Cooking and other things

On Friday I made a mushroom and chicken risotto and an endive and goat cheese salad.

On Saturday I had dinner with Ana's uni friends who are also English teachers and are absolutely hilarious. I made some chocolate and coconut macaroons, which I called wombat droppings because that's what they looked like. Later we met up with the guys and had drinks. The putting forward of the clock one hour was absolutely painful (not that I slept one hour less, just when I woke up, I had one hour less of the day to do things. Not cool.)

And then today we had a flat meeting to discuss issues with the flat, except it was mostly Pablo saying what he had issues with and JC and I going 'Ok. Ok.' Well, anyway, the good news is he's going back home next Tuesday until the 20th.

The man from Brussels

I'm going to buy bread from a man from Brussels, who will be six foot four and full of muscle. When I ask him if he speaks my language, he'll just smile and give me a vegemite sandwich.

No, but really. I'm going to Belgium for semana santa, yeah! Belgian waffles and Belgian chocolate, here I come.

Speaking of Belgium, there's a cerveceria just down the road from me that had a huge Hoegaarden sign lit up outside, probably being the only cerverceria in Logroño that serves it on tap. Anyway, last week when I walked past, I noticed they'd taken down the Hoegaarden and put up a Foster's sign.

Everyone who talks to me about Foster's, I tell them it's repulsive, which is why we export it and never drink it ourselves. But actually, had one and it's not that bad. I just think it's such a shame our export beer is so average.

They fell like flies

Thursday was a public holiday here and also Father's Day but I was still supposed to have tutoring with four kiddies.

Then the first one rang me at about 11 am, telling me they were taking a day trip so not to come. I rang the one who came right after, to see if they wanted to move the time earlier, and she said 'Oh, didn't I tell you? I'm not going to be home today, so you shouldn't come.' While I was deliberating whether to cancel the last two, the mother called and said 'Well, the weather's so good today, and since it's Father's Day, we're going on a family trip, so don't come.'

I had a five minute party running around my flat cheering, then rang and told Beza the good news. He, like many other Spaniards, had a puente (which is when the public holiday falls mid-week and you have the rest of the week off, like a bridge between the public holiday and the weekend. But as my friend pointed out, I have a puente every Monday so I shouldn't complain if for one day I have to work when the rest of the world doesn't).

We decided to go to the Parque de la Grajera, which is a park with an artificial lake, about 20 minutes by bus from Logroño. I whipped up some hamburger patties, packed a towel and sunnies and we bought some bread. When we got there, the whole carpark was packed with cars and there were people everywhere. It was like Myer in the city on the first day of sales. But most of the people were congregated around the restaurant/bar and we managed to find a nice quiet spot ie. without any bratty children screaming or playing ball and after lunch we took a siesta in the sun.

When we went to catch the bus back, the bus couldn't stop because some people had parked in the bus stop area.

On Friday, I had to work again. We had another cutting/colouring activity which was as much of a debacle as the last one. Seriously, if by the time you're in Year 6 you still don't know the meaning of the word 'cut' you deserve to be cut up and roasted like a turkey. This time, I didn't say anything about colouring in, I just handed out the paper and said 'Get your scissors... (holding up a pair of scissors)... and CUT along the lines.' As I walked around the room supervising, half of them were colouring in and I had to say 'NO, CUT.' And the other half asked me 'So do we colour now?'

After the fifth child who asked me that, I seized a pair of scissors and a piece of paper, marched to the front of the room and shouted at the top of my lungs 'EVERYONE, LISTEN! YOU CUT WITH. YOUR. SCISSORS. DO. NOT. COLOUR. IT IS S I M P L E,' demonstranstrating by massacring the piece of paper I was holding. The first graders got it right- the sixth graders must be wrong in the brain somewhere.

WELCOME, SPRING!

Unlike Australia, where the seasons start on the first of the month, in Spain Spring is actually supposed to start on the 21st March. So we're technically still in Winter but the weather has been fantastic for the last week. (Photo: picnic of sushi, salchichones, fuet, aceitunas and pan)

I had my first 5-day weekend since the beginning of February this weekend, so I got to completely and utterly relax (and yes, I know most people are stoked to even have a 3-day weekend so I'm not complaining). On Friday, because the weather was so good, I made some sushi and we took it to the park and had a picnic.

And then we had a mini-siesta in the sun. To celebrate the start of Spring, I wore my thongs for the first time since September. And after 10 minutes I already had oozing blisters. (Photo: Beza eating sushi with wasabi and chopsticks)

Allen also sent me some DVDs including Summer Heights High which I watched on Sunday. I'd forgotten what a genius Chris Lilley is.

Ruben moved to Zaragoza for work about a week ago, which I was pretty sad about because it was nice having him living 5 minutes walk from my house. But he came back on the weekend and we had icecream and beer and kalimotxo (but not all at the same time). At least on the positive side, if I want to fly anywhere on Ryanair from Zaragoza, I can always stay with him for free.

With all this good weather, I've been in cooking mode. On Monday, Beza came over to translate an official letter I had to write and as a thank you, I made empanada for dinner. Except it was more a Catherine quasi-empanada because I ran out of pastry so had to make an open-faced pie. And I used the recipe from the cookbook my friends gave me for my birthday but as usual, I was missing some ingredients so had to substitute. So it ended up being very unlike a traditional empanada.

Yesterday, being St Patrick's Day, Andres, Beza and I went to an Irish pub and had Guinness. Actually, it was the same Irish pub that Breda, Mel, Em and I went to three years ago. And they still had the deal where they gave you a free Guinness hat if you bought two pints of Guinness, and they again ran out of hats by about 10 pm. I wore my only green item of clothing, a green dress, but it wasn't very noticeably green. And Andres and Beza wore their Celtic football club shirts which they bought from Scotland. I reckon we were awesome.

Birthday haul

I had the best birthday in a long time. (Photo: Wall Street, Saturday night)

Some of my friends were already sending me birthday messages a few days before and on Friday night, Beza and I had dinner at an Italian restaurant. It was nice to not be alone at home feeling miserable about getting older at the moment I turned 25 (although I'm never home on Friday night anyway).

Then on Saturday, had dinner with all my friends who were in town. I'd only told them on Friday that I was thinking about having dinner, so I thought maybe about seven or eight of them would turn up but they all showed, which really made my day. The only problem was I had an issue with my bank account, where I couldn't withdraw money so I was left with 4 euros on the weekend of my birthday. I'd wanted to shout drinks but I couldn't even do that, because it felt wrong to borrow money from a friend to buy birthday drinks for everyone. And they got me awesome presents too.

Beza made a portrait of me in my Carnaval outfit, Bola made me a CD, Javi and Laura gave me jewellery, Ana a shirt and scarf and the guys chipped in and bought me cookbooks and awesome cooking stuff. I used the cake mould on Monday to make a cake for the teachers at Cenicero.

And Monica made me a video which made me laugh and cry and my family sent me Aussie food. I felt completely and utterly spoilt.

Then on Monday night Juan Carlos, Pablo and I went to an Asian buffet where we stuffed ourselves for two hours straight.

Nightmare trip to Madrid

I went on a school excursion with Years 5 and 6 to Madrid last week from Wednesday to Friday, and basically everything that could go wrong did.

It started at about 9.30 am, half an hour into the trip, on the bus, when a girl threw up from carsickness. Then, at the albergue, all the teachers were in one room and it turned out we had to share a bathroom with another room, of four boys. And none of the girls knew how to make their beds. The boys were actually pretty good. We broke a student's bottle of medicine and one of the teachers had to go to the pharmacy to convince them to sell her another one without a script and in the meantime, we went to the Planetarium. About five minutes after we arrived, we realised we'd left the diabetic girl's food on the bus, so another teacher had to go and buy some more. Then the other remaining teacher was playing with the kids and dislocated her shoulder.

We were supposed to see two films at Imax after the Planetarium but the albergue said they closed the kitchen and dining area at 9.30 pm sharp, so it was a choice between dinner and the film and the teachers decided dinner was probably slightly more important.

After dinner, one of the girls started coming out in hives. She checked her antibiotics and realised it had some ingredient she was allergic to. And the next morning, when we woke up, one of the boys had vomited in the sink from all the junk food he'd been eating all day, and he hadn't even bothered to clean it up. I'll never understand why he didn't throw up in the toilet. SO much more hygienic.

In the morning, the teacher's dislocated shoulder was killing her so when the kids went to the zoo, I went with her to Emergency. We all walked to the zoo together, and apparently where the albergue was is the most infamous red-light district in Madrid. At 9 am, we passed quite a few hookers. The kids flipped out and wanted to talk to them but the teachers threatened to torture and behead them if they went anywhere near them.

Spent 5 hours in Emergency, waiting. Seems like Sydney isn't the only place with hospital issues. Missed going to the Prado as well, but it was actually very relaxing being without 28 hyperactive students. And the weather was fantastic so while I was waiting, I walked around the area a bit and sat on a bench in the sun. I was so re-energised when we met up with everyone again but all the kids were buggered from walking around all day. And the diabetic girl had very low blood sugar levels. Went on a short tour around central Madrid to learn about the Austrias, then back at the albergue after dinner, we played camp games with the kids.

Friday morning, we went to the mountains north of Madrid for a bushwalk. It wasn't too difficult but all the kids were going 'I'm tired, my legs hurt, I'm hot, can we stop for food now? I need to pee, are we almost there? When can we head back, when's lunch?' It was hilarious. And one girl was hypoglycaemic and nearly fainted.

I left them at about 3 pm because they were heading home without passing Madrid while I was spending the weekend there. It was an awesome trip, and I had insane fun, what with all the unfortunate events, so was a bit sorry not to be going back with them on the bus.

Met up with Iñigo, whose place I was crashing at, and Diego at about 6 pm and started drinking straight away. They took me to a student bar with some students who'd started drinking at 3 pm. Ahhh, uni life. Beza was catching the bus down from Logroño after work and arrived at about 9 pm, then we had dinner and went out. But I was pretty buggered after 3 days with the students, so came home pretty early while Iñigo and Diego stayed longer. At about 5 am, when they came home, Diego thought it would be hilarious to sit on my head.

Beza and I spent Saturday just walking around. There was a second hand bookshop I wanted to check out, and ended up spending two hours and 40 euros there. Had pinchos of bacalao, calamares, jamon, bacon and lots and lots of beer. Also went to my beloved Asian supermarket and stocked up. Diego was supposed to catch a plane to Lyon for work that evening, but for some reason missed his flight so came back to the flat. He's hilarious.

On Sunday, went to the Rastro, then a Bacon exhibition at the Prado which was FANtabulous. All in all, was a great week.

Carnavales fever

I now have six little kiddies I'm privately tutoring. The youngest one turned four in December. I also meet up with my friend on Thursday afternoons at the pub to practice English and then afterwards head off for my Thursday night pints in the old part of town. They've been putting on live jazz music at a bar for the last few weeks on Thursday nights and I've been a few times, which was pretty cool. (Photo: With Javi during Carnaval)

They also ran this cinematic cycle of phantasmagoria every Tuesday night for five weeks. At one of the cinemas, they showed an old film in original version with Spanish subtitles for the bargain price of 3 euros. I missed the first two films, but went with Ana and Beza to see The Other, A Matter of Life and Death and The Haunting. Afterwards we'd always head to Laurel for dinner. Unfortunately it finished up this Tuesday. But Bola joined us for The Haunting and is considering doing a cinematic screening every Tuesday night at The Pad/El Piso, which would be awesome.

We thought all the films were horror/suspense/thrillers and ten minutes into A Matter of Life and Death, we turned to each other, completely bewildered, because it's less horrific than a Disney film.

Two weekends ago was Carnavales. The teachers at Cenicero got dressed up as native American Indians. We spent an afternoon at the school cutting up cloth to make our costumes and then painted them ourselves (except I cheated and got Beza to help me because he studied something arty at uni and if I may say so myself, my costume was the best). It was insanely fun.

All the students dressed up as well and at recess they had a parade and some parents prepared hot chocolate and biscuits for everyone. Afterwards the teachers went and did a wine tasting and had lunch at a swanky, delicious restaurant.

Then we went back to Logroño and had more drinks. On Saturday night, went over to Beza's place, had dinner, watched Tropic Thunder on DVD and got dressed. I went as a Japanese schoolgirl while he went as a Dutch pianist, complete with fully functioning mini-keyboard. Javi dressed as Wolverine, Millán as an astronaut and the rest of the guys as Rafael Nadal, which was hilarious. They bought these musclemen costumes off the internet, cut off the right arm and bought ridiculous wigs. Unfortunately, Adres, whose idea it was, had the flu so couldn't come out and Jorge went out on Friday night and spent all Saturday throwing up, so didn't join us either.

Generally, the costumes were nowhere near as spectacular as in 2006, but it was still an insane night. Some guys dressed up as Wall-E with glowing lightbulbs for eyes. Theirs were probably the best costumes on Saturday night but it would've been a pain in the arse to get into the bars. The prize for overall best costume this year has to go to the little boy at school who dressed up as a transformer.