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.