Not your every day citrus press, but a real “all-you-can-think-of-throwing-in-juicer” made by none less than Philips. Being Dutch that counts as a big plus!

Some juicy facts: Enjoy fast juicing with multiple speed controls for soft and hard fruits, get fresh juices at speed with the powerful 700 watt motor. Make more juice with continuous juicing thanks to extra large capacity, micro mesh-filter made of stainless steel.
Delicious and easy-to-make juice recipes with recipe booklet. No pre-cutting needed as the extra large tube swallows even bigger fruits and vegetables. All parts are dishwasher safe so this juicer is quick and easy to clean.

And after watching a few videos to see what can all be done with it, we decided to click the “buy now” button.
It’s now several weeks later and our juicer has only arrived two days ago. UPS informed us that it was some kind of delay at the China Custom. Anyways, it has been well worth the wait and we have been juicing away these past two days!

I went to the local fruit stall and bought a variety of fruits and veggies with the sole purpose to feed them through the “extra large tube” of the juicer. Oranges and mandarines (with or without the peel), lemons, apples, strawberries, melon, dragonfruit, peaches and nectarines, kiwis, spinach, celery and cucumber, all can be mixed in an endless stream of different combinations!

A few favorites so far:

• tastes like lemonade: 2 apples and 1 thick slice of lemon
• green monster: spinach, kiwi, carrot, cucumber, thick slice of lemon
• morning delight: strawberries, peeled orange, peach, nectarine, kiwi, carrot
• tropical cream: strawberries, quarter of pineapple, apple, peach, quarter lemon

And below some pictures of our Philips HR1861 Aluminium Whole Fruit Juicer, how it operates and the juices it can make. We’re going to have a Juicy Summer overhere!

On national television there is an hours long broadcast about the celebrations in Madrid, but also here in Valencia the streets were being decorated this afternoon already, tribunes and chairs for the audience were set up and people rushed to do their last minute shopping before the shops were closing a couple of hours earlier than normal.

Christmas and New Year’s are just finished and the Spaniard gets ready for another major party and of course the ubiquitous nationwide day off. Mia just went to school today after a two week holiday only to be free again today tomorrow…O…K…

The three kings – Melchor, Gaspar, and Balthazar, representing Europe, Arabia, and Africa, arrived on horse, camel and elephant – followed the star of Bethlehem bringing respectively gold, frankincense and myrrh to the baby Jesus.

Los Reyes Magos is far more popular than Christmas; the latter is basically celebrated with family dinners and going to church. I think Los Reyes Magos can be compared to the Dutch celebration of Sinterklaas, only quite a bit more popular even.

Although it is a festival mainly for the children, adults also give each other presents and of course there is a big family dinner tonight in every home!

We have decided to also give a present to each other instead of doing it during Christmas. Mia is cooking a nice meal, after make-sushi during the weekend, Japanese seems to be the theme this week with beef teriyaki tonight.

Coincidentally today in Valencia also was gorgeous: 20 degrees and blue skies. The perfect day to finally take some nice pictures at the “Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias“, the City of Arts and Sciences.

We walked along the Turia all the way down to the Ciudad and had a cup of coffee on a terrace in the sun. We walked around a bit to enjoy the beautiful architecture and walked back through the areas of Monteolivete and Ruzafa with all their little streets and plazas.

On the way back we found a Japanese store with all kinds of Asian imported foodstuffs where we bought some goodies.

Below one of the pictures we took today, this one is from the Palau de les Arts and L’Hemisf‚àö¬Æric; more pictures follow soon!

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We took a taxi back home and went to the supermercado to buy some things for in the evening. I always find it good to visit a local shop as one of the first things as that gives a good first impression of the new environment.

We made it a very nice evening and had a nice breakfast together on Sunday. In the afternoon we took a tram to the beach and after a nice stroll we had a fantastic brunch with cochinas (Valencian mussels), calamares, seafood paella with lobster and a nice bottle of wine. We strolled some more through the harbor area, took a tram to the center and walked home via the Turia.

In the evening we were still so stuffed from our brunch that we didn’t need any dinner and Mia’s jetlag was kicking in again so we went to bed early.

This morning Mia made breakfast and then I walked her to school. She first had to do a test to assess her current level and she made it to the advanced beginners class. I left to run some errands and at 11 went back to the school to have a coffee with Mia and introduce her to some of my friends. We decided that tomorrow we will cook dinner for a bunch of people, so she will immediately get to know my friends and co-students a bit better.

At 4 Mia’s classes ended and mine were starting and when I came back home in the evening Mia just finished up her home work. We had a small dinner and made plans for tomorrow’s one.

Slowly but surely we are becoming the happily in love couple again that we were before I left China!

I figured out how my heating (aircon) works so at least it is nice inside.

Was a bit heavy-headed after two late night drinking sessions with Duncan, a Scot who is another classmate of mine for this week only. Last night we visited a bar of a friend of his and we had quite some fun, practicing our new learned Spanish. That goes so much easier with a few beers!

At school we had probably the most boring lessons we have had so far. First two hours of yet again Pret‚àö¬©rito Perfecto. We have started this on Monday and thus have accumulated 10 hours of this tense alone, a bit much if you’d ask me.

During the break we went outside and there was a beautiful light! The sun was setting and the last beams were shining on the Cathedral at Plaza de la Reina, so I snapped a picture.

We decided to finally try the “horchata“, a typical Valencian drink made from tigernuts, water and sugar. It tastes a bit fruity and it’s quite refreshing.

The following two hours we focused on the first part of the Imperativo, not really complicated and again not entirely necessary to break up in parts.

Anyways after class we were pretty much done and because we wanted an early night we went to a hole-in-wall tapas place with all kinds of delicious dishes.

After getting new ciggies I went to the park to sit on the terrace in the sun for a bit. I ordered a large strong coffee, “caf‚àö¬© Americano”, and a bocadillo with pork, cheese and red pepper, “bocadillo con lomo y queso”.

The bocadillo is one of the most popular type of breads in Spain. It’s not a sandwich, because that uses a soft bread and the bocadillo is made with half a French bread.

Translated from Wikipedia: Usually a bocadillo is made up of half white loaf of bread (French bread) cut crosswise roughly with a length of 24 cm and with the ingredients between the two halves of the bread. You can differentiate between ‘cold bocadillos’ and’ hot bocadillos’ depending on the temperature of the contents to use.

When I came back home I met my vecino (neighbor) Kevin in the elevator. Kevin has come to my place for a few times to learn some Chinese and he lend me a small TV over the weekend, so I can watch some TV if I want to. I downloaded some movies (Death Race with Jason Stratham and Bangkok Dangerous with Nicholas Cage) over the weekend and Kevin wanted to see them too so we burned them on CD’s.

Then I had another look at my sailing game and I am happy to announce that for the first time in my life I crossed the equator in a sailing yacht! OK, a virtual one at that, perhaps at a later stage in life I will be able to do it for real!

Last night I talked for a long time with my good old friend David who lives in Barcelona and he actually gave me an idea worthwhile considering: buy a yacht and live on that during the summer months. He will come down to Valencia before the end of the year to check out some sailing charters for his business Sailing Dreams and I am looking forward to do some catching up with him!

OK, getting ready for school now, start of the complex past tense…

Another reason to write today is because I have an hour extra. Wintertime, not used to anymore, but a nice enough concept to make the shorter days seem longer…

On Monday I heard from the moving company that my shipment is due to arrive on November 29. This means I have to get my papers in order a week orso before, that is if I don’t want to pay import tax. On Tuesday I went with my lawyer to the town hall where she arranged the first step in the long “papeleo” process (red tape): the permiso residencia y trabajo, something like a temporary residence permit that allows for working too.
Next week we will go to the police office for foreigners to arrange for my NIE (without this paper you can hardly do anything here), step two and after that more steps have to follow to come to full legal status.

In the meantime Mia has arranged all her paperwork at the Spanish Embassy in Beijing and school has even called them to make sure everything is in order; hopefully that helped to push her file onto the right pile!

On Wednesday it was “Happy Miercoles” again and we went with a bunch of people to the Irish Pub. The CEO of Babylon Idiomas was also there, a fellow Dutchman and it was very nice meeting and talking with him! Afterwards we went for dinner and a couple of bars and discos. Ideal to have classes in the afternoon!

Talking of which, we are booking great progress. Next week we will move on to the past tense which brings us to the end of the first book and on to level A2! Basically that means that by the end of my 12 week course I should be at the start of level B2, enabling me to speak pretty good Spanish on a light conversational level, great!

Yesterday I went to Sala Parpall‚àö‚â•, a museum in my street where they have an exposition of a Chinese photographer He Chong Yue. He has taken pictures of the large tiled family planning propaganda signs you will find in the countryside of China. On each of the signs he has hung a mirror, so you can also see him taking the pictures. Nice enough to have a look around.

With the Volvo Ocean Race Game I was stuck in the Doldrums most of the week, but it seems that I finally have left them behind and I can make myself ready for the southern trade winds on my way to Cape Town. I managed to climb to a position around 8,500 but lost that again due to the lack of wind. Now on 12,539 of more than 41,000 competitors.

And today I had a nice stroll in the park enjoying the warmth of the sun.

I have been cooking a lot lately, all kinds of delicious stuff and tonight it will be ensalada de espinaca.

A co-student told me where to find them, in the station area.

So I walked there and found 2 shops, one with live fish and fresh veggies and meat and the other more “supermarket”-like with different kinds of chillies, dried, sauce, even sambal and finally real soy sauce!

Chicken with lots and lots of chillies tonight for dinner with noodles, yummie!

Yesterday’s 4 hours were very nice, I could actually wabble on quite a bit, especially in the first block with a really cute Valencian lady

For the second block my teacher was Pedro and he is gonna be my teacher for the rest of the week. Well he keeps the speed up! Blazing through the lessons, I guess he is pushing me a bit, but everything was going well. To his surprise I immediately udnerstood the difference between “hay” and “esta/estan” and today’s homework was that too.

Amparo, my landlord, had invited me for lunch this afternoon and we had a gorgeous lunch on a terrace/park next to the Turia with some tapas (clams, snails and small green peppers) and a large entrecote. At first I kindly declined el vino (I would have go to class afterwards), but when she ordered a 2005 Rioja, I of course had to take a few sips/glasses

Just in time for school, after repeating some of yesterday’s class, we moved on to things in the house (las cosas en la casa) and for tomorrow I have to describe our new home After that we also made a start with the possessive words, becomes quite complicated with singular/plural/feminin/masculin, pfffff…

Since Amparo moved most of her stuff out over the weekend I need to buy a bowl, a cutting board, a sharp kitchen knife and some cutlery. Now I wanted to buy stuff that came as cheap as possible, because I have all of it coming in the container in 6-8 weeks! So I had the shop attendant pick all the cheapy stuff for me, hahaha.

On my way back to home I made a detour of about an hour as after 20 mins of walking in what I thought was the right direction, I arrived back to where I started…O…K…

Near my home there is a shop run by 2 Chinese ladies who sell anything and everything. I wanted to look for a bag for my school books, so I asked one of them if they could speak Chinese. The lady said yes and we moved on to easier grounds. I had a nice chat with them and I will definitely ask them very soon where I can buy Chinese ingredients (especially lajiao) in Valencia!

Finally back home I tried to make tortilla, which tasted a lot better than it looked!

Now I’m gonna watch some downloaded CSI and then off to bed!

Hasta manana!

You probably also have noticed posts with links coming in every day at 4am. No, that is not me being still awake (although sometimes I am), it’s delicious posting a feed of my bookmarks of that day.

Soon you will also find a similar feed of Twitter, which I joined last night. So even though I have no news to really write about, still every time I bookmark sth interesting on the web and every time I place sth short on Twitter, you’ll find it back here. Hardly any of my friends is on Twitter it seems and if you can’t pull them in it, you’d better bring it to them

Had quite a nice day. When I woke up to my alarm clock today, the sky was a blue blanket! That helps to put a smile on my face! Went to check some language schools for Mia and myself today. First school was nice, run by a single guy it seems, His English was ok, though heavily accented. The second school was much more professional, in the historical center of Valencia, just east of “Placa de la Reina“.

Just finished a 40-page WordPress-CMS Tutorial (links to PDF) this weekend and still in the writing mood, I made an as objective as possible brief for Mia; she is the one that has to study the longest time after all.
Now the choice has been made, fortunately for the 2nd school, so the wheels are set in motion. I start on Monday with my 12 weeks intensive course and Mia’s target date is to start on November 17 with her super-intensive 20 weeks course followed by 3 weeks preparation of DELE Superior, which should enable her to study an MBA in Spanish for the next two years.

I have not been able to find any Chinese ingredients here, or resembling for that matter. And although I still don’t have a real craving for Chinese food, which is weird in itself, I wouldn’t mind scoring some real chillies and soy-sauce (jiangyou).
This evening I found a reasonably compromise. In another supermercado than the one next door I found “semi-picante” peppers and “soja sauce”, it’s sweet and has no resemblance whatsoever with the real stuff except the colour! It’s more than Dutch “ketjap” than anything else!
Anyways I cut a few peppers up and mixed them with chicken, threw a bit of salt over it and quite a lot of red pepper powder (it says picante, but it’s definitely not chilly). Fried an onion in the pan, added the chicken-mix, added some long beans and added a tomato and garlic as well as some salt and fresh-ground pepper.
And it actually tasted quite good! So for now, if I need my spicy-fix, I know what to do!