Why kids should learn a musical instrument.

I started music at the age of three.  I remember my parents piling all three of us in the car one day and driving off to the local Suzuki school of music.  They wouldn’t tell us where we were going, but that day changed my path in life forever.   I’m sure of it and for the better.

I could go on and on about statistics to show my point, but if you’re online (which you probably are if you are reading this) then you can find them yourself.

These are reasons of why kids should learn a musical instrument based on my own experience of learning from a young age.

Focus

This is the main reason I have recently put my own son into piano.  He has a hard time focussing on anything other than the computer.  I’m not going to lie; practice time every day is a struggle with him.  I am, however, very conscious of the fact that maybe if we struggle a bit now, he will struggle less later on in life if we are able to develop his ability to focus now.  Music developed my focus and I’m betting on it doing the same for him. 

Coordination, dexterity and memory

Learning coordination and dexterity works the brain.  So while kids are learning coordination and dexterity they are also getting a brain workout which helps in school and other activities.  Besides who doesn’t love having coordination and dexterity?  They’re awesome!  Playing an instrument also develops memory.  Part of the process of learning and performing a piece is repetition which develops the memory.  All are very handy in life.

Work ethic

This is the one that I saw a huge difference with other kids my age when growing up.  My work ethic was so developed early on in life that when I went to college I didn’t struggle with the massive change in workload like some of my other colleagues.   

Sitting down and studying for hours was not a problem.  Writing long papers came relatively easy to me.

Discipline and structure

When kids have a regular routine that is beneficial to their development (beneficial means NOT coming home, throwing their jacket on the floor and heading straight for the Xbox) they learn personal discipline and develop structure in their own little world. 

They learn that they are not going to die if they sit down at the piano for 30 minutes (or however long depending on their level and age).  They learn this and then start to realise that they are not going to die if they do other things they don’t really feel like doing like taking out the garbage or you know….homework.  Learning discipline and building structure early on in life will stay with them.  Especially when you’re no longer there to keep them on track.

There are lots of benefits to learning a musical instrument at a young age.  I’ve met a lot of adults who regret not learning one when they were younger.  I have yet to meet one who regrets actually learning one.

@sassykuhl's first tweetup

Sooooo I went to my first tweet up this week and I have to say it was a pretty cool. When I first heard of the tweetup (a meet up arranged on twitter for fellow tweeters), I thought, "Well, what's the point of that? All you gotta do is call some friends arrange a place to meet and show up." I see the bigger picture now especially considering I don't have any local friends.

I've been living in Spain for over 6 years now and while I do know a lot people (working in the high networking business of recruitment) I rarely see people outside of work which is mostly in Gibraltar. I ended up meeting some great people and a lot of them were small business owners who I can relate to. Networking is key in this location and in this economy for that matter. I even met another Canadian who told me the funniest story I've heard to date of how he ended up in Spain. It was worth the trip just hearing that. 

Thanks to this tweetup, I've met three other Canadians. All of us went out for breakfast, talked about Canada, Spain and work as we all work in similar areas. All this from deciding to go out for a drink at a bar at an event arranged by a stranger for strangers. They are not strangers anymore and I look forward to the next one to see who else I meet. I feel a little less of a recluse now. This is good.

That is all.

If you are in the Marbella area and interested in networking with other local professionals, follow @tweetmarbella to see when is the next tweetup.

My New Year Resolution

Soooooo tomorrow is New Years and what on Earth have I done over the year? 

Well, I got a new job. Two actually. And I still have them both. You can imagine the stress. Especially since the year started in the hospital with our new little girl catching a deadly strain of pneumonia. That was scary. The year has pretty much been kids and work which is not bad because the job has been extremely rewarding and the kids are doing great.

This is the end of the year though and like everyone I feel the need to promise myself next year is going to be better. And maybe I should because other than healthy jobs and cool new work this year has SUCKED!

I could promise to quit smoking or even lose 50 pounds (wouldn't that be nice), but all I really want is to be bloody happy. Even in a new, healthy body would I be happy? Who knows!

But then how do you quantify happiness? How do you know if you are actually working towards happiness unless you are happy. Then you have already achieved it, have you not? And will it last or is simply a burst of serotonin that somehow got away with positive affect. Again, who knows!

So maybe I should just aim to have as many happy little moments as possible, be aware of them when they happen and just enjoy them when they are there in 2012. That's what I'll do.

Happy New Year everyone!

The Beethoven Project – Lessons Learned

This past Thursday was the first time I performed chamber music in front of a live audience in over 10 years. Back in February, I had come up with this idea to have a small Classical concert to highlight some of the local (or semi-local) talent in Gibraltar. At the moment there are two types of Classical Music venues you can attend in Gibraltar. You either have the professional musicians who travel to Gibraltar and are paid for their services or you have recitals of young musicians in the community who are forced to play in concerts set up by their teachers for all parents to come and watch. You don´t see a lot of the teachers themselves perform so I wanted to do something that involved some of the teachers including myself.

The concert had a few hiccups that we dealt with as they came. I think the biggest one was having two pianos as the first one was not playable for the Beethoven. When you´re accompanying 5 year olds I´m sure it´s okay, but when you are trying pull a complicated melody line out of a Beethoven Piano trio, you need something that responds. This led to our pianist insisting on bringing her own electronic piano from home at the dress rehearsal. Understandable.

There are a few things I learned from arranging a concert. I´ve only ever played in them, never arranged and then played. Here are a couple of things to remember for the future and I hope anyone reading this can learn from my experience if they are planning on putting together a concert they are playing:

1. Never arrange a concert that you are playing in! It is too hard. They are two separate jobs and if you are busy doing one (arranging) you are going to be too tired to do the other (play).

2. Never arrange a concert for the same day as the Queen´s birthday in a British Offshore district. Oops! I tried really hard to find the best date and venue for this concert however there were a few things I forgot to look for. Such as, major events and special holidays taking place in Gibraltar.

3. Never arrange a concert on any special religious holidays that may stop potential concert-goers from coming to the concert. In this case a very big Jewish Holiday. Given the appreciation for Classical music by many of the Jewish community in Gibraltar this was a huge oversight on my behalf.

4. Factor in the cost of rehearsals. Have a good idea of the ability of your musicians and how many rehearsals you are going to need. Then calculate how much that is going to cost in travel and the rental of rehearsal space.

All in all it was a good concert. I would have liked for a higher turnout, but we played well despite being completely exhausted from arranging the whole thing as well as moving a bunch of pianos. I think it might be a while before I arrange anything else, and if so I´ll be sure to learn from the major and costly mistakes stated above. For now, I think I´ll stick to relearning a few of the Bach Suites and getting to know my family again. My dad always said “A day without Bach is a day without sunshine”. The same goes for family.

Thank you to all who came to the concert and a special thank you to the Gibraltar Ministry of Culture who financially supported the project.

What do you do with 25,000 square meters of land?

This isn´t the lead up to a punch line. We really have 25,000 square meters of land which we have now had for just over 5 years. We pay the mortgage every month (sometimes barely). There is a farm house (not liveable) and even provide a lovely playground for the neighbours free range chickens. We do not however live on or even grow anything on the land.
Our neighbours grow things on the land. We rent it out annually to our neighbour farmer who alternates a crop every year on it. This year is wheat. We rent it for less than one month´s mortgage payment. Why, you ask? He maintains the land which would otherwise be a very large fire hazard come every July and we still get some money out of it as opposed to nothing.
Lately we´ve started asking ourselves what we can do with the land. It´s not an easy question to answer because you´d think that 25,000 square meters is A LOT of land. To live on sure, but to grow things on, it can add up to very little. For example, this same neighbour that we rent the land to has other land. He earns approximately 35,000 to 40,000 euros a year in olives. This is great except these are very mature trees and on a total of 100,000 square meters. This means that in 10 years we could earn about a quarter of that. Not really a motivating goal. So we came up with another idea.
Truffles are like the stinky cheese of fungi. They look gross, they smell weird and quite frankly are an acquired taste. Fortunately I have experience in that area as I love sushi, olives and crazy cheeses. I did some research on truffles as I found out that farmers in Oregon are now growing them. This made me think, “If truffles grow naturally in France and they can make them grow in Oregon, shouldn´t you be able to grow them in Spain? Especially the region where you can grow ANYTHING?” It turns out you can. If you buy a book on Amazon (the only good one in English really), email a truffle enthusiast in England and ask him for a knowledgeable contact person in Spain you´d be me last September.
I ended up getting in contact with a really nice, ridiculously knowledgeable Dr. of Fungus (that´s right you can get a PhD in Fungus) who helped us out. So now after a very positive soil sample and taking an afternoon to plant nine trees infected with fungus (probably the only time you really want your plants infected with anything) we wait to see if they first survive (did I mention I kill plants?) and then produce. It takes three years for the trees to produce truffles which grow in symbiosis (young Skywalker) with the roots.
I´ll be sure let you know the results so make sure you check my blog in three years time.

Be THAT Parent

I nearly lost my little girl. Seven weeks old and fighting to breathe. When she was lying flat on the table, hooked up to about 8 different machines, I could see it. Breathing so hard like she had just run a marathon. Only the right side of her chest was rising. I start to feel panic again when I write this down, which I don´t like feeling, but I have to. I want you to feel some of it too and to know that it is okay to be THAT parent.

Athena caught the cold we all had earlier. It started with our little germ machine JR who brings everything home from nursery. Artwork, toys, fevers, coughs. Everything! I got it briefly, but Miguel had it much worse. He eventually recovered. No big deal. Then Athena caught it. I watched carefully. JR was six weeks old when he caught his first cold. He was miserable, but it went away, but I am wary. I´ve had pneumonia twice in my life and one of those times my left lung collapsed. I know what can happen.
When she got a fever I took her into the emergency clinic near us. He listened to her chest, verified it was not in her lungs and gave me ibuprofen for the fever. If it got worse I was to go to her regular doctor. It got better or what seemed better. The morning she was admitted to hospital she had no fever. It was the first day of no fever since I took her in five days earlier, but her fever had been getting progressively better. I wasn´t convinced though while she improved. Something felt off. I felt bad that she seemed to be suffering so much, but then again babies are miserable when they are sick. JR was and still is when he gets a bad one.
That morning she ate, she had no fever, she was active until about 10:00 am when we went for breakfast. She was sleeping which I suppose is normal, but it seemed a very deep sleep. By noon when we left Toys ´R´Us and were going back to the car, we noticed that her lips were grey. Not rosy. And she was pale. It happened like that.
We didn´t panic, but I didn´t feel right so I suggested that we stop by the health center and see if the paediatrician was available to take a quick look at her. As we did the 30 minute drive I was starting to think about it more and felt a growing urgency. Okay, if he´s not available then we´ll go to the emergency clinic again.
When we got there the paediatrician was there. By the time we got there and he had looked at her she was even paler. He called an ambulance to take her to the hospital. I rode in the front with the driver and two female EMTs had her in the back with an oxygen mask. Miguel followed in the car. Some people are real dicks in front of a wailing ambulance by the way. Don´t be one of them.
When we got to the hospital they took her immediately into the trauma room. I had no idea what was going on. I had no idea how long I was waiting. Not knowing. I called my mom. The doctor came out and asked some questions and told me she was very sick when I asked how bad it was.
In the end my6 six week old daughter got a cold and a week later ended up with a severe case of Streptococcus pyogenes (Wikipedia it). She had a pleural effusion and at one point had 3 IVs, a chest tube which drained a total of 180ml of fluid from her lungs. She had a catheter, a feeding tube and a machine forcing oxygen up her nostrils. She also had a heart monitor and an O2 saturation monitor. All at seven weeks of age.
When she left the hospital this past Wednesday she had spent more than one third of her life in there. Three weeks to be exact. She spent her first Christmas and New Years there. All I can say to other parents is that it is okay to be THAT parent.
Be the parent that is over cautious. The one that brings their kid to the doctor if they sneeze twice in a row. The one that others roll their eyes at and groan about. The parent that makes the doctors and nurses say “here we go again”. All week leading up to this I had it in my head that I didn´t want to be that parent. If I had kept on ignoring my instincts who knows what would have happened. Be THAT parent because the alternative can be more that you want to imagine. You´ve got company now.

And then there were four

Athena Paz (yes, we are aware of the irony) Espigares Fortin was born on November 2, 2010 at 1:15 pm. I don´t know what it is with my kids, but they both decided to come into the world at reasonable hours. I thank them for that. I went into labour at about 6:00 am. Of course again I wanted to be sure that it was labour and just sort of wandered around the living room for an hour or so before I woke up the hubby. It was kind of funny because when I woke him up and said “It´s time to go” he thought I meant to get JR ready for nursery. After 10 minutes I realized that this is what he thought and informed him that the other one was coming so he needed to be a little quicker getting out of bed.
So off to the hospital we were. All three of us. My wonderful friend Natalia was about 3 minutes behind us on the highway to come and grab JR when we arrived. Thank you for that. I couldn´t imagine Miguel trying to deal with a two year old while trying to check me in and help me with translation.
One thing I have to say is that the health care is phenomenal in Spain considering it is public. Growing up in Canada and hearing how great the health care system is and experiencing it first-hand you start to think that every well else sucks. Well, for having kids Spain is awesome. I was a bit worried about going to the Costa Del Sol Hospital. I went to El Materno in Malaga the first time around and we debated driving all the way there to have Athena, but in the end we realized that we were going to be just way to far from JR should we need to pick him up from nursery or something. I´m glad we didn´t because Costa del Sol was even better. I didn´t realize how “antiguo” Malaga was before. It was still excellent, but CDS was amazing.
It could be also that this birth went so smoothly. Last time they had to help JR out a bit so I was a bit worried that they were going to have to again this time. I spent about an hour on the monitor for my contractions which were a bit erratic, but they were definitely the real thing. Once they started to get a bit more regular they checked to see how far along I was. It was all so familiar from when I had JR. I was just as far along. Scary.
At that point they put me into a delivery room and asked me if I wanted the epidural to which I replied “oh yeah”. Well the guy handing them out just happened to be wandering around our ward so they quickly had me sign the paperwork and within 2 and half hours of getting to the hospital, right when the contractions were starting to get a teensy bit annoying, along came Mr Epidural and all was good. The epidural was a much better experience this time around. The first time was a bit weird. At one point it was wearing off and then it was so numbing that I didn´t like the feeling I had of absolute no feeling. This time it was helpful in dulling the pain, but I could still move and feel certain things which is better because then you still know what is going on and know when to push and all that.
At one point the contractions stopped which happens sometimes with epidurals so they had to give me something to kick start them again. By 12:30 it was time to push, which was a bit of a shock as it seemed so quick, but not as much of a shock as how quickly and easy she arrived after that. I had it in my head that I was going to be pushing for at least 2 or 3 hours as I was pushing for about 5 hours with JR, but I swear to god, she was there within 10 pushes. I didn’t even realize just how quickly she was coming.
Carmine, my little 24 year old midwife who handled my labour all by herself from start to finish, asked me if I wanted to pull her out. I think she thought that I hesitated because I didn´t understand the question, but I fully heard Miguel translate it. I just had to think about it. I know there are these people out there that think that childbirth is a beautiful thing and I suppose that there is some aspect to it that is. More the thought than anything though because in my opinion, child birth is not all that pretty and quite frankly some of it is just gross. At one point Carmen held up the afterbirth for me to see afterwards and it just looked like something the butcher would do when buying meat at the store. I mean, I don´t need to see that, do I? Anyway, in the end I opted to pull her out which reminded me a bit too much about helping our dog birth her first litter a few years ago, but I´m glad I did it. It was kind of cool and something that I´ll always remember. Still not pretty though. I nearly dropped her because she was so slippery. Miguel cut the umbilical cord which again he thought was a bit weird and worrisome. He worries about breaking newborns when picking them up though so I could see him freaking out about cutting the cord.
After that they gave her to me right away. This was very new for me because when JR was born they pulled him out, washed him up and took him away for a check up and then 15 minutes later brought him back to me and then took him away again. With Athena, I pulled her out, they put her on my chest right away and about 30 minutes later they cleaned her up and did the check up right there and then gave her back to me. We went up to the room together and everything. I think I like it better that way. I grew up again thinking that babies spend most time in the nursery after they are born, but not the case at all in Spain.
The second time around is definitely easier. Your body knows what to do and you have a better idea of what is going to happen and what to do. The aftercare was excellent too. This time they told me to call them the first time I get out of bed to get help as I might be light headed. The first time I learned that the hard way by almost passing out and hitting the floor. Labour really takes it out of you. I think I´m good with two for now. I´m expecting if we have a third it will be the “accident”.

Slowly but surely

We are becoming acclimated to Spain. I recommend everyone to put themselves in the shoes of an immigrant. Of course this would mean that you actually have to move to another country. I can understand if it´s not for everyone, but it gives you a better idea as to what people go through when they move to another country for whatever reason.

First off you get lumped. Yup, lumped into a category whether you like it or not. And not a very well liked one. To government workers you are just another person looking to take advantage of the system and take jobs. To some Spaniards you look like another person who comes here to enjoy the weather, not learn the language and use the system that they pay through taxes to keep going. I´ve actually been dying to pay my taxes like everyone else in this place and now I finally can. Except that I work in Gibraltar so technically I am still supporting the Gibraltar system and not the Spanish one. Oh well. What can you do? But yes, I do in fact have my residency in Spain. FINALLY! I still can´t figure out why this took over 4 years to achieve given that I am married to a Spanish citizen, but it just goes to show how screwed up the system can be. I´m almost starting to think that maybe they don´t want me here. How rude! Too bad. I´m here now and starting to get comfortable.

They say that it takes about 4 years to settle in. I think it takes having two kids. Our second is due in November. We are having a girl this time and I think I´m more scared this time. I´m really freaking out about having to put tights on her. I keep thinking about a squid wriggling around and trying to get tights on one of those. I hated putting pantyhose on myself when I was working in Toronto. This is going to be hell! Still, I am pretty excited. When I´m not too exhausted or bitchy. This one has definitely been more difficult. I think excitement got the best of me when I was pregnant with JR. This one is not so new anymore and I´m still working full time in a job that requires a lot of memory which I don´t have these days. IT´s true what they say. Your brains start to fall out when you have kids.

I´ve decided that I need to work a little harder to become a part of my surroundings. While working in Gibraltar has been a godsend up until now, it is a hindrance as well. Everyone speaks English so I´ve gotten used to speaking Spanish to a very low conversational level. Wouldn´t it be great if I could actually get a job that requires me to speak Spanish to a professional level. Or even go back to University and take classes in Spanish. How awesome would that be. In March I can apply for Spanish citizenship which means I can go to University as a Spanish citizen (low cost). Let´s just see.

We´re also working on a small project to finally get our farm up and running. I don´t want to get into it now. It´s all very preliminary and I don´t want to jinx it, but if this works then we will officially be farmers AND be using our land like originally intended. To be continued....

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!