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!

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…

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!