moving day

We move today! September is away laughing on a fast camel and tomorrow's scorchio octoberness welcome us. I taught my first lesson yesterday- 4 small catalan boys whose shouts and laughter rang out through the brightly coloured corridors. "You are a very dynamic teacher" is code for: I wasn't expecting you to cause so much chaos. I'm procrastinating against packing up our room but the day is long.. right? I want to make lists. Lists are beautiful. Coffee bubbles through me and I'm excited about life. Arepa's tast yummy and I love tomatoes you can slice with a breadknife.

SCORCHIO!

Dear friends and family,

The butterflies here are huge, seriously.

BUM

I don't know what this shop sells. All I know is it's my favourite shop in Barcelona.

sea job hog

As I sit in a local library typing speedily as the clock ticks down my available hour, I ponder the anitcs of our Peruvian mafia friends. "sin conexcion internet" awaits me at home. However, only 3 days till moving day and I have to say I will miss our Swedish and French friends. Last night we swam in the twilight hours, the lights of our new city reflecting on the silken waves. Syd´s training days are flying by, with him slaving away and me cooking English delights and hanging out of the balcony to watch his return. Not for long though as I start work tomorrow! Its a shame in many ways as I have enjoyed cooking, my current read about the happiness of a Viennesse house matron whose origins in a suffragette household did not dissuade her from her true vocation of whipping up strudels and light scones at a moments notice, pushes me on to try new treats. I exagerrate, the book is wonderful but cookery is not a vocation for me and my real work with finger painting, dolls and stories begins. A new stage of barcelonionian life! We look forward to it with eagerness and I'm giving the next post to Syd because I am a blog hog and no one likes that. I shall have to change the name BARCELONA OCTUBRE!! I want to learn catalan. imogen out.

wet dry sun

This is what the beach at Barceloneta looks like with cries of COCOOCOCOOO and masaje? massaje? and lovely warm clear water. but tonight it was anything but hot n sunny, it was MONSOON rains. I swear, we ran through the streets laughing and dripping, almost unable to see as we swirled past hapless festival goers crowding under parapets and balconies. The metro station stared at us with wild eyes as they imagined the cascades we must have faced to reach its dry and humid sanctuary. Mercé is fun though, we glimpsed Swan Lake performed by St Petersburg ballet company through our precarious positions crouched behind a palm tree, barcelona is beating madrid 5- 0 and a documentary on Cuban trumpetists beckons.

358 PPL DRA

This is our new flat we're going to move into on the 1st of October. It's a big room, given to us by a few Peruvian gansters, in the heart of L'Eixample (pronounced ayyyshhhammpl.) next to ice rinks, hostels, chinos, havana clUbz, private parks, butchers, bakers, candlestick makers and FORN DE PA and bicing bike racks. Although we dont want no bicicletas we iz wantin' da real ting- SCOOPY! please research "honda scoopy" because they are amazin'

нет niet nie

Wednesday the 21st of September:

we got up at 6am, went to the police station, queued for 2 hours outside (!!), went inside and got a ticket number, waited for 2 hours, saw a lady who stamped our form, went outside to the bank to pay for it, inside again to get another ticket for the 3rd queue, few hours later and a man stamped our form and it was done. All in all ; 7 HOURS to get our NIE, I am now a extranjero/a living Spain. Before the computer told me; I never knew!! However, I shouldnt complain because the queue for the non-EU internationals was horrendous and a thousand times worse than ours. And now with this number we can get jobs, get our social security, get bank accounts etc.