the next 6 stifling weeks, I will be showcasing some of my favourite salads that I make regularly along with the recipes. Enjoy!!

First on the list:

Ensalada Mixta

We'll start simple. Probably the most common salad you'll see in Spain is an ensalada mixta or mixed salad. Everyone has their own version of how they prepare this salad, but some ingredients you always see.

1/2 head of iceberg lettuce
2 sliced tomatoes
1/2 jar of shredded, preserved* carrots
1/2 jar of shredded, preserved* beets
1 can of sweet corn
1 small can of tuna

I also add:
1/4 of a small onion - thinly sliced
sometimes I will replace the carrots with apio (shredded, preserved* radish)

It's a typical house salad I know, but very popular in any restaurant and common in any Spanish home.

For dressing I simply put a little olive oil and even less vinegar over the salad with some salt and pepper to taste.

YA ESTA!

*Preserved in vinegar. Fairly easy to find in Spain, but maybe not so easy to find in Canada. You may have to make your own.

Harsh!

One thing that I noticed from the start when we moved to Spain is just how harsh life is. It wasn't so much from the struggles that we've gone from although those were pretty harsh, but more from just life around us.

The reality of what sort of part animals play in the everday lives of humans here in Spain is quite obvious. Watch a bull fight to see that. I still haven't gone. I don't really need to.

Last night was a perfect example of the harshness of life; and death for that matter when I was driving on the highway to go an pick up a friend to go out for drinks and passed a dog who had obviously been hit. What I didn't expect was for the dog to look back up at me as I was driving by. By the time I had realized that he was still alive I had already passed him. This was a highway of 80 km/h.

For some reason I went and picked up my friend first and told her what had happened and then proceeded to go back to see what we could do for the poor guy. It was a good thing I picked her up first because while I tried to get to him, she called the vet.

A couple of other good people stopped just as I was getting to him and they hauled him over the medium off of the highway and out of harms way. This was no small feat as he was obviously in pain. One of the people who stopped happened to be a vet and while she was waiting for her husband to bring the van back around off the highway I kept thinking if he survived this and was okay, Miguel and I would take him and call him "Lucky". He was not well though.

I called the vet several hours later to find that they ended up having to put Lucky to sleep as his back was severely broken and he was paralyzed.

This is life. It happens. Unfotunately to dogs and cats far too often in Southern Spain. There are a lot of strays. I feel better now though knowing that Lucky is no longer in pain than having the nightmare in my head that some poor dog is dying slowly on the road.

I wonder how many people drove by in the time I passed Lucky to the time I came back with my friend. Harsh!

Why they call it Labour - Originally posted December 2007

Joaquin Raoul Espigares Fortin was born on December 15th, 2007 at 7:45 pm. I can't really compare having a baby in Spain to having one in Canada because I haven't had one in Canada, but I'd have to say that the experience here in Spain was a good one. A painful one, but everything went all right for the most part.

I woke up on Saturday, December 15th around 8:30 am. I was feeling pain lower down in my belly. This was not something new. I had been waking up for the last several weeks feeling pain because I had to go to the bathroom so badly. When you have to pee every 5 minutes all day long and then go to sleep for 8 hours with only one bathroom trip throughout the night, you're bound to feel pain first thing in the morning. Some mornings I was afraid to get up in fear that I might pee the bed right there with Miguel next to me. Nice way for him to wake up. Anyway, I went to the bathroom as I normally did and then went back to bed.

This was the first day that Miguel had been given to sleep in. He didn't have to work until 4 that day so we had both planned to sleep in. JR had other plans. Around 9:30 I woke up again with the same sort of pains. I thought maybe I had to go, well, you know. The other number. So I went to the bathroom and off to bed again. About 2 minutes later I had the pains again. I thought "Could it be? Am I in labour? Nah, first your water is supposed to break or your contractions are only supposed to be 30 minutes apart to start off with; not 2 minutes apart. Nah, can't be labour. But just in case it is labour I have to at least take a shower. I can't go to the hospital like this and have people looking around down there".

So I took a shower. An hour and a half in labour and I'm taking a shower. Contractions are fun while you're trying to take a shower. Finally I started to face the reality that I might actually be in labour. I went upstairs, woke Miguel up and told him we had to call the hospital because I might be in labour. I wanted to make sure (I just wasn't getting it) because I didn't want to have to drive all the way to Malaga and then come back if it wasn't labour. Apparently having contractions every 2 minutes wasn't enough to convince me.

We finally found the number for the hospital. This confusion all happened while my mother in law opened my Christmas presents for me so that I could have them for the hospital. I may be crazy, but I don't think labour is the best time to open someone else's Christmas presents for them. In fact maybe you shouldn't open other people's presents at all. She did it again for my Three Kings day present too. I'm in the middle of a contraction and she's showing off the nightgown and bathrobe she got me. I never used them either since you pretty much wear a hospital gown when you're in the hospital. Everyone would have thought I was a nutjob walking around in a pink housecoat.

So it took the nurse on the phone telling me that 'I have to come in before they can make a proper assessment' to finally get me into the car. So about 2 hours after my labour started we were off to the hospital. When we got there, Miguel's 75 year old mother who is afraid of parking let us off about half a mile from the hospital doors. We finally made it to the emergency entrance where a clerk told us we need to go ALL the way around to the maternity entrance. As we walked out I stopped to have a contraction and a doctor came out and told us to come back in. Apparently she overheard the clerk tell us to go around the building and to which she replied, "What, are you crazy! She's in labour you idiot!" Maybe the clerk used to work for the Spanish government. I don't know.

Either way they put me in this wheelchair which was way too small for me (I could tell by the wheels rubbing against my ass) and brought me to the maternity ward. I still have to wheel marks on the sides of my pants. I could have just walked you know. I think she was feeling bad for almost making me walk around the building. Here we had to go to the front desk and check in first. Got you're health card, Yup, Passport, Yup, NIE, Yup, Pregnancy booklet, Yup. Ah, Spain. The land of overwhelming paperwork. We're finally getting the hang of it. Just bring every piece of paper you've acquired in the last 5 years with you everywhere and you'll be ok.

After checking in it was time for the first examination to see if I was in fact in labour because I still wasn't totally convinced that this was the real thing. Ok, dilated 3 centimetres. Hmm, by this time I thinking maybe we should be talking epidural. The doctor actually beat me to the punch and asked me if I wanted the epidural to which I replied "Si, claro!" Loosely translated that means "hell yeah!" So then I was off to the delivery ward.

The hospital I went to is called "El Materno". It is a maternity hospital and if anyone has a serious problem with their delivery in nearby hospitals they fly them to el materno right away. The medical staff were excellent I have to say. I was in very good hands. The only problem I had was when one of the doctors who examined me left me kind of hanging half way off the bed because I couldn't feel my legs enough (due to the epidural) to pull myself up. I honestly think she just didn't know how to handle the situation. I eventually got myself back up. The epidural was a welcome help although it took about 4 hours of waiting before I got it because they had to do blood work beforehand to make sure I was a candidate. Every time the doctor would come into the room I would say "epidural?" My Spanish is still a work in progress, but I think I got my point across. Finally around 3:30pm after 5 hours of contractions every 2 to 4 minutes that kept getting stronger and stronger, I had the epidural. I slept.

Dealing with the worst pain I have EVER felt in my life for 5 hours had knocked every ounce of energy out of me. The doctor in the pregnancy class told us that we need to rest in between contractions to get ready for the next one. Exactly when are you supposed to rest when your contractions are 2 minutes apart. THE WHOLE FRICKIN' TIME! That's like saying "relax your leg muscles after every stride" when your running a 10K race. The nurses kept telling me to breathe too. "I am breathing. Can't you hear me breathing. The people in the next room can probably hear me breathing. Between screams that is".

The epidural wasn't all roses and sunshine though. At one point it started to wear off on the left side so they upped my dosage. This made me lose feeling in my lower body all together. This lead to the whole falling off the bed incident. You don't realize just how heavy you are until half of you is unable to pull the other half of you up. I can relate a little bit more to that whole scene in Kill Bill when Uma pulls herself into that guy's truck after coming out of a 4 year coma. Except she handled it a lot better than I did. I'm not a trained assassin though.

All in all things went along fairly well. I dilated really quickly. I was fully dilated by about 4:30 even with the epidural. That's when they tell you start pushing with contractions, which is a bit of a task when you can't feel your lower body. This was the biggest complication I had. I pushed for 3 hours and JR just wouldn't come through the birth canal. This was hard. Not like anything before was easy, but I was starting to feel my right side through the epidural. I didn't ask them to increase the epidural though because I didn't like the feeling of absolutely no feeling and I also figured it was best if I could feel the contractions at least a little so I knew when to push. Besides it wasn't going to be much longer. After 3 hours of pushing I was getting frustrated, but JR was no closer to coming out. I remember at one point Miguel came back from calling my parents to give them an update and asked me how it was going and I said "He won't come out, the dirty bastard!".

Finally the main doctor who had seen me through the whole delivery came in and made the final decision. Miguel tells me that after he examined me he then told the others to get "him" in here. So in came this young thing, examined me, and told us that they were going to have to help JR out a little bit in order to get him out. He said they were going to have to get out the spatulas. I made some comment about cooking (I can't really remember). Then all of a sudden like 14 people ushered into the room and one of them asked Miguel to leave for a few minutes. Ok, a little weird, but what do I know. I've never had a baby and this is really starting to hurt so just GET HIM OUT! It turns out spatulas for delivering a baby look nothing like spatulas you use in the kitchen. Big long scary looking metal things. We'll leave it at that.

At some point they let Miguel back in and then he was born. The first time I saw JR he was upside down and blue. I remember seeing his little willy and thinking "Yup, definitely a boy". He didn't cry much, but boy I did. The medical staff must have thought I was a big weirdo. I'm not sure if I cried more out of relief of having him out or the fact that there he was. Our little boy. He had so much hair. I just couldn't believe that this little person came out of me. He was amazing. He still is. Then they put him on my chest. I just couldn't believe it.

Most amazing thing I've ever done. Can't wait to do it again, but I want a girl next time.

We are gathered here today..... - Originally posted July 2006

Yes, it’s true. We have lost another member of our family here in Spain and I would like to dedicate THIS update to her. On Monday, July 17th our little peugeot 106 died (several times) on the highway into town. She was a tough little car (or golf cart masquerading as a car) and we miss her. She carried us through most of southern Spain with not too many complaints and endured the 33,000 km we put on her in a matter of 7 months. That’s right! 33,000 km. We put more kilometers on her than Miguel’s mother has put on her car in the 6 years she’s owned it. I don’t know what’s sadder. Our 30,000 km in 7 months or her 30,000 km in 6 years.

On a happier note we have made several new additions to the Espigares family here in Spain. One is a new Peugeot. It’s brand new (thanks to that wonderful invention they call financing) and black and quite the machine. We’re both loving it! The other addition is a kitten that I picked up at the pet store. They were giving them away because nobody would in fact buy a cat here in Spain. They all think we’re nuts for shipping two of them over here. Cats are not appreciated here in Spain. More times than not I’ve seen dirty emaciated cats walking the streets. I’d love to take them all home, but then where are we going to live?

So I took this one for Miguel so he could have his own cat. Poor thing. She was pretty small and hungry when we got her home. She’s put on some weight and is very happy to not be living in a cage. Miguel named her Hyperbola because 1. He’s a math nerd and 2. She’s very hyper as most kittens are. I think she was taken from her mother at a very early age because she nuzzles up to my neck and kneads my head and tries to get milk from my hair. Hm, that would be interesting. She’s tried on Tosca a couple times on her tummy, but Tosca has never been a mother and really can’t stand other cats so it never ends well.

Dirty Cats and Oil Barrels

I always start an update and then stop before I really write anything and think “Why am I writing? I have nothing to write about”. Something always comes up though. My topic today is that everyone here always thinks that their land is a goldmine. They think it because a couple years ago when the Brits started coming here and buying land to live and enjoy their retirement, they paid too much. Or at least in terms of what land was going for they spent too much.

The story goes “An English man came to Spain and asked a farmer ‘I would like to buy your land. How much will you sell it to me for?’ and the Spanish farmer not really wanting to sell his land gave him, what he thought was a ridiculously high price, to which the English man replied ‘Really?! That cheap eh? Ok. You have yourself a deal.’

So the Spanish farmer walked away with more money than he could possibly imagine he could get for his land and went and told all his friends. And for a while a bunch of Spanish farmers sold their land for outrageous prices, not knowing that back in London you couldn’t buy a scone for less, until the prices of land in Spain finally caught up to the prices in the rest of Europe (thanks to the euro) and the British stopped buying land for ridiculous prices because it became a little expensive at that point.

Now while the British have stopped buying overpriced land the story of the Spanish Farmer who sold his land for a fortune still travels through Spain except that the price gets higher and higher each time." You know. Like the caught fish that gets bigger and bigger? So now what do the Spaniards who have land to sell do? They try and sell their land for waaaaaay more than it’s worth according to this story. I tell you this because we’ve seen it first hand.

The other day Miguel had an appointment to go and check out a piece of land that was described to him as “just on the outskirts of the city (Antequera)”. The truth is we drove past our place which is a 20 minute drive from the city and then we drove for another 15 minutes after that. What we ended up at was a piece of land that I can only describe as a dumping ground for rusted oil barrels and dirty unwanted cats (inbreeding was definitely an issue with these cats). To top it off it was between two mountains so what we had was a giant wind tunnel filled with oil barrels and dirty cats.

I was already upset by this point because I had an 8 o’clock swim class plus a possible interview for at a new sports club. It was 7:45 by the time we got there. So we get there and the wife (sweet but missing some marbles) has to say hi to the people who live there. Yes, people actually live in the giant wind tunnel with the dirty inbred cats and oil barrels all over their land. FINALLY, she gets around to showing us the place EXCEPT she forgot the keys. At this moment I turn to Miguel with the straightest expressionless face ever and say “I want a divorce”. He told me later that he wouldn’t blame me if I divorced him. After all he made the appointment for an hour before my class. Of course he was told the place was just outside Antequera.

Nobody ever really tells you what’s going on in this country. You have to experience it for yourself. By this point I was fuming so I went and sat in the car so as to not make a scene. Finally at 8:30 we get to leave after she’s shown Miguel everything she possibly can, except for the one part where she didn’t have the keys, including the neighbours to prove that English people will buy her oasis. Who knows if the neighbours really were English.

It was 9:00 by the time we got back to Antequera. I parked the car in front of Miguel’s work and said “I’ll be at the bar up the street”. I say that a lot lately. I don’t know why. Haha! I ordered a beer and eventually relaxed a little by the time Miguel and his work buddies came and sat down.

We told the story to Javier this one guy Miguel works with and he shared an experience he had a couple days earlier except that it was even further away (about an hour) and yet he was told the same “on the outskirts of Antequera” line and that it was in fact on the side of a mountain where you couldn’t even stand properly let alone build a house on. He said the guy was saying “see that goat all the way up there, that’s the end of my land and see that river down there ‘Don’t Trip’ that’s the other end.”

You haven’t heard the best part. Both mountain side man and oil barrel lady were looking to sell their crappy land for over 600,000 Euros. That’s close to a million dollars Canadian. Miguel said all he could hear when she told him her price was all the time we had wasted blowing in the wind. After Javier told his story I had to laugh at the whole experience. I mean what else can you do?

Everyone here thinks their land is a goldmine because of this one Spanish farmer, but what they don’t realize is that he probably sold a piece of land one hundred times the size of theirs and at the price that it would cost to buy a new car now. I hope he’s enjoying his new car if it’s not old and falling apart by now. The story has been around for a while.

Poo Wars - Originally posted May 2006

I think I mentioned in the third or fourth update that the neighbours dog keeps crapping on our yard. Well, there have been some updates since then that pertain to this story. First of all, the dog is still crapping on our land. Every once in a while we come home from town or come out of the house to leave for town and there’s a nice big one waiting for us. It’s weird having to watch where you step on a 25,000 sq meter piece of land that is yours and you don’t even have a dog. The big dog is even doing it now. We can tell because his are much bigger. I’m sure you all find this very interesting (NOT), but there is a build up to this story I assure you.

A little side step. We signed the contract finally for our place. It’s officially ours now as of last Tuesday (April 18th, 6 days after the deadline). See how long stuff takes in this country?! We put our money down for this place in the middle of December and BAM! 4 months later it’s ours. The reason I side step is because I want you to know that only one week after taking complete ownership of the place our first big problem came up. It all starts with a clogged toilet.

We didn’t clog it even though we’ve been using it for the last couple of months. Like it’s not bad enough that the toilet is outside now it doesn’t work thanks to the old stuff that’s been sitting in there for two years and, well, let’s use the word petrifying. That’s enough description. Sooooo being the responsible people that we are we decide to hire a plumber to come out and take a look at it. The reason I mention that we are responsible people is because you would be amazed at the solutions (or lack thereof) that some people here come up with. You’ll see some really good examples in a second.

So the plumber came. Took a look at the problem and actually fixed it. All within 20 minutes which is great because plumbers are not cheap. We all know that. DONE, RIGHT?! Nope. While fixing this problem the plumber came upon another problem. I’m not going to gross you out with the details (and it is gross), but what it all comes down to is this. Any place in the country here does not have direct plumbing. Generally what happens is you have a septic tank where waste filters into and once a year you get a truck to come by and clean out the tank. This is pretty standard. Anyone with a place on Georgian Bay knows this. Well, it turns out ours is full.

We’ve only been there for 2 months now so it’s obvious to us that it was not emptied in a while since the last time someone lived here was two years ago. We only found out the day before that we have a septic tank (keep in mind we’ve lived in cities all our lives; both Miguel and I) and now we find out that it’s full. So we get it emptied no problem right? Wrong! We can’t find the septic tank. We know where it is because the guy who sold us place told us yesterday when we called him to ask what sort of plumbing we have to start off with. It’s 3 meters down and 15 meters from the house. But it’s not there! Where is it? Well, it turns out it is there.

The neighbour came out and informed us that the tank is there, but the guy who owned the property before buried it under a bunch of rocks so he could build a ramp to the other part of his land which, by the way, now belongs to the realtor who sold us the land. I have a hard time believing that he had no idea that this thing was buried under the ramp to his new land. Especially since he knew its exact location in meters. The neighbour told him he couldn’t bury it like that, but he didn’t listen. The only thing I can think of is that the guy wanted to sell the land separately and figured he needed to build an access to the second lot, but was too lazy to move the tank to another location. So now we have a full septic tank that we can’t access to empty and it isn’t even on our land anymore, but now on the land of the realtor who sold it to us and neglected to mention that it’s buried and the final kick is that because the tank is full it is now leaking into the neighbours field. So in a way we’ve kind of got the advantage in the crapping on each others land competition.

I’ll leave off with one final piece of news that is brand spanking new because it just happened today and that is that Miguel and I took a little trip with our new bike club here in Antequera.

We did a 35km cycling trip which doesn’t sound like much except it was up The Sierra Nevada (The original, not the one in California of course). Three hours later and 2,200 meters (7,000 feet) higher we were at the tip of the town Sierra Nevada and yes there is snow in Spain if you go high enough.

I’m looking forward to skiing season this coming October. I haven’t skied for years since I would refuse to pay to SKATE down Blue Mountain in Ontario (I missed Banff severely). Apparently there over 6 million skiers in Spain.

Our New Old House - Originally posted April 2006

Tosca and Amatti. Our little insect hunters.

So much has changed. Have you ever watched a movie and at the end of it you think “Man, the end of that movie resembles nothing of the beginning”. You know? Because so much has happened in the last two hours. Such is our life.

Andalucia is very beautiful and is progressing everyday, but it’s almost like living in two separate worlds. One world is progressive and resembles Canada very much. The other is the old world with houses with no indoor plumbing and horse buggies. It’s not unusual to get stuck in traffic on the highway because a giant tractor pulling a cart of olives just coming in from the fields is pushing 30 km/hour in front. Or to get stopped on a road by a herd of sheep following their shepherd home. They sound so funny with all their bells around their necks chiming.

We are now living in the new place. New to us. Old to the earth because let me tell you this place is OLD. It is definitely part of that old world I just touched on. Ironically enough our address is Casa Nueva which translated means “New House”. I wonder what the old house looked like before this one. Miguel and I actually have a bit of a theory about the name of this place.

Miguel found out some gossip about our place from this guy who’s done some construction work in our neck of the woods and knows our neighbours and a little bit of the history. First off you need a little explanation as to the setup of our house. Our house is actually attached at one wall to our neighbours.

Originally our place was the barn of a much larger house until it was “fixed up” (I use that term loosely) and sold as a separate unit along with 50,000 sq m of land. The story from this guy is that the family ran into a little bit of financial trouble when one of the boys (I don’t know how far back this goes) killed someone and the legal fees trying to keep him out of jail left them in debt.

That’s all the guy really told Miguel except that the name of place was Rey Mundo (King World). Our theory is that there was a lot of bad publicity and negative energy because of this whole incident that when they separated and sold this place they changed the name of the whole place for a fresh start.

Of course this is all speculation and who knows if that guy was even talking about our place. I do have to say that the neighbours are weird. Harmless weird though (except their stupid little dog who never shuts up – I’m gonna kick him one day).

So you are all probably wondering how is the new place. Let me just say – Life is very very real now. Very real. I equate it to camping inside. For starters our bathroom is not part of the main house. You have to go outside. We consider it a glorified outhouse because even though there is a bathtub, sink and a toilet that flushes, the sink is not hooked up and our hot water heater does not work so we can’t take showers. Right now we’re making trips to the in-laws for laundry and showers. I wouldn’t use the shower anyway. Every time I go to the bathroom I play “guess the insect”. The insects are much weirder and bigger here.

Needless to say we will be moving the bathroom inside. We have enough room for a nice big one. First things first though. The water needs to be redone or more like “done”. Our kitchen tap right now resembles a garden hose through a hole in the wall. In fact all our pipes resemble garden hoses. The good thing is that everything in this place seems to be a temporary job which means it won’t cost a lot to rip it out. The kitchen needs to be redone pretty quickly too. The roof needs to be redone ASAP as parts of it falls down everyday.

The other day I could hear something crawling around in it. I thought it was going to come right through the ceiling since I could see it “bulging” around inside. It turns out it was a cat trying to meet our cats. I’ve always wanted to buy a fixer upper and make it something amazing. I just didn’t think there would be such a large draft from the doorways and windows and so many bugs. Thank goodness for Tosca and Amatti our little hunters. Let’s hope they don’t eat anything poisonous. There is a lot to the house though which is good. There is an upstairs which will eventually become our bedroom and a TV room, but for now it will have to be the bird sanctuary that it is. We can hear the birds up there every morning. God knows what else is up there.

I know it sounds dire, but it’s not. It’s different. It’s new. And it’s very real. It actually makes you feel more alive. Everyday there is something new. The air out here is fresh. Our view is ridiculously amazing. We have a well and apparently the water runs 200 meters below our land and flows at 100 meters per second so we’ll never run out of water. We have quince (sp?) trees, fig trees and an apricot tree. We have a grape vine running up the side of our house. We can’t remove any soil from our place because it is protected by law and indigenous only to this part of the world. You can see the end of El Torcal (the largest karst formation in the world) from our place http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torcal_de_Antequera .

So far we have encountered rabbits, vultures, golden eagles, foxes, wild pheasants, and a mother of a frog which is apparently poisonous to touch. Sometimes at night you can hear this god awful scream that sounds like an old witch or something. It turns out it’s a screeching owl. I almost ran over a lizard the other day and the day before we saw 7 vultures circling around a section of the mountains. Obviously something had died. I love this place and I can not wait to make it our own. Quite the change from our little condo in Toronto.

The latest thing to scratch off our list is me getting my NIE which is the number that foreigners get here instead of a DNI. It wasn’t easy to get even though it’s supposed to be. Government workers are unbelievable. I don’t know if they really don’t know their jobs or if their just trying to confuse the foreigners so that they’ll leave and not come back. The only way to really get anything done smoothly here is to go through the backdoor and for that you need to know someone who knows someone.

It turns out that we know someone who knows someone. The guy who sold us our place, knows the head of the foreigners department at the police commission. After all the miserable jerk workers we’ve dealt with I can not tell you how awesome it feels to be able to go to the head honcho’s office in the back of the police station where no civilians go and have him tell the workers who treated you like an old kleenex two days earlier to give you a NIE today (it usually takes 4-6 weeks to get one).

So now I have a NIE. I’m still not legal here in Spain, but the NIE is a big step. My residency card is the next step and Juan Antonio has said that he will get his friend to help with that as well. They have a saying here that goes like this “A person who knows someone who can get things done in the government shits gold”. Well, let me tell you, this guy is shitting bricks of it.

We are slowly but surely ticking things off the list. Still, miles to go before we sleep.

Meier Front Hatchway U100 - Originally posted February 2006

A LOT has happened since the second update so I’ve actually put everything in two separate updates. Here are the third and fourth instalments of The Great Spanish Adventure.

I’ll start where I left off. Remember the bit about our stuff finally leaving Barcelona and being shipped to us. Good! Now remember I ended with “I’ll believe it when I see it”? Well, herein lies a very interesting and funny tale. The truck driver had called on Saturday and told us that he would be here around Tuesday or Wednesday, but he was a little confused because the shipping order said our shipment was 3000 kg, but it didn’t look like it should be 3000 kg. In fact our shipment was 300 kg. No biggy so they tacked another zero onto our shipping order. We’re not getting charged extra so why do we care. We were waiting and ready to go on Tuesday. He didn’t show, but he did call us again to tell us that he would be there around 8 tomorrow morning and that again he was concerned about this shipment because it was in fact quite heavy and he wasn’t sure his truck would be able to get onto a residential street as it was an 18-wheeler. Ok, again no biggy. We’ll just get him to drop it off at the bottom of the hill and haul it up one box at a time. We can even use the car. This guy worries more than we do. So sure enough we get a call at 5 minutes after 8 on Wednesday morning and we’re off to meet him at the front of town.

Now, before I go on allow me to divert with a little piece of history first. I guarantee it will make perfect sense in a minute. During the Second World War there was a German navy soldier named Meier. Meier was kind of a burly guy and often took a while to get through the hatch from the bridge to the control room on the ship. So one day his shipmates decided to play what they probably thought was a really funny joke. As Meier was going through the hatch on this unfortunate day they jumped on his shoulders and of course poor Meier fell through the hatch and followed through with an 18-foot drop to the floor. He did survive this terrifying experience, but developed a fear that his shipmates might try this again. In order to make sure it would never happen again Meier created a very sophisticated and fast system of getting through the hatch like “Grease Lightning” as his shipmates called it. It was named “The Dive” and the hatch was renamed the Meier Hatch which lives today for every hatch of this design.

Now, I’m sure you’re all asking why are you talking about a German soldier in WW2 and how do you know such a useless fact anyway. Well, because we researched it on Wednesday night the same day that we opened the back door of the truck drivers semi and were surprised to see a crate about ¼ of the size of our 25 containers that said Meier Front Hatchway U100 on the side at which point I turned to Miguel and said “I don’t think we’ll be able to get this up the hill”. First thoughts are funny eh? The driver was right. The shipment was in fact 3 metric tonnes understandably for a ship’s hatch which was meant for Bilbao, the ship building capital of Spain. We were right too. Our stuff is 300 kg, but never made it to Málaga. Apparently we were not as pissed off as the shipyard was to receive our Rubbermaid boxes full of picture frames and my grandmother’s lamps. I can imagine some big guy full of grease pulling out my fluffy purple sweater saying “Where the hell is my HATCH!”. So we made some phone calls and received one back saying that our stuff was BACK in Barcelona and would be here the next day at around 10 in the morning and again I say “I’ll believe it when I see it”.

Sure enough the next morning, no truck, no call and no returning of our calls to find out where the hell our stuff is. We were starting to think that these guys were real professionals. I don’t know what tipped us off. By this time we were, well, livid! At this point we’re threatening to get everyone involved from the guy in Canada who shipped the stuff in the first place to the RCMP and INTERPOL. We did eventually get our stuff. Next Tuesday. I can’t be mad anymore. I can not express how great it felt to see our stuff finally. It felt like a victory of some sort.

That week was a busy week because Miguel’s DNI came in as well. That meant that we could claim the car that we had been driving for over 2 months and also insure it. What a novelty. The insurance was a little tricky though. You need to know what you’re doing because if you don’t you can end up paying an arm and a leg. The first guy we went to quoted us 1400 euros for the year. The reason being that my International Driver’s Permit is only valid since November so I would have to take the non-experience driver’s rate. I have a copy of my driving record which shows that I’ve been driving since I was 17, but it’s not valid for an International Driver’s Permit. We decided to try RACE which here in Spain is the equivalent of CAA. Our second quote was 340 euros for the year. We went with the second. They could insure me under my Canadian Driver’s Permit which meant my driving record was valid. YAY! So now we have a car to our name and we can get into all the accidents we want. Which is a definite possibility since the drivers here are all insane!

Right now our days are busy as we are getting our new place ready to move into. We have the keys, but we’re still working on getting the financing together. It is looking very good. It’s so weird how it works here. There are rules, but they are being bent or twisted all the time. We got kinda lucky because our realtor knows the director of the bank that we’ve applied to. The two of them are in cahoots and working to get us the best mortgage they can. We had the land evaluated last week and we’re just waiting for the paper work to go through and then we can find out how much of a mortgage we can get.

So one by one we check things off our list, but there are still so many things that still need to be done. We should be busy for a long time. Never a dull moment!

Banks, shipping and television - Originally posted January 2006

So what’s happened since December?

Apparently January is colder than December, the car still belongs to no one and on top of that we found out our car insurance is invalid and we can’t get any until Miguel’s NIF comes and we can claim the car as ours. On that note, Miguel’s NIF is late. It should be here any day HAHA! We did get the land that we were looking at. We almost lost it because, but in the end we bought it. All we need is a mortgage now. We have no idea what we’re doing.

Keep in mind these were the initial problems that we encountered. More have come since then to give us a lovely collage of pains in the ass.

The first problem is our money. We left Canada without it. You’re thinking “Are you dumb or something”, but think about it. Most people who sell their place where do they move to. Perhaps a bigger house or to a different city where they have a new job or closer to family. All they do is go to their new branch of TD or RBC or BMO and get their money. Who moves to another country? Only morons like us, that’s who. So we left the country with our money in our Canadian accounts thinking no problem. Why would there be a problem? We live in the age of computers? Anything can be transferred in a matter of days. No problem? Problem! It takes A MONTH to process a Canadian cheque in Spain. We know this now because we tried it with MY new bank account (Miguel can’t get one yet cuz he doesn’t have a NIF). So I came up with this brilliant idea to transfer the money to my dad’s account from Miguel’s account and then get him to wire it to our new account. The money should be here in a couple of days. No problem right? Problem! Have to call our bank in Canada first and get them to add my dad to Miguel’s internet payee list. You’d think you could add another customer of the same bank to your account online, but NOOOOOOOOO. Get that set up then transfer the money to him. No problem right? Problem! We can only transfer 8% of out total amount at once, but apparently you can do as many transfers as you want and it doesn’t cost anything. So 13 transfers later the money is with my dad who wires it to us the next day. A WEEK later it finally shows up, but not all of it. Oh, there’s a rule you need to know. Here in Spain EVERYONE takes a cut. So our bank in Canada took their cut, pretty standard. But then it went through their intermediary bank, which took a cut and THEN it finally got to our account where our bank took a cut. Nice eh? Wait until you hear about the shipping.

So the shipping. Ah, the shipping. First word of advice; NEVER USE SEALINK CANADA TO SHIP ANYTHING. Unless of course you love surprises like getting a phone call from Barcelona telling you that your stuff has arrived there and that you need go there and pay them money and fill out some forms. For your convenience you can hire a customs broker and have them take care of it for you and you pay them. Hmm, what to do? So I call the GUY from Sealink Canada and ask him, “So, like what is this all about? I paid you $1500 to ship our stuff to Malaga and now their calling from across the country telling us we can go there and pay or we can hire someone and pay?” To which he replies, “my fee is for transport and documentation in Canada so you’re pretty much on your own”. And you couldn’t tell me all this in Canada? Whatever, once again someone’s getting their cut. Sooooo, 600 euros later we still don’t have our stuff, we paid extra fees because the customs brokers office took their sweet ass time and didn’t inform us that we had to send the money first just told us to bring the invoice to the port so now we’re paying fees for the port in Barcelona holding our stuff. Have we finally gotten our stuff you ask? No, it’s apparently going to arrive next Tuesday or Wednesday. I’ll believe it when I see it. They should make one of those Mastercard commercials from this experience. Except it ain’t priceless baby. Total shipping: A cool $2500. Are we having fun yet?

One last problem to talk about and then I have to talk about happy things because all this negativity is giving me a headache. We learned something new here. I can own a car! I just need a NIE. It’s like Miguel’s NIF except it’s for foreigners. So we go to Malaga to get this NIE that will allow us to own a car and drive with insurance. Cool eh? So we go to the place we went for Miguel’s NIF. Nope, not there. You have to go to this other office all the way across the city.

So we take a cab there. Hmmm, can’t get a NIE yet you need to register your marriage certificate that shows that you’re married to a Spaniard. You have to go to this other place here across the city.

So we take a cab. Wait in line. Finally our turn. Nope, you need to be in that line. Ok, again our turn. Oh, you need to go to the Canadian embassy and get instructions from them. Where is that? Don’t know. No one knows, but the British one is over there ask them. Where? Hmmm, no. That’s the French embassy, but wait! Nice receptionist has a list of embassies in Malaga. Here is the Canadian embassy all the way over here. Ok, get another cab. Um, no. No cabs available cuz it’s getting close to lunch and everyone’s going home. Walk all the way there. Of course it has a Burger King attached to it. Only funny thing all day. Finally get there at 1:10 after running around town for 3 hours just trying to get one thing done. Hours of Operation: 9 to 1 Monday to Friday. Sit down on bench and CRY!!!

OMG someone actually opened the door. Such a nice lady. Gives us the instructions we need to send our marriage certificate back to Canada to get authenticated by the Department of Foreign Affairs so it can then be authenticated by the Spanish Embassy down the street in Ottawa and then off to Madrid to get authenticated once more. By the time it comes back Miguel will have his NIF and I can get my NIF and not my NIE. I have a headache.

Now for a little lesson in the funnier things in Spain. I guess they’re not really funny, but instead odd. Today’s topic is Spanish TV. For starters, they’re soap operas are ridiculously dramatic especially considering that nothing happens. No one steals anyone’s baby or husband. No one gets kidnapped. No one gets possessed and there are no bitch fights. No ridiculous story lines and yet twice the drama. Commercial breaks for any show last like 15 – 20 minutes, BUT they only play once every hour or so.

The news is for the whole country because there are less people killed and robbed in all of Spain than in Toronto each year. And yet Miguel’s mom is sure we will be killed in our sleep if we live in the country.

Another thing is that this country is obsessed with performing children. There’s this one show that is all performances from children from singing songs to telling jokes. They had this one girl on there singing pop music and trying to shake her hips like Britney Spears (she was 4 years old; she has no hips) and the hosts LOVED it! I couldn’t figure out what the big deal was. I mean she’s four. She hasn’t even developed a voice yet. She sounds like a chipmunk and rightly so. Two weeks later in Malaga I noticed a poster advertising this same four year old in concert. I guess she’s a big star and I didn’t even know it. I consider it the equivalent to pageanting in North America. They also have this song on one channel that comes on at 8 o’clock every night for kids so they know it’s time to go to bed. It’s very catchy.

And finally the movie names. I don’t know how it works, but sometimes they keep the English title completely, sometimes they translate it literally and sometimes they come up with something completely different. Here are two of my favorites.

Movie Names:

Spanish Title: La Jungla de Cristál
Translation: The Glass Jungle
English Title: Die Hard

Spanish Title: Los Blancos no lo Pueden Meter.
Translation: The Whites Can’t Put It In
English: White Men Can’t Jump

How's the weather? - Originally posted December 2005

This is my initial update for everyone who is wondering if it’s possible to make a big move to Spain and survive. So here is the scoop on our big vacation to Spain. HAHAHAHAHAHA! Vacation; yeah right.

I’ll start with the flight. Miguel flew over from Toronto on November 23rd and I followed him from Calgary the next day. Both flights were hell for different reasons. While I only had an hour and 20 minute delay in from London to Malaga as opposed to Miguel’s 2 hour delay, I paid close to $500 more in excess baggage while Miguel paid around $250. Luggage becomes a whole new concern when you’re taking your entire life with you.

Finally we made it to sunny Spain where the temperature outside is around a balmy 15 degrees Celsius in Malaga. Pretty warm eh? The only problem is that we are 20 minutes north of Malaga in the mountains so by the time you get up here take off around 5-7 degrees so you’re looking at an average temperature of about 8-10 degrees.

Still not bad for November? Ok, but first let me explain Spanish housing. Houses in Spain are NOT made the same way that North American houses are. I’m sure you probably already had an idea of that, but I’ll go into a little more detail. Houses in Canada are made to keep the warmth in. This is why they are made with planks of wood and drywall. So when you come in from a cold blizzard you instantly feel warmth; like a warm blanket. Houses in Spain are made to keep the heat out. They don’t have a lot of air conditioning here as it would take the GDP of a small country to cool it down for 10 months out of the year. So they make the houses out of concrete, brick and plaster. That’s GREAT! For 10 months in a year, but for 2 months it’s like living in an unheated basement. You guys get to read about it. We’re learning it the hard way or should I say the cold way. Here in Spain in November and December if you want to warm up you have to go outside and hope it’s not raining as this is also the rainy season. We are adjusting though. I’ve gotten used to my nose being cold all the time and I spend a lot more time outside now.

So that was the first night’s lesson. There have been many along the way. The next lesson was more fun. I don’t know if you know this, but the amount of time it takes a country’s government to get something done is proportionate to how long the country has been around. So if your country has been around for like EVER then getting anything processed like say a birth certificate takes approximately 8 months to a year. UNLESS, you go through your family lawyer. I have a feeling in Canada if you were to do this someone would be going to jail, but in order to get Miguel’s birth certificate so that he can get his national identity number so he can do anything here we went to the family lawyer who calls a guy in Madrid and it turns out that it only takes 25 days to really get a birth certificate if you’re willing to pay. We can’t wait 8 months so we did it.

This is apparently how Europe works. You know what they say when in Rome….. Of course if we knew that we needed the birth certificate before we got here we would have been on it like white on rice about a year ago, but you never know what’s going on until you get to where you think you need to be here in Spain and then they send you to someone else and they tell you something completely different. Make sense? I don’t get it either. Anyway, so we’re waiting for Miguel’s birth certificate now and a bill.

As I said before you can’t do anything here unless you have a NIF (national identity something or rather) UNLESS you’re not a citizen. HUH! So I, as a foreigner, can do anything I want except work and apparently own a car, but Miguel can’t do anything. Not until he gets that number. We have a car now except that we don’t really. We drive it around and fill it up with gas and we even have some pictures of it (it’s more like a golf cart cuz sometimes on the highway I can only go like 60 km in a 100 km zone), but when we went to change ownership we couldn’t because the guy insisted that we need a NIF # to do it. I’m not sure as I don’t speak Spanish that well and I also don’t understand the bureaucracy here at all.

We did the next best thing we put it in Miguel’s mom’s name. She didn’t like that too much since she already has 2 cars in her name so we went back to where we bought it from and she talked to the guy and now apparently we’re leaving it in transfer which you can do for up to 60 days until Miguel gets his NIF and then we can transfer ownership. The question is who is it in transfer with right now? The previous owner or his mom cuz I think we already went through the process before she complained. Meh! Who cares? We have a car. I never would have guessed that my first car would be a Peugot or in Spain for that matter. It’s a good thing I learned on a standard.

Anyway now that we have a car we’re spending a lot more time looking for a place to live and soon at finding work. There is a lot of land here, but every time we make an appointment to go see it turns out it’s already been sold. There is one place that we looked at that has been vacant for a while. There’s a reason it hasn’t been sold yet. Actually there are about a million reasons it hasn’t been sold yet, but we like it!

It’s a real fixer upper which is kind of what I’ve always wanted. Miguel’s cringing at all the work that will need to be done. The most appealing thing to me about this place is that there is a vulture’s den about 150 meters away from it. Now, I know what you’re thinking, but these are not the kind of vultures that you see in old cowboy movies in Canada where they’re eating the carcasses of dead people in the desert. These guys are quite well fed and keep their distance. Mind you if we do end up living there I think that we will be keeping the cats inside just in case. But these birds are amazing. Twice we saw one hover in mid air. One time it was right in level with our heads since we were up in the mountains and there are lots of hills. They just stay in one place in the air and let the wind keep them up. This is how they hunt. So we’re looking into this place a little more. Keep your fingers crossed.

I gotta say, I’ve been here before, but when you’re here as a possible future citizen it’s very different. There are so many weird things here that I thought I’d never see. Like a monkey crossing the street in Malaga. Apparently one of the problems here in the south of Spain is a lot of illegal immigrants from Africa. And I guess some of them bring monkeys and such with them. Apparently some guy once tried to import a whole litter of baby tigers or lions or something rather.

It’s different being here and I am slowly adjusting, but it will take time. Things are happening, but at a slow rate. We have no idea where life is going to take us, but I’m sure we’ll be just fine. I hope this letter has been half as entertaining to read as it has been to me to write. I’ll send some more notes along the way and let you know how our vacation in Spain is going. HAHAHAHAHAHA! Vacation. Okay, I’m going outside to warm up.