first week back in spain

O.K.

So here I am again in Spain, Canary Islands. I love this place. It´s warm. It´s more or less sunny all the time. From Amanda´s place—and nearly everywhere in the island that enjoys any elevation—you can see the city (Las Palmas) down in the distance, the mountains behind and to both sides with the little villages spotted across the valleys and peaks climbing up into the mist, the sea below... it´s Vancouver without 10 months of rain, or the Olympics.

Amanda must have read my mind because as we leave the airport and fly down the highway, I notice we´re headed South and not North, as we would do were we headed to her house in El Monte, as I´d expected. I point this out and she´s surprised that I´ve clued into this so quickly, but I remind her that she lives on an island the size of the GTA, and that from her house in the North to her apartment in the South is not even as far as Toronto-Hamilton. This is my third time here and I explain to her that I now know that if the sea is on my left, then I´m either headed South or I´m on the wrong side of the island.

Sweet! This means a weekend in San Agustin, lying on the beach, sipping cervezas on the balcony as I marvel at the deep blue of the sea below and the fact that I´m wearing a t-shirt.

The only hitch in the plan turned out to be the weather (horrible according to Amanda; "fucking alright!" according to me. What else do you call 23C, partly sunny?). Actually, that was fine, but on Saturday and Sunday, our second and third full days at the beach, it was really windy, so we had to return to her apartment and drink white wine and eat tapas (whooh...shitty). We´d planned to visit this secluded beach called Montaña Arena, which you can only reach by following a steep trail along the sea cliffs behind an encampment of Canarios, who spend their summers living beside the water in their trailors roasting in the sun, but we met a couple returning along the path who told us that the tide was so high there was barely anywhere to sit, and aside from staring at the newly arrived Kayak, still beached a day after bringing another load of West African refugees to Europe, there was nothing to do except freeze your ass off on the rocks. So we headed home.

San Agustin is where ¨the South¨of the island begins. Just beyond a small peninsula and bay begins Playa Inglés, where all the beer-guzzling Brits get dropped off for their holliers. It´s a beautiful, is somewhat strange, place. San Agustin has always been the beach for the locals, but it´s also home to an enclave of Swedes and Germans, who have built a comfortable community of 400 or so cottages, nestled in the green hills overlooking the sea. There´s a shopping centre by the beach with an odd combination of cheap dollar stores, Bars de Manolo, Swedish and German restaurants and casinos. It´s kinda like the low-key tourist resort, with a healthy dose of Canarios spread out anywhere they can, with their lawn chairs and folding tables, playing dominoes beneath their umbrellas and eating endless bags of chips, nuts and other high-fat/low culture foods. I like it. And the beach is marvelous. It´s not golden brown, or white like in Cuba, but coarse and grainy, with black volcanic streaks through it. The water is clear and cold, with a steady current. It´s 5 minutes walk down from Amanda´s apartment and extremely handy for those days when feel too lazy to drive to the more exotic beaches or the most famous stretch of sand here on the island: Maspalomas (Morepigeons?). Really though, I know it doesn´t sound tough, but getting into the burning hot car after a day at the beach is about as off-putting as things get here. You feel drained and energy-less and sun-baked. So, I´m happy enough ensconced at the local beach, just close enough to home to run up and get an ice-cold cerveza or have a nap in the shade.

Amanda seems glad to see me (this is good: that´s why I´m here, right?), but seems kinda stressed out between her new job, and living at home again (although this seems to weigh on her a lot more when I´m around), applying for grants, and generally not having a very clear idea of what the immediate future will look like. I´ve become pretty comfortable with uncertainty and indecision in the last few years, but when it is nearly constant it does begin to wear on you. For example, both of us have applied for grants to study abroad (well for me, abroad means here) in the summer. We applied in January and won´t know until May (at best) whether we´re getting the funding. The problem is, the Swedish school (Amanda is applying to study in Sweden in July) wants her to register and pay NOW. The Spaniards, on the other hand, at the school were I wish to study, thought I was extremely premature in calling about course calenders already. Afterall, they still don´t know themselves what´s on offer this summer. Bit of a culture clash. I´ve also applied for a grant as an English Language and Culture Assistant for October to May. In contrast, I find out exactly 2 weeks after the application deadline whether I have been accepted. I don´t know if they will give me a place in the Canary Islands, though, or in Valencia, or not at all, and I don´t know which place I would like them to give me a grant for either. Amanda has also applied for a really cool and wierd position on a National Geographic luxury cruise ship. If she gets the position, she´ll be off around the world for 2 months at a time, with 1 month break. At the moment she´s working at a Shipping Agency that handles foreign ships´paperwork and other problems, and that´s how she was pointed in the direction of the job. How will that change things if she gets the job? I dunno. Aside from all those considerations, basically we need to decide whether to stay here in September or go to Valencia.

So, everything is a little up in the air at the moment. Just trying to maintain as many options open as I can and chill out a little bit everyday along the way. I´m trying to find work here in the Canaries and will approach life here as if this is where I´m going to be living, just to give it a fair shot and keep myself sane in the meantime. I´ve dropped-off some resumes at some English academies and I´m going to put up some signs in the neigbourhood for private classes. There are lots of rich kids around who need english tutors, so that shouldn´t be a problem.

We´ve managed to get ourself a place already, only one week in. I have to admit, I was a bit surprised when Amanda first told me about some apartments for rent in her neighbourhood that were available NOW. I had thought we´d be at her place for a few weeks at least, but we´ve decided to move in together and avoid the imposition and slight discomfort implicit in showing up at your girlfriend´s house for 3 months, minimum.

Amanda´s (parents) house is in a neighbourhood called El Monte (The Mountain), which is located in Tafira, a suburb of the city of Las Palmas. Technically, she´s on the very edge of the furthest municipal district of the city, but she´s actually closer to the village of Santa Brigida, a 5min drive up the crazy winding road. Our new place is in the epicentre of El Monte: the main street, which consists of 2 or 3 restaurants, a bar (yes!) a pizza place, SPAR, a hairdressers´s, post office, gas station, bus stop, a lot of traffic and, right below our window, the taxi stand! We´ve rented in a place called El Monte Inn, a sort of short-term residence for husbands temporarily estranged from their wives, young couples, students and other rogues. We have a little terrace and free access to a washing machine. All that for 500€/month aint bad, considering it´s furnished and we don´t need to commit to any longer than 3 months. Not the cheapest thing around, or the largest, but considering the circumstances, I´m quite content. And since it´s located where it is, I should be able to host any potential clients at home!

I think Amanda´s folks are a bit dissappointed we´re leaving, and Amanda also seems quite content here and not-at-all-anxious to go, but it was really her initiative with the apartment: I think she´s afraid I will feel uncomfortable living in her parents´place for 3 months (probably correct) and that this will give us more freedom. I think it´s also the more "adult" thing to do, take a bit of responsibility, pay the rent, buy groceries, etc. We have to go by the apartment tommorrow and sign the contract and hand over a grand. Then we move in this weekend. Naturally, we´ll have to have a little celebration.

That´s it for now.
Take it easy, take it all.
Owen.

Wow, that's the first time I've ever been fired.

Actually, I was "let go", part of the "restructuring" of the Spanish Centre, according to Javier, the director of the centre, who so obligingly explained the situation to me.

Unfortunately for me, I've only been working here for two months, and so am not even eligible to be given notice. Nope. Instead, a little after arriving and— immediately—being sent upstairs to collate textbooks in the closet for the second day in a row, my manager Victoria gave a soft little knock on the door and informed me that today was my last day. "uh, you know. As you can see we're not very busy. uh, you're going to Spain, and uh, so we'll no longer be needing you."

Right. And, uh, what the fuck am I supposed to do for the next five weeks? I am aware that employers are not obliged to give notice to employees who have been working for less than 3 months, however, two weeks notice would have been the least of common courtesy, and the very same I would have given them had I been given the chance. In fact, it was for precisely this reason that I hadn't officially notified them about my imminent departure to Spain: because I suspected I may be premeturely let go.

Still waiting to see if they'll pay me for Family Day, or if I'm the latest casualty of Dalton McGuinty's ill-fated statutory holiday.

gray days; lonely nights

I had intended to stay at home until the end of June or July working and saving some ‘start-up funds’ with which to move back to Spain. But I found myself in bed—so to speak—after another fruitful, but solitary, day reading and studying some Spanish, thinking: why am I here? I’m just working a ‘Joe’ job to throw some cash together, so it’s definitely not for my career. Especially since the dickheads over at the Spanish centre recently cut my Friday shift, so unless it keeps snowing like it has, and aside from the few days a month that I organize John’s billing, I’m now working only two evenings a week: hardly a lucrative situation, even if I’m not paying rent. I don’t go out much and only rarely get together with friends. The weather sucks. Shoveling snow is terrible, back-breaking work—it’s only fun when a) you don’t have to drive the truck and can get drunk in the passenger seat and b) there are fewer than 10cm of snow (then you can just push it out of the way). Last but not least: Amanda’s in Las Palmas, not here: so what the hell am I doing? This is stupid.

So, I bought a plane ticket to the Canaries for April 5. Screw putting my life on hold, even if it is only for a few months. Because that’s what I feel like I’m doing. Sure, there have been some concrete advantages to returning home, but I think I’ve exhausted those and it’s time to get the show on the road.

Amanda and I have talked about it a bit, and I think we’ve both come to the conclusion that we might of ‘shit it’ in terms of our planning this year. We really didn’t accomplish quite as much as we’d thought by uprooting ourselves from Valencia and going off traveling without a specific timeframe or any concrete plan to go back to afterwards, so that, I’ve found myself back in Toronto thinking, gee, I could have gone to Cuba in August and traveled in Canada in September, and have returned to Valencia by October and been teaching for the last five months. Hindsight is, as they say, 20/20.

On the plus side, I’ve gotten some things done during my time at home, like get my eyes checked (nearly 20/20) as well as a new prescription so I can put those new glasses on my dad’s insurance before they finally figure out I’m not twelve years old. I've gone to the dentist, got new orthotics (you don’t know how excited I am about this: tendonitis sucks, ill-fitting and ugly orthopedic shoes may be worse), I’ve re-read the first four books of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, and plowed through a pile of others, I think I’m back in shape again: shoveling snow and playing hockey four times a week will do that for you, and I’ve found myself mentally prepared to get on with it. Also, if it takes a few months and a few wasted trips to figure out: “oh, I may have had a good thing going there,” it may just be worth it.

I was at Niall’s place last night. In a bit of a similar situation himself, having squandered/invested his time and money moving back and forth between Toronto, Spain, and Vancouver, he finds himself back in the city in a (really nice) new apartment and determined to get a bit of stability and continuity back into his life. Moving around can be disruptive, we agreed. It costs a lot. You don’t put down roots in the same way you would if you'd just stayed in one place. It can be difficult to feel fully invested in the place and the moment your in, knowing you're about to move across the country or to a different continent. There’s also the continual pressure of starting-out: making new friends and reviving old contacts; figuring-out where to buy your meat, your cheese and your Sunday breakfast; buying a new toaster, finding a suitable couch, that starts to wear you down.

So, off I go again to Spain, and I’m going for at least a few years. Amanda and I have agreed to think things through a little better in the future (although I don’t think we’ve done too badly, really!). Our next big decision will be: do we stay in the Canaries or move back to Valencia in September? Amanda’s got a job at a shipping agency and has a contract until June, so I’m going to see how it goes finding work in Las Palmas during the next three months. We’ll see how it compares with living together in Valencia and take it from there. For my part, I’m tempted to return to Valencia because I really liked my job at Casa Americana, it’s on the mainland, we’d already somewhat established ourselves there, have some friends, know some good restaurants…on the other hand, Grand Canary is really nice and Amanda’s friends are there—though I’m not sure if she’s sure that that’s a good thing. One thing I’m sure of though, I’m spending my first week there at the beach!

scratch that

OK! It's 8:30, the boss has left, and it's time to blog!

How's the job going, anyway?...Need you ask?

It's week three, they've paid me—one of those cheques that reads "casual labour" in the re: line, which means no nasty deductions (or Canada Pension savings contributions), and my first salsa class begins tommorrrow: so far so good.

Uh, on another note, I just read my last posting for the first time, and it's really insulting! So, sorry Jer, Andrew and assorted company. If you read the post it sounds like I'm completely disowning you, in fact, I just had a few too many beers and got carried away picking apart dinner formalities. Well, hopefully nobody's actually read it (the most likely scenario) and I can do a little re-write. But, judging by the vehemence of a recent email from Jer, I don't think that's the case.

17/01/08

Nothing much to report here: still plugging away... Christmas fairly-well flew by, as did New Years. In fact, I can happily say that I had more fun this New Year's than I ever have, which is not saying particularly anything. For me, New Year's is a notoriously big let down. I usually end up at some terrible, boring party with people I don't like, or wandering the streets freezing my ass off in search of a drink and a warm place, and, since my financial resources have not as yet caught up with my taste in champagne, I'm stuck drinking things like Irish Car Bombs and Labatt's.

*OK, this is where I went off on a rant about dinner etiquette when I originally posted this, unfairly taking a jab at my best friends and basically being a jerk.

So, what I meant to say was that this year somebody (Andrew, I think?) had the brilliant idea of just getting together for a meal, drinking a bunch, and bringing-in the new year the old-fashioned way: no grandiose expectations, no big let-downs, no cheezy bars or cougars, simple, cheap, intimate. Cool! Great idea!

It was nice to be all together again with my buddies from high school (minus Chris, who's off in Scotland studying) and get completely canned in the basement. My friends are a quiet bunch, on the whole, but I'm used to that, and as far as I can remember we had a bashing good time, mostly singing a lot and spilling beer on Jer's carpet. We had a few good conversations too, stepping out occassionally into the still, snowy night to smoke a joint or knock back another Irish Car Bomb.

Why the vicious-sounding rant I posted earlier? I guess I just found it a bit strange my friends had already started dinner without me—along with a few other friends I rather uncharitably tagged as "people we like to describe as 'acquaintances' (ie. people we know of but don't really like enough to become real friends with)." I suppose that description still holds though. I don't want to completely censor myself. Besides, I think it's kinda funny.

Also, call me old-fashioned and stubborn, but in my experience, dinner is served after the guests arrive (hence the cocktail, which conveniently fills the before dinner gap). I'm not sure why I insisted on mentioning this, and didn't mean for the criticism to be insulting, although I can see how it is. (I was late, after all). I guess I just couldn't help connecting it to something else I'd read recently in The Rebel Sell, about "a noticable decline in civility" in our society, and I probably just read too much into an insignifant event not worthy of commenting on. Why would I do that? I suppose I agree with that assessment and...I read too much into insignificant events not worth commenting on. Like I said, we had a great time.

Highlights of the night:
80's Karaoke
Guitar Hero
Irish Car Bombs
Christian's dad's tortellini

Let's see, what else has happened to me lately...not much: still shovelling snow, which I did both on New Year's Eve and hungover on New Year's Day, still playing hockey three times a week, and still thinking of heading back to Spain while I huddle inside away from the cold.

I guess that's good. I'm still alive and looking forward to another year, unlike John O'Keefe, who was shot dead after leaving the very bar in which Jeremy, Andrew and I were celebrating my birthday.

That's the kind of thing that just makes you despair, it would also turn you fascist pretty quickly, if you didn't resist the temptation. I'm referring here to what I'll tentatively call the "send 'em back to Jamaica" complex—even though in this case, and in many others, these were not blacks—as well as such eternally appealing measures as mass sterilization and forced labour camps. I'm sorry, but that's what comes to mind when two losers kill an innocent man on his way home to his girlfriend and son after a Friday pint with friends and as I open the Toronto Star website and read that another innocent victim has been shot again on our city streets.

the prodigal son returns home

Nope, I'm not dead, just haven't had time to post in a while.

I'm at home (Toronto). Actually, I've been here on-and-off for some time, but my visits have been more like 10 day stopovers in between Cuba (September 1 to 24) and my road trip out East (October 12 to November 12). So that's why it seems like I've fallen off the map (being in Cuba's sorta like falling off the map, not to mention Moncton).

It's starting to get pretty cold here, but that's fine cuz I'm making some money snow-shoveling with Crazy Jon—more on him later—and raking-up leaves in Forest Hill. Apart from driving a pickup truck around with an illegal Mexican, a fallen woman whose rich Jewish dentist husband screwed her out of her million dollar house, and other occasionally-employed types, I just got a “real” job! By real, I mean that you show up regularly, at an agreed-upon time, for a set wage, and there’s no crazy guy throwing garbage cans at your head one minute and offering you a joint the next, and not receiving calls at 3 in the morning from a guy who starts the conversation off with: “so it’s going to snow…” That’s all well and good, but I need something a little more predictable, the snow is just the icing on the cake, as it were: when I get the call I'll be ready, but I can't count on it. So, I'm pretty stoked. The new legit job’s at a place called The Spanish Centre, conveniently located 3 streets north of my house, is full of Spanish chicks and involves no heavy lifting.

I had been getting pretty tired of half-filling out 3 page Starbucks applications, then tearing them up and storming-off to another 40 minute interview for an $8/hour sales associate job (apparently they wanted someone less educated and more committed to cotton/wool blends: fuck 'em!). In contrast, The Spanish Centre pays $12/hour, three evenings a week (Mon/Wed/Thurs) from 4:30pm to 10:00pm, and I still have time to bum around all week. I get to speak Spanish and take free Spanish and salsa lessons, and all I have to do is welcome people to the centre. Cool!

I start January 7th, so until then I'm free to update my blog and other stuff, like re-reading George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, probably the best, most morbid and wickedly funny fantasy series ever written. I bought the fourth book in the series while I was in the States in paperback for $7.00 (the only thing to do in Providence, Rhode Island is shop, plus it was raining). Other than that, I'm just hoping it snows a lot. I'm trying to write some articles about "my travels," see if I can get my head around Cuba, maybe throw in a piece on Crazy Jon, play a little hockey, been drinking a lot of Gin & Tonics, and Christmas is coming, so I should be fairly occupied in the coming weeks.

Amanda's here until December 11th, which means she's going to be in town for Ev and Will's annual Christmas Party. I've been attending Ev & Will’s Christmas Party since I was of age to make a decent Gin & Tonic, that is, about the age I learned to read and write, say, five years old. Amanda and I’ll be the youngest people there by about fifteen years, the average age being about 68, but that's ok: those old people really know how to party!

I went out the other night to the Old Mill with Ev and her friend Miriam, as a sort of an escort for their 72nd and 75th birthdays, respectively. We hit the dance floor no less than six times! I had a blast. Talk about a dry crowd, though (the rest of the strangers dining at the Old Mill, that is, not my two dates). All these white bre(a)d Kingsway wraiths shoveling steaks into their guts and bobbing their heads to the stagy big band. Makes you want to get up and just give a particularly smug and ignorant one of them a good slap, spit in their food, and pull down your pants, but I suppose there’s something to be said for their well-fed decorum and respectability; it keeps the riff raff out and maintains the illusion, if only for a few hours.

Afterwards, having said goodnight to Ev and Miriam, Will, who’s Ev's degenerate and incorrigible husband—as well as my longtime friend and financial advisor—and I stayed up until 6am solving the world's problems and sampling liqueurs. Well, Will drank the liqueurs; I had a coffee pot full of tea, as I was driving home. Strange that. Will’s always warning me about how alcohol, liqueurs especially, is "terrible dreadful stuff...to be avoided at all costs," before rubbing his hands together eagerly and pouring himself the first of many glasses. Before you know it he's polished-off the Panama Jack and is heading towards the Courvoissier with a sly grin on his face.

Coming soon:

Cuban travelogue
Maritime memoirs
Notes from the Security State (ie. my creeped-out impressions from 10 days in the U.S.)
Crazy Jon Special

O.

Back, again, in Salamanca

Behind the old cathedral, at the bottom of a certain street, there´s a garden. It´s the loveliest, most peaceful little garden you could wander into.

I read the inscription over the entrance as I pass under its stone arch: Huerto de Calixto y Melibea. It´s the first time I´ve noticed the inscription. Until now, I´d wondered if what I called ¨the secret garden on the wall behind the cathedral¨, were more in the romantic or the religious tradition of secret gardens. But that seems to clinch it: Calixto and Melibea are the Spanish equivalent of Romeo and Juliet, this must be a romantic garden.

And yet, the harmony of the garden´s distinct little flower sections, its quietude and orderliness, conjure images of nuns, barefoot, pluming rosebushes before their midday prayers. The garden´s setting, behind the Albergue de peregrinos, lends credence to this notion, as do the multitude of seminaries and nunneries hatched in around Salamanca.

But, in the corner, under the shade of the blackberry tree, within reach of the damp touch of the ancient walls, there´s something mysterious, oneiric, about the garden. The running water of the lonely fountain, set in it´s own mini-clearing, adds to the feeling of timelessness and loss. There, beyond the murmur and clang of tourists, beneath the interlocking vines that cover its pathways, the garden lives. At it´s edge, overlooking the River Tormes, the walled precipice suggests a secret gathering of lovers at sunrise, while the drops of purple syrop from the blackberry tree mildly dispossess, hinting at an older, hidden presence.

I came here to be silent, alone, to gather myself for a moment between touristic sorties in and out of the medieval centre of the city. But as I sit in the corner, with two vine-covered walls at my back, and the blackberry tree providing a somewhat threatening shade, a man with a black guitar case approaches, and asks would it bother me if he sat down. Of course not, I say, with a nod of my head, watching as he pulls out a honey-coloured classical guitar, and begins to play, flawlessly, in the Spanish style.

After he leaves, I hear the birds again, and it becomes clear who the mysterious forest presence is, dropping blackberries on my head. I hear again the sound of the fountain running, I remember that from the garden, one has a unique view of the new and old cathedrals conjoined, from behind and through the leaves of the blackberry tree.

The garden of Calixto and Melibea—like so much of what one sees etched in the golden stone of Salamanca—is a facade. Inaugurated on the 12th of June, 1981, the garden was designed to evoke the setting of La Celestina, to encourage contact with nature, as well as to give the zone a ¨romantic air and medieval aspect.¨ Like Salamanca, what the garden presents is a cultivated romance. But somehow that doesn´t matter, the proportion and craft and care put into the project overcome its affectedness, leaving visitors to the city enchanted and coming back for more.

For me, however, on this, my fifth return visit to Salamanca, the artifice and charm has worn off. I genuinely enjoy my moment in the garden, marvel at the primitive-looking wooden desks the students kneeled at(?) that I see in the old university, and happily lick my ice-cream as I stroll, yet again, through the Plaza Mayor.

But by 2pm, I´m hot, I´m bored, and I wanna go home. I've been in Spain for 14 months (2 of which were spent idle and jobless in Salamanca), taught english to indifferent kids for 10, and I've just spent 28 intense days as a teacher/monitor at an english camp in Ciudad Rodrigo, on the border of Spain and Portugal; the last thing I want to do is return to Salamanca for another 3 days to pass the time wishing I was at home in my own bed. I don't know what I was thinking when I booked my flight home for 5 days after the end of camp. I thought I might travel around this corner of Spain for a couple of days, maybe catch a boat to Portugal, but I was just too tired to do that, so I chose the easiest, cheapest option, and came back to Salamanca.

It's wierd being here, again. I feel not only as if I'm retracing my own steps in Salamanca, but as if I'm following in my mother's footsteps too, taking cues from her scribbled annotations written on the loose leaves of the ripped-out pages of the Let's Go guide she left me. I think I´m beginning to better understand the crisis she experienced here, while travelling alone (most of the time) through Spain earlier this year: when you´re out of your home, or something you can call home, for long enough, whether or not its by choice, and you begin to feel kept away from home, the pleasure seeps out of travelling. There´s also the sad little fact that beyond eating and drinking there´s very little to actually do when you´re travelling (especially if you´re on a low budget). You can only read for so many hours a day and eat so much... you begin to feel isolated, an outsider, and somewhat irrelevant; cut-off from the responsibilities, routines, hobbies, places, and people that centre your life at home. You consider the avenues through which you derive and create meaning in your daily life, and to question if you would really be lost without the cotidian structure you've come here to escape.

I´m just putting in time before I can catch my flight home. And, beyond drinking, eating and reading (on the backless! public benches—these should be outlawed, or at the very least, severely restricted) there´s not much to do in Salamanca, hence my presence, here, in the internet cafe. I´m also simply tired. It was a long month in Ciudad Rodrigo and sleeping in the stinky hostel (HI Albergue Salamanca 12.90€/night, not bad) could only do so much to recover my energy and zest for exploration. Moreover, I can´t seem to break the rhthym of the camp: sleep very little, eat a lot, eat more, go go go go: collapse. So, I´ve been wandering around Salamanca like a madman looking for something to do, or eat. Yes, I can´t stop eating: I´ve had two ice-creams today, not just because they´re good, but because I´m still too tense to do anything else, like relax. Working back-to-back two week sessions at camp this year was too much (the other monitors took it even worse, but since I'm generally laid back and tend to disconnect too easily when silly problems arise, I suffered less).

I really enjoyed the first two weeks. They were intense, exciting, difficult and hilarious, but the second two were tiring, boring, and full of conflict. So, I can´t wait to go home: there are no kids there (I hope).

benimaclet, a picture diary of my neighbourhood, part II

The main drag in the old part of the village of Benimaclet. Man, am I going to miss my little morning walks to the panadería and frutería, staring occassionally at stereotypical old world sights I'd once thought lost, like the old ladies chewing each other out and waving their breadsticks at the sky in reprimand.

With the sun shining down and the blue sky overhead, you can´t help but be in a good mood here, especially if it´s 11am and you know you don´t start work till 6:30pm...suckers!

Ah yes, the garbage bins. A figure on just about every city block, these yellow (plastic), green (glass), grey (garbage), and blue (paper) bins stick out like sore thumbs to the western eye, but I've nearly come to appreciate their tidy out-of-placeness. I suppose they must encourage a certain awareness of recycling, for what that's worth, but I'm not sure how environmentally-friendly chucking your beer bottles into pieces is, especially when they could easily be re-collected and re-filled—as they are in Ontario: The Beer Store reports a bottle return rate of 99%. Fuckin eh!

Benimaclet has what too many of the newer neighboorhoods in Valencia—and places in Toronto like Bay Street—lack: light. The buildings, even the four-story post-war flats, are just low enough and far enough apart to create a sense of coziness without blocking out the light, or one´s view of the sky, a friendly dose of which every day is, I think, necessary for the maintenance of a certain degree of mental health.

The houses in Benimaclet also sport larger-than average windows: they're nearly floor-to-ceiling, unlike the typical modern Spanish flat.

Small windows suck, especially when you can't even see the sky out of them standing up—and you're only 5'9'. Floor-to-ceiling windows are probably too much to ask, but, maybe we could settle for at least ceiling to thigh, instead of forehead to knees, like in my flat where, though the light of day is clearly discernible, only a vague sense of sky actually creeps in around shoulder height. I have to bend down to tell you if the sun is shining, and snuggle up close to the window so that the light falls on my page when I'm reading. Apart from being a pain in the ass, this can be really depressing.

I've also noticed that, in general, the furniture here is lower, the kitchen counters, for example, only come up to mid-thigh, the toilet appears mischievously distant as I ponder it from above, and I have to bend down to wash my hands afterwards. Between leaning over to look out the window, wash the dishes and check for evidence of splashback, I've really put a strain on my lower back.

For me, this is a real design flaw, and given that I'm, at best, average height, I can only think that the kitchen counters must have been installed with grandma in mind, frying-up a storm, as she obviously does more or less from morning until night (when she's not brandishing bread sticks in the street, or hobbling over to the frutería to discuss tomato prices with Consuela and Ahmed, the Pakistani guy who sells us fruits and vegetables).

Spanish homes tend to be set up like personal little fortresses: equipped with practically light-proof persianas (blinds, which, I must admit, I am a fan of—apart from the back-rattling sound they make everytime you pull them up or down), they're the ultimate refuge from the street, which is great, because, as far as I can tell, only 3 things seem to go on in the average Spanish household, and none of them require outside imput: eating and meal preparation, sleep (both of the post prandial, and nocturnal variety), and television-watching. Thus, the lack of light and general unfriendliness presented by the blinds-down faces of the buildings doesn't really matter to people here.

When the blinds are down they're not out on the street taking a stroll remarking to themselves how cold the area seems during siesta or at night. Only crazy foreigners or people running home late do that...No, they're either asleep, nearing sleep, or watching tv, as far as I can tell from the street that is, noting the tell-tale buzz of the buk-tube and the peaceful stillness of happy citizens vegetating away...

The design of Spanish flats does (as I've perhaps made clear) bother me, which is why I spend most of my time either inside doing my best to imitate my sometime compatriots, or outside, basking in sun amid the openness of the street and Valencia's cafe culture.

Calle de la Alegría, or, as the Spaniards say, en Cristiano: HAPPY STREET. Fuckin right! This is the happiest little street in my neighbourhood, mind you he doesn´t look especially happy, neither, for that matter, does she, but that´s par for the course here. Back to the street. Nothing much happens on it, really. It´s just a quiet little, particularly content-seeming, street. Cool!

benimaclet: a picture diary of my neighbourhood, part I

Benimaclet used to be a village in its own right; it is now a neighbourhood in transition, existing in a strange flux between village, neighbourhood, country, and city. About 200 metres from my 10 year old apartment block—a 12-story C-shaped structure with a semi-public patio garden in the centre—Benimaclet ends and the farm fields begin. The change is not softened by any musical flow into the country, there´s no soundtrack and Beethoven´s 6th symphony does not gradually and triumphantly usher you into the pristine, pastoral countryside. It just ends. You walk to the edge, there´s a huge empty roundabout, its 5 shiny black asphalt lanes throwing the sun into your eyes. Beside the roundabout there's a (famous) Horchatería, whose semi-paved parking lot fills up every Sunday night as Valencians from across the county come for their Horchata and Farton fix. On your right, beyond the green overgrown (cultivated?) ditch, which the Horchateria's patio (with it's farton frying hut!) looks out on, you can see green fields;

they're so flat they seem nearly to be set in a depression. On your left, there's a—rather decrepid looking—football stadium. Straight-ahead and beyond: an 8 lane road, some semi-abandoned-looking fields, and, behind that, what looks like more city, or maybe suburbs, or maybe something in between. What you see in the distance is actually Alboraya, which, like Benimaclet, also used to be a village in its own right, and still remains more self-contained than Benimaclet, but appears also to be rapidly losing ground to development.

This photo is pretty representatitive of the low country surrounding Valencia. You can see the sea in the background. The distances look closer because of the flatness of the land. Don't ask me what they grow here, but I've seen some cucumbers and watermelons. There's a horrible smell that occasionally invades the city from the North. We call it the chorizo queso podrido smell because it smells like a mix of rotten cheese and salami. I've figured out—one particularly pestulent day when jogging through the countryside—that this odour originates from the fields, specifically, out of the irrigation chanels than run alongside them and which carry the spent drain-off from the fields. That's why the smell comes in waves and only on certain days: when the farmers decide to get their revenge on the city dwellers.

Some people are angry about this (not the watermelons—I stuck that part in after, nor, for that matter, the smell, which was a still later addition). A community group called perlhorta ("for the Garden?"—horta is Valencian for huerta, which means garden. It's the name of this county in the province of Valencia) http://www.perlhorta.org/nova/ has been fighting to save La Huerta, organizing protests, workshops and even a "mini-university" out in those green fields beyond the Horchateria. Their graffiti, as well as their website, is written in Valencian: "save our land!"..."Live Benimaclet!" I discovered this group a few weekends ago at the Alternative Fair in the Turia gardens. It was encouraging to see so many dirty hippy types buying organic produce, eating vegetarian at the food stalls, slugging cold(ish) beers bought from entrepreneurs toting ice-filled garbage bins, talking to representatives from GREENPEACE, the local Palestian rights organization, etc. There seem to be lots of people in Valencia who care about saving the world, eating healthy food, and having a good time. I've never seen the Turia so dirty as the day after the fair though. It smelled like urine, beer bottles and broken glass were scattered across the ground, and each and every one of the skylights of the new subway station under the bridge (both of which are designed by Calatrava) were smashed into pieces. I grabbed some photos off the perlahorta website (the two pictures of fields and the last picture of a construction site). You can see the fields of La Huerta as well as some of the buildings typical of those being thrown up around Benimaclet.

Cuba Trip

I´m going to Cuba!!! (September 1st to October 3rd). Amanda and I just got back from a weekend in La Sierra Pobre (the Poor Mountains), which is located about an hour outside of Madrid, where we attended a pre-departure meeting of Sodepaz (http://www.sodepaz.es/), the NGO with which we will be travelling to Cuba. It was a lot of fun. There were people from all over Spain who will be travelling this summer, in various groups, to Bolivia, Cuba, El Salvador, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Palestine.

Sodepaz is an NGO that focuses on international cooperation and solidaridy. This means that they're not a charity, nor are they politically aligned. They do, however, encourage a closer, more open look at some of the regimes we traditionally approach (at least in the main-stream media) with a (usually negative) pre-formed opinion or bias, such as that of Fidel Castro in Cuba. With this goal in mind, Sodepaz organizes trips to, usually under developed, countries in order to come closer to understanding the reality lived by the people in those places. Some of these trips involve working in some sort of project that the NGO is developing in that country, others, like the trip to Cuba, focus on education (ours) and making connections, as well as more traditional-style tourism. We will be travelling in a small group, meeting-up with academic groups, citizens groups, members of the Communist Party, as well as visiting various projects being developed by Sodepaz and their partners, such as CubaSolar, a group that is installing solar panels on rural doctors offices, or to an agricultural school in the countryside.

The idea of the, supposedly mandatory, meeting this weekend near Madrid was to get to know the organization, learn a few things about the country we're going to visit, and meet the people we´ll be going with. Unfortunately the other 4 people in our group didn´t come, so Amanda and I had to do the touchy-feely team-building drills in pairs. We—among other stunning achievements—successfully climbed a tree (working in-tandem) and developed a strong sense of team membership, as well muscling-out some impressive group dynamics. We also threw some tennis balls around in a circle, demonstrating impressive coordination, and applied face paint while detailing our deepest travelling fears. Anyway, we met lots of cool people (from other groups)—that was the only real drawback of the weekend: that we didn´t get to meet the other members of the group we´ll be going with—,enjoyed the tropical-themed mojito disco, and left the weekend pretty pumped: the trip sounds AWESOME. It's 21 days (traevlling with the SODEPAZ group). We start in Santiago and wend our way through the island, finishing in Habana, then we´re going to stay on another 10 days or so wandering around on our own.

Fruit & Veg

6 pears
2 lemons
2 grapefruits
1 cauliflower
¼ cabbage
4 spring onions
3 leeks
5 celery sticks
10 carrots
2 red peppers
3 white potatoes
5 red potatoes
1 zuccini
9.10€ (roughly = $13.50CAD)
Went to the central market the other day, as I typically do at least once a week, and bought some produce. It seemed like an awful lot for the price, but I can't remember how much fresh food costs in Canada. Apples are certainly cheaper there, and better: I remember buying big bags of them at the Hamilton Market for $2.50. Bought fresh clotchinas (Valencian mussels, which are just beginning to be in season) last night and made a nice pasta/seafood dinner. They were also really cheap (2.50€), and can probably be bought more cheaply, purchased as they were at my local supermarket. Delicious!

Kick in the rear, Part II

Woke up in a wonderful mood Monday morning to find this on my doorstep. Not the Audi—some middle-aged moron no doubt wields it daily between here and his cubicle, struggling to pay his car bills—no, the shitmobile locked to the tree, which is now missing its rear wheel thanks to some other shithead, who stole a broken wheel off the back of a bicycle that hardly rides at the best of times. Why didn't he steal my basket? At least it works. The back wheel, on the other hand, was wobbly, missing a couple of spokes, and prone to fall off on occasion...but it served. Just the week before, in fact, I had been riding to work when the same rear wheel suddenly fell off. It was the first time this had happened in 6 months and I took it in stride. I'd just put it back on on Thursday, which, for a technically challenged bastard (literally) like me, is no mean feat. Not to mention that it was a real pain in the ass...

That bike cost me 50euros. I got it from Alan, the director at my school, and he's going to buy it back from me when I go for 40euros. Well, it's going to cost me 45euros now to replace the fucking wheel, which really rubs me the wrong way, especially considering that a brand new bike only costs 100, but, it's in my interest to fix the fucker and get back on the seat, since the repair basically pays for itself when I sell it back to the big guy.

Incidentally, I'm not bitter (I'm just fucking angry!): what really fucking pissed me off was precisely that I was in such a good mood, even after I walked past my crippled bike and continued on to work resignedly on foot. It was only when I realized how much it was going to cost me that I really got pissed off, I was actually grudgingly content this afternoon as I carried the bike on my shoulder the kilometre to the shop, until I recieved the second half of the second kick in the face of the week.
Ride on.

O.

underwear mishap

It´s the small things in life (I hate those stupid commercials that increasingly seem to begin with "it´s" without previously establishing the noun for which the pronoun stands): morning coffees in the sun, a damn good sandwhich (with toppings—the traditional Spanish bocadillo, while delicious, is sometimes, dishearteningly, basic—while the delicious and unique combination of jamón serrano (cured ham) and grated tomato with oregano and olive oil really hits the spot, what one all too often gets is simply ham, or ham/cheese. ie. no lettuce, tomato, no sauce, etc.), a cold beer after work, finely-spun soft cotton undies.

Well, here´s where it hit me, the first shit in the face of the weekend—a small piece of shit, as the little dogs of Benimaclet are wont to lay, but shit nonetheless: hoping to save a little cash, I decided to head to the seconds store to buy two packs of discount, but high quality, underwear. Having planned the stop for the half hour window that falls in between my Spanish class and the dead time of 1:30pm to 5:00pm, when the whole city shuts down, I had stuck a 10€ bill in my back pocket before leaving the house, already relishing my (cheap) squeeky-clean new polyester undies (the ones that dry really quickly and are really convenient when you´re travelling, or strutting around the house).

Going out of my way to get there, I get there, struggle through another embarrasing conversation with the girl in the shop:
"yes, the size 32 socks."
"but socks don´t come in that size"
"well, those things with one hole on each side for your legs that...yeah those..exaaactly", ...only to find that I´d lost my money on the way there.

Bicycling home dejectedly, underwearless, through the obstacle course of old ladies doing their daily shopping right at rush hour, just when the stores are about to close and all the working people head home (or to the stores so they can make their lunches), I reflected on my nasty surprise: 10€ may seem trivial, but losing them really was a kick in the sack: I´d set aside that money especially for new underwear—an altogether functional, if stylish, item that nevertheless seems frivolous when it comes to laying down 7.50€ - 12€ (euros!) a pair (regular price). Isn´t it ironic, I thought, that just when you try to save a bit of money, you lose it? Whatever. It´s the first time in a long time I´ve lost my money. Bound to happen at least once in awhile.

*I have since purchased a pair of edgy silver boxer/slips, which I found hidden behind the regulary-priced (7.90€) underwear at H&M, for 2.90€. This has somewhat made up for Friday´s disappointment.

frankfurt hahn

If you ever get a chance to fly through Frankfurt Hahn, take it. What a lovely little airport. This is the second time this year that I´ve been through the airport and it really is a treat: tiny, comfortable, nestled in the German agricultural heartland, it boasts cheap pretzels and coffee (.90cents), 2 outdoor patios – one of which has a view of the landing strip, the other of rolling farmland – and a golf course. It´s just small enough to feel like home for a few hours. – Bryan! I´m really sorry I didn´t contact you. Had I known we´d be in Frankfurt for 6 hours, and brought my cell phone with me to Sweden, maybe we could have had a coffee/beer in town. As it happened we had more than enough time since our flight (from Stockholm) landed at Frankfurt at a little before 9am and our flight to Valencia left at 3:30pm. Next time buddy. Oh, by the way: I have your double CD set "Edad de Oro del Pop Español", which you left behind with Alan, to which I have been rocking out for the past week or so. Don´t forget to pick it up next time your here!

Incidentally, these pictures are NOT of Frankfurt Hahn Airport and surrounds – it´s not that nice. Rather, they´re from my trip to Sweden! I didn´t take so many pictures. The first three days in Stockholm my fingers were too cold to want to take out the camera, and the rest of the time, I dunno, just didn´t feel like it. But here are a couple photos from in and around Kalmar, the city of 60,000 where Amanda´s mom is from. Kalmar is about halfway between Stockholm and Copenhagen, in the South of Sweden. The first photo is a Purple Nun Flower, a unique flower that can only be found in a tiny valley on the island of Ohland, which I think means Island, called The Valley of the Nuns. The third photo is from this lovely little place: it´s an outdoor chapel. Really beautiful spot. The middle photo is of Kalmar castle, minus the castle – oops! But you can check that out online if you really want to.

Awesome.

-Awesome- replied one of my 10 year olds today to my, by now must be growing stale, greeting of -Hi! how are you?- Cool! I thought: I must be teaching them something after all, it’s only taken 6 months for a kid to a) reply to me, and, b) use the word “awesome.”

And awesome’s how I felt today. It’s how I responded this morning to the same question when I was buying olives and feta cheese at El Raco de Ferri, a booth at the central market run by an exceedingly friendly Greek guy with really frizzy hair. -Estoy muy bien, pues…un poco resacado, pero de buen humor. - Translation: -I´m Awesome, but I´ve got a bit of a hangover. I am, however, in very good humour.

Yeah, I had a great night last night. Having a half-empty bottle of wine, I felt obliged to “echarme una copa...o dos” and “terminarla.” I did so in a very civilized manner, while watching the fifth instalment of El Quixote... Then I got drunk and cleaned the house. Had a wonderful time. My rationale for cleaning the house in this moment, if you´ll believe it, was this: since I´m drunk I may as well clean because I sure can´t study Spanish in this condition, moreover, I may even enjoy the cleaning, and then tomorrow, when I´m sobre, I won´t have to waste time cleaning and I can study. The mirror-image of this thinking would, of course, be the one habitually invoked by my mother: “sure I might as well be drunk as I am.”

This kind of fundamentally economic thinking has characterized my decisions more and more of late, especially when it comes to time management. Referred to as “opportunity cost” by economists, it implies the necessary surrender of one choice in return for another. If, for example, I´m reading a book, or speaking in english, I´m not reading or speaking in Spanish; If I spend money on lunch, I won´t eat dinner, and so on. Which brings us back to cleaning the house with a bottle of wine: aside from representing what, at the time, was the best allocation of my resources, it sure is a nice surprise to wake up and find your toilet´s sparkling clean, and you can´t even quite remember why…

Soooooo slow

76€/month for phone and internet is unacceptable: now that I´m semi-retired that´s like 1/6th of my income, so I don´t regret cutting my internet connection at all, but I sure do miss it. Casa Americana´s computers are dying a slow, stress-inducing death, which has stolen at least 1 and a half of my halfly-written blog entries and attempts to upload cool photos.

Not that I don´t have time to post: I´m not terrribly busy here: my days aren´t exactly full, but they sure do fill-up pretty quickly, to the point that they seem to gather a momentum of their own. In fact, I think it´s taking me longer to do stuff now - that, or stuff is taking longer to do. For example, I tried to bake some cookies and make some dinner one day after work and freaked out when I ran out of time. Somehow in the 2 hours between 8pm, when my class finished, and 10pm, I managed to not make cookies - that is, I tried and failed. I mean, not that I tried and they sucked, rather, I failed to organize myself sufficiently into a state of cookie-making preparadeness.

Let me explain myself: the supermarket closes at 9:15pm, which shouldn´t be a problem because I live beside the supermarket. So, I biked home, which takes 10min, opened the fridge, realized I needed chocolate, went to Mercadona and bought chocolate. Fine up until here. Return home, start mixing, and, Fuck! Eggs! The supermarket has now closed, so I head down the street to the Consum, which closes at 9:30pm, fifteen precious minutes later, but do I make it on time?... Nope. Great. What now? Aha! the 24hr supermarket/gas station! Off I go, but do they have eggs? Nope. What time is it? 10pm...Screwed yet again. All this is to say...what the fuck?!!

2 questions immediately present themselves: 1) Owen, what the fuck is wrong with you*, why don´t you just chill out and buy the cookie mix pre-made like the rest of the male heterosexual world? 2) Where the fuck did the time go?

*Ed. note: Erin, my ex-girlfriend, once asked me a very simple yet significant question. She was pretty mad at me and somewhat frustrated with what she viewed as my inability to organize and restructure myself into a smooth and well-functioning, punctual, glitch-free make myself a sandwhich, tie my shoelaces, remember my keys (oh yeah, it must have been the keys) machine. She asked quite simply and incredulously: ¨How do you get through a day?" i.e. You seem to be a perfectly functioning human being on the surface, but, (oh shock!) you forget your keys!? Thus, how do you, on a daily basis, manage to get from point A to B while completing all the little steps that make the trip possible? The answer, of course, is to go through the back door, or leave an extra key in the mailbox, or whatever. I didn´t know what do say though, I mean, how much of a fucking achievement is it to get through a day? What´s to it? So I´m apt to lose a few things along the way, I may have to return home once or twice to forget something I left there, I occassionally replace the milk in the cupboard and the cereal in the fridge, but, what´s the worst that could happen? I´m not going to explode, at least, not unless someone else were to blow me up. Anyway, I found this question quite humourous, both because it conveys a certain truth about my shoddy organizational skills and general absentmindedness, and because it seems to define her version of a successful day as some sort of a well-organized and productive journey that only ultra-capable people achieve. In retrospect, it also hints that days can be pretty damn hard to get through sometimes, I´ll give her that (but we were talking about normal, privileged, attend classes and feed yourself days).

This is one of a few recent incidents (we´re back talking about the cookies now) that have left me anywhere from confused, late, indignant and even incensed. Time just seems to go faster now. But this incident and another similar one that I have since forgotten made me think: they say that ¨time flies when you´re having fun.¨ Could it be possible, I asked myself, that this saying, which I have always taken to be a metaphorical comment about our perception of time passing, actually contains a literal truth? Could it be that it takes longer to do some things than others? Could it be that time moves at different speeds during some activities? For example, when attempting to arrive home, buy eggs and chocolate, (admittedly in two trips), and make cookies, than it does when, say, driving from Toronto to Waterloo, ON (150 odd - the last 5 or so especially, we always get lost - kilometres) where my cousins live? It sounds strange, but I am becoming more and more convinced that this is the case.

I think the phenomenon could have something to do with productivity differences between Canada and, say, Spain. I think it also explains how my days have managed to fill themselves up. You see, when you block off short bits of time in a strange and slow-moving country, you actually speed those hours up, which, as any worth his weight in soya sauce mathematican can tell, means you do less... Thus, an 8hour Canadian 9-5 workday followed by a 6hour post-work freedom/recovery period actually moves faster, yet manages, at the same time, so to speak, to accomplish more than an 8hr Spanish workday that begins at 9, breaks for 2hours between 2 and 4, and returns to work till 7ish. There are practical explinations for this, such as the time-erasive effects of driving in 2 rush hours/day. For me, personally, it seems to come down to a complete inability to divide time into productive chunks. Blocking-off time just doesn´t work for me.

Firstly, I can´t concentrate enough in a 2hr block of time to do 2hrs of work (I´m talking about intellectual work here, reading, studying, thinking). I need to be in the zone, and that means that I need spaces in between my blocks, big spaces, otherwise I´m thinking about the next block and everything falls to pieces, I forget the eggs and I burn the cookies.

Secondly, if I have 2hrs to, for example, do the shopping, I end up in a hurry, flustered, and caught in one of these wierd time warps I´ve been talking about. So, that´s why I feel like my days have a nasty tendency of filling themselves up so easily without properly compensating in that satisfying, you´ve done a shit load of work today feeling. And that´s why after my, I have to admit, almost pathologically relaxing day of a) 9am wakeup, yoga on the roof, brief halting run through the building sites north of my house, breakfast, or b) an hour or so of studying Spanish, then Spanish class till 2pm, 2hrs to prepare and eat lunch (don´t ask me how, but it always takes at least 2hrs - the sandwich has a lot to be said for it, but they eat those for dinner here, or for el almuerzo (snack)), I end up trying to squeeze writing a post into the space between my evening classes - and that brings me back to the slow computers, and that´s when ...the fucking computer crashes! Deep breath. The world will not end if you don´t publish your post, but you´ve just sucked an hour an a half of time out of the day. So that´s why I haven´t posted yet in April. I´ve also been in Sweden for two weeks having an awesome time.

Ah well, the barbarians are once again knocking at the gates, and I´ve got to run to class, but I´ll fill in the rest of the details tomorrow or the next day, or the day after that. For now, I´ll leave you with this wonderful image of me eating a mashed potato-wrapdog in Sweden. Dig it.

making paella

For me, the highlight of Fallas was easily the Paella competition on my street: chatting up old ladies for recipe tips and techniques, sipping cold beers, inhaling the smoke from the orange and pine wood fires...it was awesome.

What the hell is Fallas? Fallas is a festival that coincides with the Christian celebration of San Jose (March 19). It´s really the pagan side of a very Catholic, traditional, staid holiday - what´s leftover of the rituals of spring renewal at the solstice. During Fallas, sculpted figures are erected throughout the city representing or alluding to various public, uh, figures or recent events/controversies. On the 19th, the last day of Fallas, all the figures are burnt to the ground, save one (the winner of the best Falla competition). The burning of effigies to mark the spring solstice clearly recalls the festival´s pagan roots and adds to the almost carnivalesque feel of the celebration, however, it does have a more recent Christian, and even cuotidian, origin. But, as the sun sets and after all the good little Christian families parade down the street during the day, the craziness begins (at night, duh) and all hell breaks loose.

Today´s Fallas evolved out of what had been a long and very practical tradition in Valencia: Carpenters, on the eve of the day of their patron San Jose (Joseph - he was a carpenter, remember?), would place a wooden figure covered in painted-on paper strips, on the street in front of their workshops. This rite was initiated by the carpenters´ guild as a way of cleaning out their workshops before spring and getting rid of old shavings and pieces of wood, which they later burned in a purifying bonfire. What used to be a utilitarian and even reverential custom changed at some point in the 18th century, when some of the carpenters began creating more elaborate and satiric figures, exposing and shaming real people to the public. Today, the figures include monuments up to 4 or 5 stories high.

¨Fallas¨ also refers to the neighbourhood group and the activities surrounding the actual figures. During Fallas, each neighbourhood group, or ¨Falla¨, organizes activities and events for their members, including this wicked cook-up (the Paella competition). They hire an artisan to construct the falla (and raise money throughout the year in order to pay him sometimes as much as .5 million€), hold parties every night on the street, march around the neighbourhood in traditional folk dress or aristocratic outfits (these people are called Falleros/as), banging drums and playing the same song over and over. There are more than 300 Fallas in Valencia and each one of them hosts its own local celebration as well as participating in the city-wide events (like the Ofrenda, or Offering: each falla marches to the Plaza de la Virgen bringing flowers, which they offer to a giant wooden statue...of the virgin, the flowers are placed on the bare wooden skeleton, forming the virgin´s dress, or, we might say, clothing the virgin), and of course, on the night of the 19th, each group BURNS their Falla. It´s an environmental disaster. The Polytecnic university is actually conducting an environmental study on this, because all the figures are made of polystyrene...

Anyway, I took some photos of what I think was the best part of all this. More than the nights spent shoving through hoardes of people and knocking old people into the gutters, guzzling rum and dancing to Shakira, I enjoyed wandering around the city looking at the monuments, buying buñuelos (deep-fried pumpkin donuts), oggling falleras, and: Paella. On my street there was a 25 paella cook-off. I settled in with a few beers to enjoy the spectacle:
This women in particular seemed to know her stuff, so I stuck by her, watching and learning: First, she fries chicken and rabbit in olive oil, adding chopped tomatoes after about 10mins. When the meat is browned, she adds artichokes and green beans, which she then fries for another 5mins or so before adding the water. The water should go up to the rivets, a little higher than you see in this picture because she tossed some more water in a second later.
When the water reaches the boil add the rice, roughly 100g per person. Stir initially, then let sit. That´s basically it. Except for spices: rosemary, paprika, safran, salt, pepper. Add during the add water stage. It´s really a lot harder than it sounds, especially if you´re cooking over a wood fire, but you can make a pretty good go at it at home on the stove or on the barbecue. I found this whole process fascinating.

¨So I´ve just made myself redundant at one of my jobs (Wall Street), let´s see how long it takes for them to notice and fire me…¨

I cut and pasted this out of a rough copy I had scribbled in between classes 10 days ago and didn´t have time to post. The plan was to make myself unavailable for certain inconveniently far away classes and let myself be pushed slowly and comfortably out of a job — while continuing to collect my monthly salary, naturally. That didn´t fly. So I quit. No more riding the immigrant train Mon to Thurs to Fuente del Jarro, the biggest industrial polygon in Spain, to teach a 1.5hour class. Well, actually I´m completing the last week of my ¨two weeks notice¨ from Tues to Thurs next week, but that´s it.

So, that leaves me with my Spanish classes everyday from 12 to 2pm. Evening classes 6:30 to 9:30 at Casa Americana, and a pair of private classes with some snobby rich kids. Wicked.

valencia from the hills

This picture is from Lliria, a village about an hour away from Valencia. You can see the city in the distance, or you could if it was bigger (the photo not the city, well, ok the city too). As you can see, it´s REALLY flat here, the city included. There is a ring of mountains that surrounds the fertile Valencian plain, on which (the plain not the mountains) grow oranges. Em, you can see where the mountains meet the sea to the right of my right shoulder, they do the same thing on the other side. Maybe I´ll take some pictures facing the hills next time. The plain is dotted with farms and intermixed with light industry. Yes, I have lost weight, thank you for noticing. Seriously though, I feel really greasy. There´s oil in everything. If not, then it´s cheese or meat, and even then you´ll probably find oil on it.

valencia from my roof

took these pictures the other day while I was having some beers up on the roof. It´s uglier than I had imagined. The first and second pictures are looking towards the city centre, but in between are all the barrios (neighbourhoods) uh, in between. It´s about a 25 min walk from my place to the centre. This would be fine except that the metro doesn´t work past 11pm at night here, in Valencia, in Spain. People don´t eat until at least 11pm here on a Thursday, Friday, or Saturday night. Where are they supposed to go after they eat dinner? How are they supposed to get to dinner in the first place? There are cabs. A few, but most of them only operate during normal Spanish hours. Arriving at the bus station in the creepy part of town after 10pm? Good luck getting a cab. Or on the 11 O´clock express train from Barcelona? Yer fucked, think again. I get around most of this by riding my bike, and I like the little village I live in, but this is ridiculous. Get your act together Spain. Geez.

And another thing. Between where I live and downtown are five decades of disgrace. I mean this is fucking disgraceful! You can see what I´m talking about in the pictures, all those really ugly buildings they threw up on the fertile fields that used to lie between here (the village of Benimaclet) and the city. The worst thing is that the last two decades have been especially disgraceful, especially considering Franco´s been long gone for at least 20 years. You guys have to stop using that as an excuse. Are you telling me that town planners couldn´t see how they should have been building the city by looking at the older, far-nicer buildings? Or going somewhere else to find out what they were doing there? There is no residential architecture here post 1950s, and as you get closer to present day the buildings just get worse. They seem to simply throw up the cheapest thing possible without giving any thought to design, use of space, materials, innovation, nada. Sometimes I think Spanish architects have a toolkit with like 5-7 models in it, they sell these models to construction companies, and these guys throw them up as fast and as cheaply as they can. Actually, someone does seem to be cluing-in though. I read the other day that they´re considering a law that would limit some of the out of control construction. I fucking hope so.

The bottom picture is facing (South?) towards the sea, which I inevitably think of as South but is actually probably not South. Maybe it´s more like East. You can see smoke. That´s from fireworks. Valencia is the capital of fireworks. I have more to say about this. Below the smoke along the first line of the beach there are some new buildings.

There are no less than 31 cranes in this picture, I counted. And what look to be at least 16 buildings in varying stages of construction, each and every one of them the same as the next. Up close they´re even
more creepy because of the tiny differences they´ve concocted to play with your head, like there´s a sculpture in the courtyard in one of them and then not in the next, and as you walk past at siesta, passing nobody because everybody is inside, you can´t help but ask yourself, why? Why couldn´t you have altered the height of one of these buildings, knocked down a wing on one end to let in a bit of sun and break the claustrophobic monotony of the perfectly equal entrances? Fuck.