Peinado. (Hairstyle)

Right. Well, this is going to be short because to be blunt, I haven´t got anything to say! Just two things mainly.

First. Went to get my hair cut yesterday... I´m not sure that the desired outcome of going to the hairdressers is for the client to walk away in hysterics because of the way her hair turned out... but that´s pretty much what happened! I was prepared for it to be an amusing experience... it´s hard enough even in English to explain to a hairdresser how I want my hair, so I didn´t go in with the hightest of expectations.

To begin with I had it washed of course, and when she was combing it out she just caught the back of my conch piercing (that´s the one in the middle of my right ear for those of you who don´t know!) I must have flinched because she asked if she´d hurt me. I said no don´t worry, and then she looked and said "ah, it´s because you´ve got these" and proceeded to POKE my ear really hard! I felt like saying "well NOW you´ve hurt me you stupid woman!!!"

When I was asked how I wanted it cut I just said "a little bit shorter, but not too much, the rest is up to you." I think that´s one of the best side effects from having been completely bald.. I don´t actually care if my hair gets mucked up, it´ll grow out. Oh, and I did remember to tell her about the tattoo before she freaked out and thought I had some kind of strange skin disease.

Anyway, cutting was fine, it looks really nice and I´m really pleased with it. The funny part was when I was given my options for how I wanted it styled. "Straight, or straight with the ends flicked out". Those are my only two choices?! I just told her to do what she thought would look best, I was going to wash it out as soon as I got home anyway.

So out comes the hairdryer and the big scary brush and I´m subject to burning and pulling around until I eventually look like this:


(sorry facebook readers, you won´t see the photo I don´t think. I look stupid!)
I came away killing myself laughing. It´s all gone back to normal this morning when I washed it so it´s fine now!

The second thing I wanted to say was how I realised this morning that the word "temperature" is actually really difficult to say! It is pronounced nothing like it´s written and for the poor Spaniards, the combination of letters is probably the most difficult for them to say! We repeated it about 60 million times this morning!

Anyway. That´s all from me, nothing else is happening at all. It´s sunny today and I´m coming home three weeks on Friday.
Love and bugs.

Update from the Spanish Front

Well hello.

How is everyone? I am doing just fine, and have infact had quite a fun week so far. Let me fill you in since whatever-it-was day last week that I wrote before.

So. Last Friday. I went to the gym again, not really wanting to because I was tired and aching, but decided that since a)I´d paid and b)it´s good for me, I would go. It turned out to be absolutely hilarious. The teacher made it known to all the others that I´m English and they kept asking me how you say things in English, and they were all really friendly. As for the class itself... it can only be described as "baffling". At one point she told us all to get these long sticks, then said we´d be singing in English, then everyone went to the centre of the room and put the sticks together in a point, then some people starting singing this chanty thing and doing a kind of hopping-type dance, and then they all burst out laughing. I have no idea what that was about.

You know how there´s a kind of stereotype for middle-aged women who go to the gym to escape their annoying children and nagging husbands and to be all young and girly again? Well, it´s not just a stereotype. It´s true. They couldn´t stop laughing at the fact we had to do pelvic thrusts lying on our backs. But then again, neither could I! And as is becoming quite common, at the end of the class the lights were turned off and we all gently stretched to Unbreak My Heart. This included lying upside down in a foetal position. The most surreal experience of my life! And I´m going again tonight!

The weekend was chilled out and lazy. I went out to buy the paper on Saturday morning (the Torygraph I´m afraid, but the only one I can get in English, plus I like the crossword!) I made my first attempt at chocolate brownies... mixing the ingredients in a pan because I don´t have a mixing bowl and guessing what 100g of butter is because I don´t have scales. Needless to say they turned out abit rock hard! But trial and error is the way forward, I am going to try them again this afternoon. I want to give them as a present to the German beggers here. At least I think they are German, they said something that sounded very much like "danke" when I gave them bread last week.

On Sunday I went with a friend of a friend to a new church, which I loved. I have never felt so welcomed among strangers. As soon as I walked in the door I was greeted with a fierce hug by a woman I felt sure I should know, but don´t... I guess this may have freaked some people out, but it only made me feel really wanted and at home. There are quite a few English speakers there which was nice, and I chatted to lots of new people. I´m looking forward to going again next week. It does take me almost 3 hours to get there... but totally worth it.

Monday and Tuesday this week have been quite artistic. We watched Miss Potter at the weekend (in Spanish because we always do, but then I re-watched it in English because I really wanted to hear Ewan McGregor´s real voice!) and I was inspired to paint and draw. Ha ha ha I hear you laugh, yeah I know I´m not the most artistic person in the world, but it´s fun, and no-one has to see what I "create". Using that word in it´s loosest of meanings!

Other than that, my friends, life here is pretty quiet and steady. Nothing majorly exciting to report. I have been buying Christmas presents though which IS very fun. Oh and something which I find really funny about living here... individual houses don´t have their own rubbish bins for collection, what happens here is that you take all your household rubbish and recycling to "communal" bins in the street. You can´t imagine how aweful I feel doing that, it being illegal in England and all. I feel like I should be going with gloves and a balaclava it feels that wrong! But hey ho, when in Rome and all that jazz.

Well, this is too long and probably boring by now. Tootle pip.

Ugh can´t believe I just typed "tootle pip". And look, I just did it again. Loser.

The Purple Tree Car With Cheese

Helloooooooooooooooo.oooo....ooooooooo....oo...ooo

...ooo

...oooo

.oo

*puff*

That was a man falling off a cliff. And yes, since the last time you heard from me, I have watched Scrubs. Lots and lots of wonderful Scrubs. I went up to Santander Saturday night to see my friend Hannah and me and her flatmate discovered that we can both quote Scrubs word for word. So we watched lots of it and drank beer. It was possibly the most fun I´ve had in a long time!

But wait, there´s more... then we all got into our pyjamas and squished into Hannah´s bed and watched the BBc Pride and Prejudice until 2 in the morning. That also was a little bit too much excitement to cope with! I felt so happy and normal having so much English intake! I love watching films with Mélanie, and I love living in Spanish, but it becomes abit painful in the head every now and then and I think I needed the injection of Englishness!

Then on Sunday Hannah came down to my little mountian town for a visit. It was really fun, I took how around the whole place... in about an hour! Then we spent ages over cooking a lovely big bolognese and drank a bottle of wine, and then went to this pub that I walk past every day but haven´t had a chance to go to yet. It was really friendly and inside there was a big Guinness sign, but I forgot to ask if they actually have it. I had my usual JD and coke... half JD and half coke, I´ve never tasted it so strong! lol.

When Hannah went on Monday, after we´d pigged out on this local thing of sweet fried bread dipped in thick dark hot chocolate sauce- the best thing ever... I did feel abit lonely and low. I don´t know, it just feels like a long way to Christmas at the moment! But it´s ok, today I am going for lunch with one of the teachers which I´m really looking forward to, and then she´s going to take me up into the valley to have a look around, possibly up to the ski station because there isn´t too much snow yet for cars to get up. I´m looking forward to it because without a car it is really difficult to go see my immediate surroundings.

I´ll also be going to the gym again this week, I really enjoyed it last week. Can you believe it, that I: the very same girl who made a great song and dance about not paying her Durham sports fee because there was no way she was going to get any use out of it... have actually voluntarily been to the gym a number of times, and am planning on going much more! But I did really enjoy it, and I also discovered, quite by accident, that it´s really good for lifting your mood. I´m sure every Tom Dick and Harry in the world knows this except me, but I thought that was pretty cool. Last Friday made me laugh because she got us all lying down on the floor and I thought we were going to do those hideous abdominals, when she turned all the lights off and had us all gently stretching to that song "unbreak my heart", can´t remember who it´s by... But it made me giggle! It was also funny because I couldn´t actually see what she was doing, and so had to guess at what she was saying!

This weekend we (as in Mélanie and I) may be going to Bilbao with a teacher I have never met which could be fun! Might be nice to go away at least and I seem to remember from all those years ago that Bilbao is a really nice city.

Ooh, I have put some of my photos up on Facebook and will aim to do so on Myspace soon. I hope everyone is well, can´t really think of anything else to say. It´s very, very, very cold here.
Love and squishy bugs.
x

Whirlwind

Hola. Hello. Bonjour. Halo. And whatever other language you feel the need to be greated in. How´s it going?

All is well from this end of the world. Isn´t that a stupid thing to say, how can the world possible have ends... it´s round. Maybe the person who thought up that saying is still living before Galileo.

So. I am safe and well back in España after my rapid trip to England. And I really do mean rapid, I feel like I need this week to recover from the craziness. The journey was in a word horrific. Far too long, and I really do not recommend staying overnight in an airport, I´m fairly sure I was beginning to hallucinate by the end of it, I´m sure I didn´t leave Reinosa in a dog sled being pulled by an army of hamsters wearing grass skirts...

For the record, I hate English trains. Both the trains I got over the weekend were screwed up. The first one because vandals had cut the signal lines at Chesterfield meaning I was 2 and a half hours late arriving into Durham, and I had to sit on the floor of the train squished right up against the door, after more than 24 hours of no sleep that just wasn´t cricket and I was in a right state by the time I arrived in Durham. I´ve never taken drugs, but I think I was close to knowing what it would feel like. I was shaking and twitching and completely hyper. Part of it was excitement of course, I´m not sure that devouring a DSU chocolate brownie was the wisest decision either!

Hound was AWESOME. I wore my beautiful shoes and the whole cheese room bowed down to worship them. Ok, so I´m pretty sure no-one noticed them, but I felt great. The music wasn´t the best unfortunately. DJ Robin felt the need to play a number of crap songs twice and completely ignore Summer of 69, Insomnia, I am the one and only and other great classics. Still, it was worth it.

On Saturday I went to Prebends Bridge and you guys in Durham do not realise how lucky you are to be there at the moment. I am not joking I almost cried when i saw the cathedral from the bridge. It´s my favourite view of my favourite building. And the autumn colours this year are incredible. Tim and I watched the football in Walkabout too which was fun, mostly for the food and all the Englishness rather than the football I have to admit! Grey fireworks on Saturday night were fantastic and the wonderful Aileen fed us with popcorn. Yum yum.

And now I´m back in my little tiny town, quite happy as well which is nice. The teachers were really interested in hearing about my weekend, and the classes this week have been really fun. The sun is shining here though the air is very very cold and even though there´s not one sign of Christmas over here, I am beginning to feel quite Christmassy. I have been wearing my poppy proudly all week and explaining that to everyone. Some of the kids were abit unimpressed that we wear paper poppies, I´d never even given that a thought before, but it´s because they´re made by kids isn´t it?

Anyways, I joined the gym and went to a "tonification" class last night, still haven´t figured out what that would be in English... "body toning" maybe. Anyways, it was fun and I was even brave enough to go on my own after the teacher I was going to go with texted me to say she couldn´t. Legs are aching abit today, but hopefully by the time you next see me I´ll be of supermodel proportions. Probably not. Oooh ooh and the most exciting thing ever is that I found Lea and Perrins in the supermarket!!!!! AND, even better, real cheddar cheese... will definitely be getting involved with some serious cheese on toast later this week.

So now I´m going to love you and leave you with two pieces of advice I´ve learnt this week.
1. If you can´t sleep, get a teddy bear. I brought Sweetie back with me and I´ve slept fine so far this week.
2. If you ever want your hair to be magically straightened forever, go talk to Nicola. I swear she has magic in her straightners as I´ve washed my hair 3 times since she straightened it and it still hasn`t gone properly curly! There will not be any photos of me at the moment, it looks horrendous inbetween curly and straight!

Bye x