The Expats Club

I may have mentioned that I was a little down in January – a little bored and a little lonely and missing the sun. So I decided to make a concerted effort to expand my friend circle past 7. I had 8 last year, but I lost one to divorce.

When I first came to Spain after retirement, I wanted to concentrate on making friends with Spanish and Catalan people. I didn’t have much interest in meeting English speakers. But, I’ve decided that I need to make concessions.

I found a group online called the U3A Group. The members are all retired expatriate English speakers. U3A stands for “University of the 3rd Age.” The idea of a university of the third age originated from legislation in France during the 1970’s which required universities to provide for lifelong education. The “Third Age” is described as “the period of time after the First Age of childhood dependence and the Second Age of full time employment and parental responsibility.” The movement spread, initially to French speaking countries, and then across the globe. Today, U3A is made up of locally-run interest groups that provide opportunities for those no longer in work to come together and learn for fun.

I joined and signed up for the Leisurely Walk group, the Medium Walk group and, of course, the Scrabble Group. I was really interested in the Local Interest Group and the History Group, but they’ve been inactive since COVID.

I went to my first event today, the Leisurely Walk + Lunch. I was right. They were all warm and welcoming and delightful! I enjoyed it so much more than I ever imagined. Most were from the UK, but a 95 year-old woman, who is a founding member of the Costa Brava group, is from Australia, and one couple is from Iceland. They’ve all been here on the Costa Brava much longer than I have and they have a lot of experience that I think could be useful to me. And they were very interesting.

We walked around the medieval town of Sant Marti d’Empuries. I’d never heard of of the town even though it’s only 30 or so minutes from my town. It was very charming! At lunch, the restaurant gave us a free appetizer of calçots, which are giant green onions that are in season now and are traditionally charred on the grill, stripped of the outer layer, and dipped in a romesco sauce. Today at the restaurant they were uncharacteristically fried in batter and served with the traditional sauce. They were so good I ate someone else’s at the table who didn’t want theirs. It does look a little anatomical, however.

The members of the group were so nice, they talked me into signing up to play Petanca and I don’t even know what it is! Supposedly, it’s like bocce ball and they don’t play very seriously, so hopefully it won’t matter how bad I am at it.

I also signed up for the Scrabble group, but this week’s game was cancelled because someone died. I hope that doesn’t happen a lot. I told the Scrabble group leader that I play by my own rules and she said I should fit right in.