Cold, colder, coldest

Like I mentioned before the season changed to Autumn. That would not be a big problem if they would have invented heating here and we would have a place to dry our laundry inside. Today I did my laundry, went up to the roof to hang it (sky was actually quite blue instead of the grey we had seen for the last week) I went downstairs, walked to the shop to buy some bread and water. I stepped outside the supermarket and it was RAINING, it rained that hard that you couldn't even see the end of the curb and start of the road.

No problem, just wash it again and try to dry it inside. Now I got a beautiful washing line all the way through my room and I made a pretty good construction in the hallway (has not come down yet, and Antonio already tried t demolish it so pretty decent if I may say so!).

Apart from that we don't have a (working) heater, so around nine o' clock the temperature outside is somewhere around 7C, so the temperature in the house also drops to somewhere around 7C. So this means people wear gloves, scarfs and at least 3 layers of clothing day and night. Karime hasn't taken of her winter coat only for showering, and this morning Antonio came out of the bathroom wearing his leather jacket?! We also found out that typing with mittens is quite hard, and cooking on gas if you wear a scarf is quite dangerous. And all the layers of clothing are also not really handy in bed:

1. Because my knitted hat slipped over my eyes, so this morning I was sure I didn't had to get up yet because it was still dark.
2. Because I wore gloves and I touched my face witch scared the hell out of me!

Luckily next week the heating at work will be turned on, the only thing is that it can't be to hot for the chemicals. I read somewhere in a magazine which was in the lobby that the heating will be at a maximum of 17C. Not very warm but at least it is something.

We just hope it gets summer soon or we can use an electrical heater. Not very likely since the fuses already melt when you turn on 2 hairdryers at the same time. But Antonio is convinced we can so we use his deposit if it goes wrong.

Now it is time for a Halloween party and tomorrow I wanted to go to see the new James Bond film, to bad that does not come here in cinemas yet for 3 weeks. But according to my television addicted source original versions (English spoken with Catalan/Spanish subtitles) come out before the dubbed version. You only have to look for them since they are only shown in a small number of cinema's, else we go to a Spanish cult film with little dialogue. Fine by me, at least it will be warm.

Perfect Friday

After Antonio made us girls all crepes on Thursday it was time to show my housewife qualities the next day so I made apple crumble. In the evening Antonio wanted to watch Mamma Mia de Movie! Perfect, love it, so with my apple crumble and his flan flavored ice cream we sang along with Mamma Mia.

And that ladies and gentlemen is perfection on a plate!

Autumn

You know it is coming, you don't want it but you feel is it unavoidable...and there it is. I am talking about autumn. This morning I left the house in a shirt, and when I left work around quarter past 6pm it is raining.

This means no leaving the house without an umbrella and a coat, and no laundry. Since we have to dry our laundry outside, and we only have one washing line among 5 people. And I can guess there won't be enough space on that line to dry all our bedlinen, towel. etc. It is not all negative, the positive side to rain is that people don't come out of their houses. And if they do they are wearing pool expedition coats with fake-fur. The whole economy collapses just because people don't like rain?! Lucky I am not melting of my 5 minute walk to the supermarket (and I was hungry and I didn't had a lot of food in the fridge), turned out there is absolutely no-one at the supermarket. So take a bit of advice: go (food)shopping in autumn.

Expoquimia

Because the biggest chemistry expo of the Mediterranean area is in Barcelona this week, Expoquimia. I couldn't say no to an invitation to this event. The only downside of this day was that it was 26C and everybody had to wear something decent like a suit. So most people were quite overheated, the good part of this was that I had to wait for my colleague to park her car (and so did 500 other car owners tried at the same time) so I sat in the shade and watched them all rushing by.

After we got in we ran into our other colleagues and we figured out what where was and where we should go. The expo is big, really big. And we wanted to go to a few stand for some information about our chemical cell and my other colleageas wanted to go to some companies who purify water en sell machines which do that. After 10 minutes of arguing where everything would be, it turned out to be all in the same room just one door away.

In the morning we did some 'serious' shopping and got a lot of information, after lunch my colleague went home and I went to IKEA. Since the building is right next to the exposition building. I didn't recognise it as IKEA cause it is not a blue box but it is just one big construction side. The inside luckily did look like IKEA :)

After the small shopping (light bulbs and wrapping paper) I went back to Expoquimia because there were some companies which I found interesting to might be doing my next internship. Since I wasn't buying anything and I obviously did not come from the Mediterranean area (I was the tallest person at most stands, that included the men), they knew I wasn't coming there to ask for some brochures. I did ask them if they have interns and do projects. And I did find a nice company I really liked and they are located around Valencia. I might get lucky again next year :)

After I got home the neighbours complained that they thought something was stuck in the ventilation fan on the roof. So I climbed on the roof to find some feathers (?!) but nothing was stuck, and I had a nice view of the sunset.

The end

Català means feeling

Yes I know I haven't kept you updated as regularly as I was planning to. But I have an excuse! I had to write some (angry) letters to my University, to my international travel insurance, my mobile phone contract and some other nice companies who are giving me a hard time. So I have been writing, just not to you :(

But now I have some time so I will updated you about what is going on here. Last weekend my flatmates and me had a pizza party. The only downside on this good news was that they bought 2 vegetarian cheese pizzas for me. That I had to eat! No sharing and no saving it for the next day!
But after 8 slices I could only smile, and sit.....sorry 2 whole pizzas are just to much for my (small) stomach.

Luckily after a hour or so I could move again and our Brazilian guest wanted to teach us some basic salsa moves. Salsa is nice, unless Antonio starts dancing. So after we all got over our Antonio-shock we just played the latin top 40 and some other South American hits to bad I only knew Shakira, some 80 hits and of course Gloria Estefan. But after that I did play a few ABBA songs so you didn't hear me complain!

For the Saturday I signed up for a Catalan Culture day. Christina and Karime decided to join me because there was wine tasting on the program. The morning started a little bit chaotic, we were suppose to be at a museum at 11 o'clock. The only small problem was we weren't expected, so people got a bit nervous: "what are you people doing here" "why are you here" "Catalan Culture Day", "no doesn't ring a bell". In the end everything turned out to be arranged by someone who talked to the organization for 15 minutes and kept saying: "no idea, no I didn't send those emails" "but here is a print out of the registration mail, with your name here" "No I did not send that". That is what you get if you put middle aged woman with a short term memory in charge!

The day started at a science museum, the majority of the visitors were kids so our guide gave us a tour in 'toddler Spanish/Catalan' so even I could follow it word for word what he was talking about :D

After the guided tour we could wander around ourselves and as responsible grownups you behave well as guest of course! This pictures inspired many people to measure their own head to these skulls, so it is partly educational and the biggest part was just entertainment for us.
After the museum trip we went to the University for Architecture for the lunch and the rest of the afternoon program. To bad that there were only 50 cheese snacks and about a hundred hungry students. To keep us entertained the organisation arranged some music from the region. Some people loved it and would probably bought their CDs if only the band members knew what kind of modern technology CD would be. We weren't that enthusiastic..... After the music about a 100 more foreign exchange students came to the University (also hungry and complaining about the lack of food). Because by now everybody was complaining they decided to continue with the wine tasting (?!).

After the wine tasting the program said that it was time to (lunch??? No) speed-dating, just to get to know each other. To bad this also took really long to organize so I decided to go home to do some work and EAT since it was around 6pm and I hadn't eat anything accept a bowl of cornflakes at 8 in the morning.

Being cultured in Barcelona

After a Friday night of going out, it was time to go to the market on Saturday. Apart from a lot of people screaming (and then I mean a lot!) and quite a few vegetables I had never seen, there isn't much there.

Saturday around tapas time Karime and I went to Barcelona to join our other flatmate Everling and her friend Maria for some drinks and food. It turned out that we went to some place which looks a bit like the German beer feest, only instead of the beer they drink pink champagne/wine.
But people did eat Frankfurters and a lot of hamburgers. Since it was happy hour drinks were around 0.60/0.70 cents per glass. So after three drinks Maria was already quite jolly and she wanted to find a cocktail bar to have a Moijto. And we did find a Moijto bar! And we had a Moijto! When we came home around midnight Karime mentioned that Moulin Rouge is on television (in Spanish ofcourse because everything is dubbed here). Only the songs were in the original language, so we sang along (and didn't wake anyone up!)

First Sunday of the month almost all museums in Barcelona let you in for free, since we are all (poor) students we took this chance to have a cultured day. To use this day optimal we had to leave at 9am sharp (sharp in Spain is, we leave somewhere around that time). When we left everybody wore gloves and scarfs, an hour later when we came out of the metro the sun was shining and the scarf could go :) We had to wait for Maria and then we were all good to go to see the National Museum d'Art de Catalunya. Which is to big to see in half a day (the museum would close at 14.30h). So after a short orientation we decided we first wanted to see the Gothic Art. When we almost finished the room someone found out that there were guided tours. Luckily no-one speak Catalan so we had the Spanish tour. The tour guide was over-enthusiastic, which made it impossible for me to understand what he said. Luckily I got the summary afterward from Karime :)

After the National Museum tour, we wanted to go to the archaeological museum, but they were only open for another 30 minutes. Because it was 14.30h and I was pretty hungry, I suggested that we should have lunch luckily the rest agreed and we went back into town to have lunch. If you ever decided to take a bus in Barcelona (I don't mean the tourist buses) I think you should have a pretty strong stomach. Bus drivers believe that everybody will stop for them and else you just honk for as long as it is necessary to make the other vehicle/pedestrian/cyclist/dog stop.

We survived and found the place someone mentioned we should go. It was a sort an all you can eat buffet, but people weren't greedy and the food looked quite good too! I was quite happy that there was no limit of how may plates you could take, because I was hungry! I did eat a plate of pasta salads, pizza, and some warm Italian dishes and some green salad. Of course there was a dessert Yogurt chocolate ice and at least 4 types of fresh melon! And to end lunch: tea. Now I know why people have siesta, eating makes you slow and drowsy.

After a little rest we didn't want to climb the Sagrada de Familia which was the original plan, we went to see a park and didn't do to much exercise anymore.

Christiana and Antonio went home, and the four of us went to the park which has a big fountain with ducks in there. The white ducks swam in top layer of the fountain and the black ones in the lowest layer. We were wondering if they were trained, if there was some discrimination going on in the fountain, no-one had an answer for us!? After some relaxing in the park I went home, but before I got there I did something very un-Spanish. I ran to catch a metro, I thought it would come 15 minutes later but on Sundays they have a different time table. When I saw on the sign that it would leave in 2 minutes I took my chances and ran downstairs towards the platforms. People were very alarmed by me running past, apparently they don't mind to wait 30 minutes in a drafty metro station...

Fruit

Just because I thought it was healthy.

An apple a day keeps the doctor away, a fruit basket a day keeps the cost of your health insurance policy low.

Shoe shopping

Shopping in Spain is nice! For example Zara is cheaper, the personnel doesn't seem to be in a bad mood all the time. Of course there is a 'but'...

A lot of shops just sell (well almost all of them) one size?! Bra's are sold here in size B, and a really nice t-shirt shop sells everything in size M (weird because people are quite petite here, that might be the reason that everything is a size smaller then it says on the label)
After a closer look at the labels I found out that size M means in the rest of Europe somewhere between 34 till 38. So I bought myself a nice shirt in a size M. Another great disadvantage is that there are loads of shoe shops, but the normal size woman shoes are between 32 and 39. Some shops (of course not the nice ones!) have shoes till size 41 (so there is almost no shoe-shopping for this size 40 girl!)