I have completed nearly 3 months of study, 11 weeks to be precise, and I must say that looking back at it, it definitely has been worth my while!

I actually have 1 week of 4 hours per day left, but today also was the last school day of 2008 and for me it makes no sense to go back to school for 1 week after a holiday of 2 weeks. Instead I have decided to split that week into 2 separate weeks of conversation classes and I will take them for example at the end of January and February.

Obviously I will fall into some sort of gap as much of my work will take place at home and in school we were basically talking Spanish for a minimum of 4 hours each day, plus all the extra activities. Therefore I think it makes sense to have the two separate weeks to keep up my conversational level of español.

This last day of the year ended with a Navidad (Christmas) lunch where many students brought a dish from their country. We ended up with a pan-European smorgasbord and I of course made “Piet’s famoso pollo con coca cola” as some of the teachers were almost begging for that after having heard form our little dinner parties over the past weeks!

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!

So in a couple of weeks the long wait is over and we can together start our life in Valencia!

The initial date of the start of her 20 week Spanish course has passed (planned originally for next Monday), but hopefully Babylon Idiomas has a spot for a week later orso.

It’s strange, earlier today we talked on Skype and said to each other that probably this round her visa would not be approved and we had to seriously prepare for a longer waiting period.

Now that has shrunk to merely two weeks, HURRAY!

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.

Well he just came today so I have been tutoring Chinese to him for the past 2 hours. He already tried to learn some Chinese from the girl in a shop that sells all import goods from China (no food) downstairs and now he will go back to practice with her…

A good opportunity for me to get to know some people, so I decided to join. My class finished at 6pm so I decided to do my homework in the 2 hours that I had to wait at a cafeteria on a terrace near the school.

We were quite a large group divided over 2 tables in the bar and of course we were speaking Spanish, or at least making an attempt to…
It did actually go a lot better after a few beers, but isn’t that always the case?

After a few hours we went on for dinner, which was nice enough, just not really organized, which resulted in a big mess once the bill arrived.

Then we went to watch the fireworks that started at midnight to celebrate Valencia Day. October 9 is the Provincial Day.

[from Wikipedia:] In 1238, King James I of Aragon the Conqueror, with an army composed of French, English, Germans, and Italians, laid siege to Valencia, and on 28 September in that same year forced a surrender. 50,000 Moors were forced to leave. Poets like Ibn al-Abbar and Ibn Amira mourned their exile from their beloved Valencia. On 9 October King James, followed by his retinue and army, took possession. The principal mosque was purified, Mass was celebrated, and the “Te Deum” sung. James incorporated city and territory into the new formed Kingdom of Valencia, one of the kingdoms forming the Crown of Aragon.

We were not in time anymore to be able to watch the fireworks near the Turia, where the view was said to be the best, but I think it was nice that we watched in the city center; it gave a very nice contrast!

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After that the group feel apart and I left with 2 co-students to see a live blues band in some street I am not sure if I’ll ever find again. It was a great performance and we stayed until after the performance and talked with the band after.

In the meantime it had started to pour down, but we decided to push on for more bars, so in the rain we walked until we found some kind of club. After a few more drinks it was time to head home, rain had stopped and I had 15-20 mins of walking to clear my head.

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!

While having a look at my Woopra stats two nights ago, I came across an article that was recently published in CityWeekend Beijing, about hikes on the Great Wall. A nice piece, although I was interviewed by telephone and then some things do not come across. One of these things that got into the magazine completely “upside down” is

Start your Jiankou hike from the back side (hou Jiankou). There is a little parking lot marking the start. The descent brings you down about 500 meters down the road.

The descent obviously has to be an ascent, since you’re climbing up to the Wall. After all the Great Wall mostly follows the ridges of the mountains, not the valleys…

Anyways a nice enough piece that I can add to my “press-portfolio”

This morning I got an sms from Mia that she was enjoying the Modern Sky Music Festival (their website looks absolute crap in all 3 browsers, typical Chinese to fabricate sth like this!) Last year I visited this festival too and it always have been a lot of fun!

On this side of the world I went to book our Spanish language courses. As said before I will start on Monday and today I found out that I only will have 1 other co-student, a Scottish lady. Because the morning schedule is pretty full, the first week or weeks we will have class from 4-8pm, so that saves me from some waking up early!

I also went looking for a hospital for my thrombosis and by accident I found a great clinic! They speak 3 words of English and together with my 3 words of Spanish we manage to have a comprehensible conversation.
I saw a really nice doctor and he seems to know what he is talking about!
He wants me to do a very complete bloodtest tmrw morning as well as a new doppler (also called echo or ultrasound). Then afterwards when I get the results I have to come back to him.
He said that it is very very difficult to establish the cause of the thrombosis. And he mentioned that there are two ways of treating a thrombosis: taking a relatively low dosis of warfarin for the rest of yr life OR going in with the “heavy machinery” and try to get rid of it. He wants to see the results of the doppler and bloodtests first to be able to say anything that makes sense, but after my last doppler in Beijing I actually don’t count on the 2nd treatment… After all they said then that the entire vein in my right leg was collapsed!

So tmrw morning at 8am I have to be at the hospital, not allowed to have eaten or drunk ANYTHING! I can brush my teeth though, hahaha! Will also don’t drink any alcohol tonight and go to bed early. The clinic is on the other side of the park, so that’s close by.

Tomorrow afternoon the movers come to clear out Amparo’s stuff. It will be empty then, but I can finally start making a “home” for Mia and myself. We will also try to change the beds around, so I can finally sleep in the bedroom instead of the livingroom, which probably also gives it a more homey feeling.
As things are looking now, Mia will apply for her visa in about two weeks and when it is approved she can join me here around November 15… Let’s hope for the best!