The other night the wind was 56 mph. Yikes. It’s all fun and games until the furniture starts moving on the balcony! Sometimes, sitting on my couch, I feel like I’m in a dinghy on the North Sea! The windows and the front door rattle and everything shakes – the flue in the fireplace bangs, the vent over the stove whistles. I have to lock the front door to keep it from rattling loudy and I have to put the doggy doorstop in front of the kitchen door to keep it from repeatedly closing.
One day I was in the parking lot at an area grocery store, and I heard some loud noises. It sounded like bombs going off. I almost took cover. I looked around and there were a lot of small objects on the ground. Without my glasses on, they looked like avocadoes. I thought maybe an avocado delivery truck had driven through the parking lot and lost part of its load! At closer inspection, it was pine cones. Every one that landed sounded like a firecracker or a bomb. They were flying out of the trees.
My neighbor said he read this was the worst November we’ve had in years. I think 2018 was just as bad. At least this year (so far), I haven’t had to load the dogs into the car to drive them to a protected areato wal k them!
I’ve always been a good speller. I can’t think of a time when I misspelled something (until recently). And as some of you know, I’m a pretty good Scrabble player. So, I’m worried.
First it was marshmallow, which I spelled marshmellow – an easy mistake because that’s how it sounds, and also it’s not a word I use often. But BOER? There’s no excuse.
I have to confess that I ask Siri fairly often how to spell a word while I’m working on my daily NYT Spelling Bee – but that’s a secret.
I’ve always been forgetful.I can remember my mother telling me many times over the years that I had a terrible memory and it should be better because I was young. That actually makes me feel better now because I feel like I’m no more forgetful than I always have been! I remember returning to the US after a year at the University of Madrid in 1973 and blaming my inability to remember words on my confusion between English and Spanish. Hardly…it’s still happening. So, in other words, so far so good for cognitive abilities…except for this spelling problem.
It’s depressing. None of us wants to lose our functionality. So I’m adding French lessons with a tutor to my mind-expanding activities. I’m trying!!
My neighbor informed me that the boars start foraging in the winter. Last year, the apartment complex upgraded the fence around the property so that they couldn’t get in again and destroy the grass. But the driveway is an engraved invitation, so every night I need to close the gate. This is what they did in 2019:
And these are fresh tracks by the side of the road. You don’t have to be a forensic scientist to see the telltale evidence!
This is my FIFTH flat tire in Spain. Unfortunately, I don’t think I can blame it on the tires. All have been my fault, except the one in Barcelona when a guy on a motorcylce slit my tire with a knife – that one was not.
I think maybe it’s that the streets are narrower, so the curbs are just closer and easier to hit. Makes sense, right?
This time was very innocent. I was taking my friend a poinsettia as a gift for hosting Thanksgiving. On the way, the plant fell over and I reached to put it upright, and boom, I hit the curb. It didn’t go flat until the next day when I was on my way to yoga. But it went super flat! Luckily no damage to the wheel and my expensive insurance covered everything, even the taxi ride to pick it up from the shop.
Post script for two new menu items seen: because I love rabbits as creatures, not as food, I won’t be trying either of these, but I thought they were curious – rabbit ribs and rabbit shoulder with prawns. I’m trying to picture these and it’s just not right!!
I can’t speak to the rest of Spain, or even to the rest of Catalunya, but here in Begur, cats are well looked after. Although not revered as in ancient Egypt, they seem to have a special place. I have never seen a stray dog anywhere around here, but there are feral cats. Calling them “feral” may be a bit harsh because they seem perfectly tame, they’re just homeless. My first clue was a cat stand I saw in Begur where food and water is left for them perched on a pedestal they can get to without having to worry about pesky land-bound animals. I’ve also seen dishes of food and water placed randomly about town on walls and in nooks of walls. Up the hill from where I live, a woman feeds the neighborhood cats. She wrote me an email last week asking me to drive slower by her house because of the cats. I can do that.
My yoga studio is cat heaven. There are four indoor/outdoor cats and 11 outdoor cats. The yoga maven is a very zen-like woman and kind and a cat lover, obviously. I asked what happens to the cats in the winter and she told me that she opens the basement and has boxes with blankets for them. They are beautiful cats and appear to be well fed and tended. I think she has as many or more cats at her home.
My dogs are born cat killers, or at least attempted cat killers. They’ve never captured one, though there have been close calls when we have visited friends with cats. When I go out of town, my American friend watches my dogs. He has six dogs, two cats, and a dove. The dogs are fine with these cats. I can’t understand it, except that his cats are large and seem to have a “go ahead, make my day…” attitude. Thank goodness they get along so I have a happy place to leave them when I go out of town! Here are the six dogs, plus my two, after a walk to the top of the tallest hill in town!!
We spent a lovely Thanksgiving together – a Catalán Thanksgiving – with paella and roast chickens (plus my sweet potatoes with marshmellows that were hard to find, and green bean casserole from scratch) and the dogs were absolutely loving the cats! And the day ended with another double rainbow! Living right, I guess.
Why in the world do they have Black Friday here? They don’t have Thanksgiving! And it’s not a holiday day, everyone is at work as usual. But sure enough, they do and everything is on sale. They call it “Black Friday,” not “Viernes Negro.” They also sort of have Halloween, which I haven’t totally figured out. They have costumes, but I don’t think they trick or treat. It’s weird and as far as I can tell totally commercially motivated, based on not local, but American custom.
There are some things I can’t find in the grocery store, and I have a huge, pretty sophisticated grocery store nearby. They don’t have pickle relish, or baking soda, or sour cream, or corn starch, and now I’ve just discovered they don’t have peppermints. I can find a few other types of hard candies, but not many, and not peppermints. Because of Amazon, I can find some of these things, but it seems silly to have peppermints delivered to my house! Plus, there are none on Spanish Amazon, a $45 bag on French Amazon, and the reasonably priced one on UK Amazon will charge double because of the shipping (damn Brexit!). Oh well. There’s also no cream of mushroom soup. Too bad! I’m going to make a “modern” green bean casserole anyway.
If I knew how to do photoshop, I’d crop out my neck, but I do love this picture of me and my neighbor’s dog, Janis, watching Succession together. My favorite dog after mine, of course. The flowers are on the table, not coming out of my hair, and yes, I’m drinking WHITE!
I just saw a HUGE pod of dolphins swimming south, I suppose migrating or following prey. They weren’t close in enough to video. They were barely breaking the surface, as if they were really booking it!
I finally got the ROKU to work on the TV. I like to have the captions on all the time. I got used to them when watching with my mother and I find it helps me fill in the blanks if I miss what someone says. BUT, the caption choices on my ROKU (I hope I can figure out how to fix this) are: Swedish, Norweigen, Danish, Finnish, or Spanish! Did I buy the Scandanavian ROKU version?? I’m going to use Spanish. Although it’s fine when the words are in Spanish, it’s confusing with the words in English. It’s always something!
I really think I could launch a new career as a menu translator. I think that most restaurants rely on Google Translate and it’s not a good result. When I go to a restaurant here they sometimes ask what language menu I would like. I always say English and Spanish because while I know a lot of Spanish foods, I don’t know all. But if I get only the English menu, I’m really lost.
Recently, I looked up the menu of a restaurant recommended by a friend. Here are a few of the specialties (as listed on the English version of the menu):
OLD COW RIB
OLD COW SIRLOIN STEAK
ENTRECOT OLD COW IN THE TERRACOTA OVEN
I think maybe they would like to say “aged beef.” Old cow is not a terribly appetizing menu item. I’m also not sure what they mean by another item, “LOBSTER TO THE SIRLOIN.”
Many restaurants calls the menu “the letter” in English. I guess people can figure it out, but wouldn’t it just be clearer to put “the menu”? Many of the mis-translations can be figured out, but they’re so funny. I don’t understand why they don’t go the extra mile to have a native speaker give it a once-over. Other examples: tuny fish (I’ve seen this one a lot), mixed fish frying, fried laminated artichokes, mushroom bikini (a bikini is a grilled sandwich, why not say sandwich?), egg poché of farmers. Some are just spelling errors: triple coocked potatoes. There are so many more. I’m going to start a list.
Random stuff from this week:
The mean old woman who works at the bookstore where they oddly take in laundry and alterations, was actually nice to me and fixed the zipper on my heavy coat, saving me time and money. I’d taken it there to have it sent off, but she repaired it for me with some needle-nosed pliers while I waited.
The wind is pretty constant, but not terrible. There have only been a few flying-nun days so far when the furniture moved across the balcony. One day, I was wearing some dangly earrings while I walked the dogs and it honestly felt like the wind was going to blow them out of my ears!
Last week, I got my Foreigner Identification Card without having to drive to a small town in the mountains! I kept checking the official website for appointments, and a town near to me finally popped up. The first time I got my residency card in 2018, it took me three trips to get it right, but this time, voila. I’m legal.
I wondered if any new potato chip varieties had come out since my last taste test and I found a few. I need to have another American here to help me judge. Maybe in the future.
All of a sudden, the wind swept in and the temperature dropped and we’re knee deep in winter. I’m cold. The dogs are cold. There’s no central heat, just electric radiators and they don’t do a very good job. I’ve ordered an electric blanket and I plan to buy another electric radiator. I’m worried about the cost. The landlords pay all bills, so I may have to supplement if I crank it up to Texas toast temperature!
I was thinking recently about how I now feel at home enough to break traffic rules – small ones like turning left when there’s no left turn (but when no one is looking), or illegal u-turns. Today, I parked in a spot that requires payment. I didn’t realize it (really), but I was just running in and out of a store, so I probably wouldn’t have paid regardless. When I got back to my car moments later, there she was, the meter maid. I told her I didn’t know I was supposed to pay. Is that what the blue lines mean? Of course. She told me that blue lines mean the same thing in Spain as in France. Funny that people assume that I’m French, sometimes even without seeing my car with French plates. France has a program for long-term car rental that is very easy and appealing to me – no fuss, for a fee everything is covered. You hit the wall in a parking garage (twice!) – they just shrug their shoulders. Perfect. Once, at the car wash in 2019, the owner asked me how I felt about the fire at Notre Dame. I told him I thought it was very sad, but “I’m not French! Just the car!”
I explained to the meter lady that I wasn’t French, I was American. She said they must have blue lines in America, but I said that we do not. Thankfully, she let me go with a warning. Two years ago, I received four speeding tickets in the mail. Surprise! They actually went to my daughter’s house in NYC because that was my address of record at the time. Originally 100 euros each (!), they were reduced by half, for some unknown reason, so I only had to pay 200 euros total. I’ve never seen a cop with anyone pulled over here. I think it’s all done by radar and mail. I wasn’t sure how to pay the tickets, but a friend clued me in — at the bank! You can pay for traffic tickets and a lot of administrative things like property taxes at the ATM. Wow!
My car is super cool.
The weather has been somewhat shitty recently – extremely windy and overcast. the coming week looks to be more of the same, but with rain. Yeah. But then again, the end of the day brought this…
After arriving in Begur in 2018, I joined a class to learn Catalán. It was a twice-a-week class that was free and pretty casual and unstructured. The other students were from France, Germany, several Latin American countries, Morocco, and Spain. Over the course of the year, I was out of town a lot with visitors from the States, so I attended as I could. I met some other expats in the class and made a few friends. The teacher was kind and funny and we all loved her. But in the class…I only learned basic vocabulary. Well, you have to start somewhere, but after eight months of classes, I still could not construct a sentence. No verbs were involved and verbs are essential!
Last year, classes were not offered during the pandemic, but when I got back to Galveston, I found a Catalán teacher online and I began taking classes two days a week for an hour each day. My teacher is warm and charming and a very good teacher. I can now make sentences in Catalán!! I know verbs!
This week, my teacher arranged a conversation over coffee (well, they had coffee — it was morning in America, but happy hour for me) with another of her Catalán students. This young man is hoping to attend the University of Barcelona next fall. He’s very intelligent and especially gifted in languages. He is also studying Russian and Thai at the same time as he’s studying Catalán!! My teacher only has one other student of Catalán, but that student was not invited to the coffee klatsch because my teacher said that student was not on my “level.” Not on my level??? What a joke. The young man did know some things I did not in Catalán, but at the same time, I knew some things he did not! It was such fun.
Language to me is everything. Connection with others is what it’s all about. And I love having those connections with people from another culture. It’s my favorite thing. The first time I made a joke in Spanish and a Spaniard laughed, I felt like I had won an Academy Award!
I’m still hoping to brush up on my French a little. I may spend a few days there over Christmas, and again next summer. But Catalán is the priority right now. It’s important to me to pay respect to the people who live here to try to speak to them in their native language, the language that represents this place. It happens everywhere, of course…immigrants come to a country for whatever reason, but never assimilate, never learn the language or the customs. I don’t understand that. I’m going to try…
PS Cassie has always been my “bad” dog – eating things she shouldn’t, but last night I found a dead bird on my bed! Cam must have carried it in inside of his mouth undetected. Nothing to see here! Yuck.
PSS Happy Halloween!! Couldn’t help but share my adorable grandchild.
As if jumping through hoops and living in suspense for months wasn’t enough to get my long-term visa issued by the Spanish Consulate (finally!), I also have to obtain a foreigner’s identity card. To do this, I have to register with the City Hall in my town to get a stamped certificate saying I live here, and then take that certificate, plus passport photos, my health insurance, and multiple forms to a police station in my province to apply for the ID card. When I filled out the online form to get an assigned appointment time, it offered me the choice of two offices — one two hours away in a small town in the mountains! and the other three hours away. Really?? I hope I can figure this out and not have to drive so far, because inevitably, I will be missing some piece of information and will have to return on another four or six hour trip! And the first available appointment in the closer office is in December – so a pleasant jaunt in the mountains in the snow! Yippee. Maybe twice.
Speaking of time, when I turned on my dishwasher for the first time, the panel lit up in yellow, saying “3:30.” I thought that meant the time, but it meant the cycle would take three hours and thirty minutes! Longer than the two hour and thirty minute cycle for clothes! Jeez. And the coffee machine! I’ve mangled so many of the capsules. I keep thinking I’ve gotten it figured out and then I screw up another one. I’m just not good with appliances. Or they’re not good with me!!
This country is endlessly fascinating to me. Today I saw an article about an annual event (now largely symbolic) when shepherds lead their flocks of thousands of sheep through the middle of Madrid. Imagine being a tourist heading to the Prado for an afternoon visit, turning a corner and seeing this! Baaa!
There are various ways to reach me. I still have access to my text messages when I am in my apartment or somewhere with wifi. But the best way to contact me is through WhatsApp on my Spanish number. +34 666 379 917. Obviously, also email, sw6252@gmail.com, and my mailing address is: Carrer Sa Nau Perduda, Apartado Correos 34, Begur, Girona, 17255, Spain.
The mornings here are still impressively beautiful and the nights are still sparkly… Stay in touch !
Susie's Senior Year Abroad 