Cooking and bureaucracy

I've been in cooking mode lately. So far (aside from the risotto, sushi and empanada) I've also made pizza with homemade pizza base, homemade spaghetti with sauce, chocolate macaroons, carrot cake, banana bread, burritos, choc chip biscuits, anzac biscuits, cuajada...

Last weekend I made teriyaki skewers with homemade teriyaki sauce and raisin bread.

I'm not very good at Spanish food because it's so cheap and easy (and tasty) to eat out here but I have two awesome Spanish cookbooks that I'm going to conquer.

Yesterday I went to the Oficina de Extranjeros (the Government office for aliens and yes I think they actually use the word aliens in their official text) and was given a ticket and told I had to wait more than two hours.

This debacle started at the end of October when I applied for my residency card. They told me they'd send me a letter within a month and I'd have to go in with an ID photo and get my fingerprint taken. At the beginning of January after returning from holidays I still hadn't received the letter so I went in to the office, waited almost an hour in queue and got told they were delayed with lots of paperwork but I should get a letter within three weeks. Three months later (and five months after I was supposed to get the letter) I still haven't received anything.

You'd think after a five month wait, spending two hours in queue isn't too much. But frankly I don't give a damn any more. If they've already sent me the letter and it got lost in the mail, they can damn well send me another one if they want me to have my card so badly (which I sincerely doubt) and if they haven't sent it yet, I'm not going to wait two hours to be told to wait another three weeks.

Meanwhile, Friday is another public holiday and with one thing and another, I'll only have worked two days this week. With a working week like this, I can put up with shitty bureaucracy.

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.