Surf's Up

I apologize to those of you who have checked a couple of times since the last time I posted and have been disappointed.  I have no excuse but laziness.
You may have noticed the title of this post.  It means that there are good conditions for surfing according to the web, but I haven't actually heard any surfers use the term.  That might have something to do with the whole Spanish thing.... But who knows?

I love surfing.  It is probably the most difficult sport I have ever tried, but one of the most rewarding.  Evan and I have gone out quite a few times lately.  I day-dream and night-dream about surfing.  "Gerardo the ninja soldier" (Evan's fault) is a hilarious but tough teacher and he keeps on pushing us out of our comfort level.  We are finally catching waves (well... attempting to catch waves) and not just white water now.   When you actually manage to catch a wave (which is hard) and then manage to stay on your board when you stand up and you ride the wave down (which is super hard) it is like flying!  The closest thing i can compare it to is snowboarding on untouched powder... really steep untouched powder lol.  I'm Gerardo's favourite because I catch on to things pretty quickly but he says I think too much.  The reason I think too much?  Thanks for asking.  Getting dumped face first into rushing, churning water after a 7 foot wave crashes on you isn't the most pleasant sensation.  And he says they are small.... (level 2 or 3 out of 10!)  Oh well... at least I can tell that I am staying on longer and longer.  Also he keeps telling us we are lazy when it comes to paddling.  On TV surfing looks hard because it looks so dangerous but I had no idea how much paddling I would have to do!  You have to paddle to to get out (through the waves that keep pushing you back) you have to paddle to get a lot of speed to catch a wave, and you even have to paddle regularly when you are sitting still because the ocean's currents like to move you.  Lets just say my paddle muscles are perma-sore.  Gerardo says by the time I leave I will go up a shirt size because of all the muscles I am getting.


Another crazy thing that we did a couple of weeks ago, is we attended it a druidic ritual.  It was basically an ancient halloween thing.  First of all you have to understand that Galicia is very Celtic.  There are a lot of Celtic ruins amongst the hills of Galicia.  One thing Galicia is known for is the superstitions of the people.  Witches and cauldrons are in all of the souvenir shops and not just around Halloween.  There are certain dishes that are traditionally made in cauldrons.  Except for a small group of people who were druids (yes they wore robes), everyone there was there to remember their culture and its origins.  Basically what we did was we went on a walk called 'the walk of the dead'.  We walked the path that the dead take when the 'grip reaper' (he said the banshee?) come to get them.  We ate a piece of bread before we left to 'protect' us and we walked for about an hour on an old path out of the village and out to a field.  I wish it was light out so we could have seen the scenery because I could tell it was beautiful even though it was pitch black outside.  We had candles and flashlights to light our way because we started the walk around 9pm.  When we got to the field, they made a druidic circle with some candles.  The guy in charge (who was super nice and knew english so he translated a few things for me as we were walking) spoke a lot about the seasons.  The lit incense so it's smoke could bring the words to the gods.  The ceremony included some repetition about something to do with peace and everyone wrote things on pieces of paper that we wanted to remove from our lives and then burned them in a cauldron.  We also ate an apple.  Im not really sure what it symbolized but i think it had something to do with a pact that we made to try to be better people.  After we walked all the way back we went to a small restaurant and ate supper (it started about midnight) and I was so hungry because I had no idea that it would take so long.  The food was very good and very Galician.  It came in many different courses so it took a long time and after we ate they started sharing stories and songs.  We managed to catch a ride back at that point though.  It was already 1:30 and it took almost an hour to drive home!

This is at 'Story Time'.  You can see Evan trying to understand the man who is singing in Galego.

It was very cool to be able to experience other cultures and their beliefs.  What a fascinating experience that I won't soon forget!

This is the link I took the photos from so click on it if you want to see more:
roteiro-da-pantalla-algunhas-fotos.html

Canadian Food?

Why is Poutine the only truly Canadian dish?  Please, readers, do not comment on this post with descriptions of seal blubber or something like that.  Evan kept promising our friends the Serranos, that we would feed them "Canadian food" because they have been kind enough to introduce us to a lot of Galician food.  On Friday evening we finally kept that promise.  There are many problems here and they all stem from the fact that 'poutine' is the only Canadian food that we could come up with.  Oh, and also the fact that neither of us are accomplished in the Kitchen.  So... first... Poutine is kind of a lone dish... it goes best with a pop and a crowded skip lodge in the middle of a long day of snowboarding.  Or as 'desert' after a gruelling hour of walking the isles of costco, eating a supper of free samples.  It isn't the most complete 'meal'.  This resulted in the most american main course ever; hamburgers.  Oh, PS. Evan thought he bought dill pickles, turns out they were anchovy flavoured.  This brings us to problem number 2: The most important part of poutine... what makes or brakes it... the gravy.  I kind of bombed the gravy.  In my defence... it is hard to make!  Picture it if you will....  the lumps of flour and corn starch (i tried both) in a stubbornly runny solution of water and beef flavour.  Luckily we have a siv (i don't know how to spell this word).  It ended up ok.  I don't think the poutine was a hit but despite the runny gravy, I think it tasted pretty good.

Im trying really hard to think of something that would be interesting to write about.  Absolutely nothing interesting has happened lately.  Oh wait!  I finally have my guitar!  That is one good thing that has been helping to keep me sane... But seriously my days consist of sleeping, cleaning, video games, walks when it isn't rainy, studying spanish, and watching seasons of downloaded TV shows (Im on season two of the Mentalist which is awesome btw (thanks for the recommendation mom)).  All of the days run together into one big blob in my mind and the only way I know what day it is, is because of my Aerobics classes.  Our weekly trips to Pontevedra for church are the most exciting events of my life.  It is kind of strange but I only go crazy for a couple of days a month (...guess why...) and the rest of the time I am perfectly content if slightly bored.

Anyway, I do have some pictures for you to check out:

This is a 'graveyard'.  It kind of looks like the bodies each have their own cubby hole in the little buildings.

It is hard to see but here in Galicia 75% of the fence posts I see are made out of stone

These large structures on the water are to grow "mejillones" (muscles)  They can't touch the sea floor because then the crabs will be able to get them

Our sea-shell collection :)

History is the new Math

For those who don't know; I actually liked math in school.
This weekend the Serranos took us to a fort that was around eight hundred years old located on the coast at a little town named Baiona. It was really cool! We walked around the whole wall which was a couple of kilometers long I believe. There were old cannons and a couple of ruined buildings along with a nice, modern, government-run hotel. :p  The views from the walls were great and the whole thing felt very castle-like. I tried to imagine what it would be like for a soldier protecting the fort from invaders.

After the fort we toured a replica of the 'Pinta Caravel'. It is the first ship to make it back from the Americas, making the People of Baiona the first people in Europe to hear of the discovery of America. The ship is so much smaller then I ever would have thought would be able to cross the Atlantic ocean.  It would have been unpleasant to be a crew member in such a small place, especially when half of it was off limits to most of them. Talk about cabin feavor! Anyway, after hearing about what life on the sea was like, I think that having the flue on the plane to Spain could have been worse.

Last on the agenda for the day was the ruins of an ancient Celtic village. So cool! The buildings were all little tiny round huts. When they found the remains there were only a few stones left. Many of the walls have been rebuilt to show what it would have been like long ago but most have only had enough stones added so viewers can better see where the buildings were. I assume that families had more than one house each because the huts are so small how would they fit to sleep?

Life here is going pretty well. I am getting really impatient for my guitar to be ready so I can commence my plans on becoming a guitar genius while here in Spain. The weather appears to have taken a turn for the worse and I have a feeling that beach days are over for the next few months. It has been raining quite a bit.  On the worst days the wind howls through the spaces in our poorly insulated windows and wakes us up and I look outside and it looks miserable! In my head I am trained to bundle up and layer when the weather is like that, especially since I have to walk everywhere I want to go, but when I finally get to where I'm going, I am all sweaty and half my layers have come off. Unfortunately, my poor ears are always cold. (Mom I blame you for at one! lol). The weather really isn't bad except for the wind. And you would think that the worst part of the wind would be walking through it, or maybe the ghost noises coming from the windows?  Not true. It is the cause of a chain of events that I must admit I don't completely understand, resulting in the most ungodly of stenches. Rotten seaweed has become the bane of my outdoor existence (luckily I am safe inside as long as the window isn't open for too long). The beach that I so love to look at from my window has betrayed me by sheltering an unreasonably large amount of seaweed. When the tide goes out guess what doesn't go with it? I feel like I need a gas mask just to leave my apartment! To be fair, it probably isn't that bad... It probably goes away once I walk half a block in any direction but I feel like it is haunting me!

Anyway... Life is good, if just a little bit uneventful.

Good Things Come in Threes

To start of with.... I have internet! Yay!!!  I don't think that it is possible for you to understand how much I missed the internet.  You would probably have to know how much I used the internet before I came here, and then you would have to experience the isolation that is felt by every immigrant who doesn't know the language and culture of their new country.  Having the internet finally come is like finding an electric blanket on a cold day, after looking and looking, being told it was one place and then another, finding out it was all lies! Then just when you thought you were going to freeze to death... Tu-da!  Well... maybe that's a little extreme... Anyway, as you can tell I am very happy to have it.

I apologize for not adding to this blog in over a week but my life has been pretty uneventful the past couple of weeks.  I finally found something active to join though; an aerobics class three days a week in the mornings.  The only issue is that it is in Portonovo and it is a half hour walk away, which really isn't the worst thing in the world because the walk is very nice as long as the weather is good.  (For those interested, Portonovo is the next town over, but it is impossable to tell when Sanxenxo ends and Portonovo starts).  I tried a Yoga class first but it was the biggest let down ever!  For those who may think "of course it is a let down, its yoga" I will inform you that in past yoga classes I have been pushed to my physical limit, I have stretched muscles that i didn't know existed and (unless I go regularly), I am always sore the next day.  This class let me down on all above criteria.  Aerobics is great, and it isn't super important that I understand spanish. (most of the time)

Also, Evan and I started surf lessons and had our first one yesterday.  It was awesome!  But also very difficult.  I only managed to stand up on my board a couple of times by the end of the two hours we were out which was better than Evan :).  Our teacher is a really cool guy who is a really good surfer.  I am under the impression that he used to surf competitively.  He is a Phys-ed teacher at Evan's school and he is giving us free lessons so he can practice his english.  He runs a surf club with friends which teaches lessons to all ages on saturdays for cheep.  The money only goes to pay for the insurance and the equipment; he just wants other people to love it as much as he does!  I think that is pretty awesome.

This is Lanzada beach where most of the surfing around here is done.  No pictures of us surfing... yet.

A Perfect Day

Things are going well for the most part.  I have a few things to complain about, all of which circle around the fact that for the past while we have been waiting for someone to come and connect the internet.  Since we have no phones and it is our primary source of communication this is pretty important to us.  Unfortunately the company told us that they would come any time in the next 10 days.  (This was over two weeks ago by the way)  Because they refuse to make an appointment and we want internet very badly this means that someone needs to be home at all times.  Because Evan has a job, this role falls to me and I am SICK of sitting at home, doing nothing.  Waisting all of this uncharacteristically beautiful weather, sitting at home instead of at the beach is depressing.  Needless to say any chance I have to get out is well received by myself and my husband to whom I complain.  I believed I talked about the Serrano's and how they invited us over after church on Sunday.  Well they invited us to a picnic with some other people on Wednesday, which was really fun, and a great opportunity for me to practice a bit of Spanish.  It was on a 'mountain' (a hill) where the view was really nice.  We played twister and relaxed and chatted.

They also took us on a drive yesterday to see some of the most picturesque places in all of Spain.


I want to remember yesterday (Saturday) as the day I saw some of the most beautiful scenery Heavenly Father has ever created.  I only wish that my pictures could do it justice.  The point where ocean meets land is a dangerous and magnificent place.  Words cannot describe the priceless beauty of the sweeping hills littered with majestic rocks only to be cut off by jagged cliffs into a turmoil of white waves.  In certain places, the water is crystal clear and you can see metres down into the blue-green ocean teeming with fish and containing as much beauty as above.  Even though man has been to this place it does not take away from the experience like is so often the case.  An aged lighthouse sitting atop its majestic throne crowns an ancient outcrop of lichen covered stone.  A winding path picks its way through the bush and rocks to reach it's base, while sailboats seam to wave good-afternoon in the hot afternoon sun.  A refreshing breeze ensures that the day could not be more perfect.  Delicious traditional spanish food, excellent, uplifting conversation, and breathtaking scenery. The Serrano family could not have given us a more perfect day.

A tour of our 'Flat'

By popular request I am dedicating a post to our apartment.  Enjoy!

The entrance:

Go up those stairs and you see our dining room:

Our Bedroom and Queen sized bed:

I am pretty sure our on-suite bathroom is bigger than our kitchen....

I tried to make our place feel a little more like home:

Our Living Room with big windows:

Overlooking...... This!

(This is when the tide is in)

When the tide is out:

At night you can see the lights across the 'ria':

Yummy....

Everyone who knows me should be proud.  I have eaten multiple things that I have had no intension of eating.  Ever.  Most notable being an octopus.  Well, a little baby one, but the legs were each an inch long and it was so hard to get the courage to eat it.  Our landlord/Evan’s boss brought us some of her left-over rice dish because we were talking about how we haven’t had any ‘Galician’ food.  I will admit that it tasted good, but the idea of it is really hard to come to terms with.  Also in this rice dish were another creature that evan thinks were scallops.  Oh and i just checked with Evan.... the octopi were actually squid; aka calamari.  Anyway, yesterday, I we were invited to lunch by some people at church and they had a soup that had muscles and shrimp.  If you do not know me well, you may be shocked to know that I avoid seafood if at all possible.  Even though I have been given the opportunity to have shrimp on a number of occasions I avoid seafood in all of its forms.  Mussels look horrible.  And their texture is a cross between chicken and mushrooms and next to them the shrimp were a piece of cake.  But I am so proud of myself because I finished that shockingly huge bowl of soup and I actually, shockingly, enjoyed it.  Not to the point that I would choose it at a restaurant because I have a feeling that one reason I liked it was that I was super hungry, but... I feel like a new, braver person.

It is really strange here because meal times are very different.  My stomach tells me it is lunch time at around 12 so you can imagine my disappointment that lunch doesn’t happen until 2 or 3 here (yes breakfast is at a comparable time to ours).  And supper?  Let’s just say its past my bedtime.  I don’t think its healthy...

Church is great!  There are only 25ish people who come regularly but everyone is really nice.  The family that fed us lunch is fantastic and they can even speak English pretty well!  Finally!  I am getting used to the double kiss thing but it was really weird at first.  Im still not sure who you kiss and who you don’t so I never make the first move.  When Evan told them that we don’t do that at home they were shocked! lol!

Anyway... We found a new beach!  We have to take a bus there, but it is a longer beach and the waves are bigger.  There are fewer people yet somehow there are more topless women. Go figure.  The bus goes around the peninsula we live on to get to lanzada beach and the costal view the entire way there is BEAUTIFUL! Evan got me into the water the first time we went but it is colder then our beach and I didn’t last too long.  The second time... we came prepaired. With toys.  Evan good a boogie board but apparently it is made for kids.  Not just people who act like kids lol.  It broke.  Luckily the plastic case is somehow holding together so he can still enjoy it.  It was really windy that time so we saw lots of wind surfers.  It looks like so much fun!
So I figured I could invite some comments by starting a conversation about rules for when you go to the beach (or pool).  There are a couple that I have learned since we have got here so I will start this thing off... Rule #1: Do not do your hair before you go to the beach.  If you do, I will get wrecked.  Even if you had no intention of getting wet.  Rule #2:  DO NOT bring food to the beach!   But if you like seagulls digging through your stuff when you go swimming and you want everyone within a 50 foot radius of you to hate you, then by all means... eat away.  Obviously I learned this the hard way.  It’s creepy how they sit and stare.  For hours.

Lanzada Beach

Evan's Sunburn

Santiago de Compostela

Before I start, I need to correct a previous post, I said that Pontevedra was the biggest city in Galicia which was most definitely wrong.  It is actually fifth biggest or something like that.  Also I apologize for not posting earlier, I tried to write and post this yesterday but the cafe closed so I didn't get to finish.
Anyway... Getting to the good stuff... Tuesday Evan and I went to the Capital of Galicia, "Santiago de Compostela".  It was very, very cool and very, very old!  Evan made the comment that the roads were definitely not made with cars in mind which is kind of cool to think about but not cool when a car decides to drive down the windy road you are walking down.  It wasn't the first city that has had really skinny roads but it was probably the most extreme case.  Luckily most of the really skinny roads require a pass to drive on so traffic is at a minimum.  Not only did we see old, beautiful buildings, we saw one of the most amazing buildings I have ever seen! (I say 'one of' because I have seen some of the best china has to offer, and I highly recommend a trip). I can see why people go on pilgrimages to visit the Cathedral in Santiago (besides the fact that it is generally accepted that the apostle James is buried underneath the cathedral).  It is sooooo huge and intricately carved and there is a huge pipe organ inside and lots of gold statues and it is just overall really awesome.  I would love to hear the organ one day...  Anyway, apparently it is a very unique cathedral and I can't imagine how they built it because it is around 800 years old. Give or take a lot of years.  We got to go inside which isn't always the case because it is in use still and if you pay a little you can see the crypt that James is buried in.  We didn't have time for that but we want to go back.


The Cathedral from the outside and the inside.  This is the only inside picture that looks ok because i was trying to take pictures without a flash since people were trying to worship there.

 This is inside a hallway of a university building.  The classrooms look the same as ours.

At a fountain outside of the Cathedral

A typical street in Santiago

The reason were were in the city with the long, hard-to-spell name was because Evan was being introduced to Galicia by the government along with three hundred other language assistants.  It was very 'aborrido' (which in Spanish means boring and uneventful) because I had no clue what was going on most of the time.  Touring after made up for it though.  Reyes is one of the teachers Evan works with us and she is the one who took us.  She is awesome!  Not only did she give us a mini tour of the city but she took us to a restaurant and introduced us to some traditional Galician food, (not just the bar food which is what we usually eat when we go out). It was very good but different from our food.  They eat a lot of fried meat here but they don't add flavours to things.  For example, salad dressing consists of olive oil, vinegar and maybe a little salt if your lucky.  I kinda miss drenching my lettuce in italian dressing.  I mean here, you actually have to taste the vegetables. ;)  And butter and salt are things you usually have to ask for even though your meal ALWAYS comes with bread.  Also, a popular dish is pickled asparagus with mayo to dip it in.  Sounds appetizing eh?  It's probably not so bad but I don't plan on finding out.  
Im going to end this post but if I have time I will add another post tonight.

Lazy Day

Hey all,

Today was a lazy day.  Evan and I got sunburns but his is worse.  It was the most beautiful day that we have seen here.  I think it got up to 30 degrees Celsius without a cloud in the sky and a nice gentle breeze.  Unfortunately for us, but fortunately for everyone who lives and works here, it is Saturday which means the beach was very crowded.
I finally got a camera which means I have some pictures to put up and we are going to get internet in around ten days :) it is frustrating though because to get internet out here it is very expensive.  Only one company does it which I don't understand because this country is sooo populated compared to Canada.  My verdict?  The companies are whiny because they don't want to provide service to a town that is 30 minutes away from the largest city in Galicia.  Also, when driving here, there were constant buildings.  I mean it was like we never left a town.  It isn't like we are in the middle of nowhere!  Anyway....
So far, beds here (if they are for two people) don't use two pillows, they use one big long one.  I just have to say that this sucks!... because for those who don't know me very well, I am picky.  Not only do I need my feather pillow to sleep but I need one in between my knees as well.  Usually when I am traveling it works out great because I bring my feather pillow everywhere and then I use the pillow they provide for the knees.  Problem #1: Evan did not listen to my experienced advise and he did not bring his own pillow.  Problem #2 he insists on having a pillow.  Therefor I have to use the not-feather-pillow for my head and the too-squishy-feather-pillow for between the knees.  Lame.
So Evan went to scout out his school yesterday (Friday) and he left me before I woke up.  I had a lazy day and didn't get dressed.  At around noon the doorbell rang, which i assumed was him coming home since nobody has tried to visit us before.  Luckily I thought ahead and only peaked my head around the door when I answered it because it was NOT Evan.  It was the good old J-Dubs.  Let me tell you that trying to hide behind a door and explain to people who don't take no for an answer that you don't speak spanish is not the most ideal situation.
Anyway, I have some pictures! Here you go:

This is our street

The fruit store by our place

This is the big beach from the pier at night :) My camera can't really do the view justice

Me on the pier

Settling Down...

Hey All!
Warning! This post may cause the reader to become overcome with extreme jealousy, read on at your own risk!  Lol but seriously... things are pretty awesome over here.  One of the teachers that evan will be working under hooked us up with an awesome deal and we are so lucky!  Our 'flat' (since everyone here speaks british english) is very big!  First of all it is furnished, and it isn't super modern or anything but it is very clean and well kept.  We expect to have many visitors because we have four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen, a dining room, and a living room.  Everything is fairly spacious except the bedrooms (the master bedroom is good though).  There is a TV in our apartment but I can't figure out how to get more than one channel, at least it's a sports channel so at least I don't have to understand what they say to be entertained.
So far, from what i have seen most people here hang their cloths to dry (even our hotels), which I don't understand because it takes so freakin' long for things to dry here.  So we have a washing machine but, of course, no drier.  We hang our laundry to dry on some ropes that go out of our window!
We are on the third floor of our building and luckily we have big windows in the living room and bed room  because we have a beautiful view that overlooks.... wait for it.... the beach! :)  Yup, we are RIGHT on the beach!  The downfall is that our beach isn't very nice for swimming, but it's only a five or ten minute walk to get to the best beach in town, so i don't complain too much.  I think Evan liked the beach at Vigo a bit more because the waves were bigger but this is still amazing.  At night it is so beautiful because you can see the lights from Vigo across the water!  It is still had for me to get over the fact that we get to be here for eight months and that it won't just end in a week or two.  Anyway, the cost of our place is 350 euros plus utilities which will be between 50 - 70 euros on average we have been told.  Our place rents it for quite a bit more in the summer months but apparently it is pretty hard to find someone to live in it the rest of the year.  The biggest downfall is that we don't have internet and we will not have it in the foreseeable future.  At this moment, I am sitting in a cafe, drinking a water really really slow...  Anyway we are working on it.
It is strange to get used to stores here because you can't just go to Walmart and get everything you need.  There are fruit stores and bakeries, and electronic stores and movie stores and well you get the picture.  There are 'supermarkets' but most of them are very tiny and they only have packaged goods and a small selection of meet and fruit.  But we have pretty much everything we would need close by.  It drives me crazy that everything closes in the middle of the day!  Why do I always pick that time to go shopping!?
Also, lots of people told me that everyone in Spain speaks english and I have since discovered that this is like saying everyone in Canada speaks French.  Nobody speaks english!
I bought a comic book because I figure that it will be a good way to help me learn.  Im on Page 4.
Anyway, I better go make sure Evan isn't drowning in the ocean... (and Christy, I really hope I don't have strange creatures populating our apartment) besides, my water is almost gone.

PS. I am so sorry that I didn't take any pictures, and I forgot Evans iPhone which is the source of all our pictures until we can buy a camera (Evan doesn't think we need one, so I'm working on him)  I will try to remember to put lots on for next time!

Adventures!

Still in Vigo but heading to Ponteverda tomorrow!
First of all I just have to wonder out loud what the deal is with tuna and pickled asparagus??  Last night I ordered a salad.  According to the menu it was supposed to have tomato, lettuce, egg, carrots, apples and onion.  This was the most normal salad on the menu.  Unfortunatly, when I received my salad I discovered that the sneaky chef added a whole freakin' can of tuna and a big long pickled asparagus!  Fine.  I ate it. (well... except the asparagus cause it was kinda gross...)  THEN, this afternoon, we had breakfast (because we woke up at eleven again) and I ordered a sandwich that was basically a wierd BLT sandwich.  When I took my first bite, to my dismay, there was... (you guessed it) tuna and pickled asparagus.  WTF?  Both times they added it and both times it was not on the list of ingredients in the menu!  This time I picked it off because there is a time and place for tuna, which does not include interfering with a BLT sandwich.
Anyway... Enough of that!  On recommendation by Evan, I will save an entire post in the future to the driving and parking habits here, so look out for that in the future.  Instead, I will tell you about our trip to the beach.  In an effort to be more adventurous, we decided to walk to the beach, which, even though we are only three blocks away from the ocean, was supposedly an hour's walk away.  Turns out it was two hours but who's counting?  Anyway, it felt great to walk along the beach(water is colder then a pool but not as cold as California) and lay on the sand (which was amazing and soft by the way) while Evan played in the ocean for an hour or so (I forgot my bathing suit).  The walk back took a little less time since we knew where we were going.  But back to the beach... you know how there are nude beaches in Europe?  Well it turns out you don't have to find a special 'nude' beach to get the experience. ...!... Actually it wasn't that bad... but seriously!  The top half of a woman's bathing suit is not a necessity but an option over here.
Other news... siestas are in effect even this far north.  Stores are closed for three hours during the afternoon and open until 9ish or later.  There are lots people walking around even at 10pm which is kind of cool and fun to be a part of.
Things are, for the most part, cheaper here (like a one liter bottle of water for a quarter (counting the exchange).  And I just tried a Kit Kat bar, ready to be disappointed (because in the states Kit Kat's taste like cardboard), but it is actually better!  Mmmm... European chocolate...
I would love to fill you in on more interesting facts but i gotta go cause my handsome interpreter wants the lap top...

Oh yeah... here is a picture I took at the beach, its not very good because it is so humid that it's hazy.

Here at Last!

So.  It has been an interesting week full of craziness.  Everything from Air Canada threatening to strike the day we left to me getting really sick three days before we left.  But it is all fine because we are finally here.  (and when I say that i mean Vigo, Spain)  We still don't have a place to live so that will probably fill a good amount of our time in the near future and our internal clocks are a tad bit off (to say the least) but it is awesome to be here finally.  Flying in was really cool!  It is so green here!  Looking out the window you could see dark green hills with light green patches and little clumps of houses in the light green patches.  Our hotel is pretty cheep... only 52 euros per night and its pretty nice, just really small but I hear we better get used to that.  I haven't figured out what the little toilette sized sink in our bathroom is for, so if anyone wants to enlighten me, go for it!  Going on a walk, at three in the morning was fantastic because we pretty much had the whole street to ourselves.  Some streets are cobble stone, a lot of the buildings are really old with cool architecture and we even saw an orange tree!  I am going to work on getting a camera so I can post lost of pictures but for now I have one that I took with Evan's iPhone out of our window:

Update

Everyone reading this needs to search Google Images of Sanxenxo, Spain and then try to control your jealousy!  I put a picture up but, so you get an idea, this is the tourist capital of Galicia and there are a lot of amazing beaches and resorts.  Not that I'm complaining, but it is kind of ironic we are going to the one 'modern' place in Galacia since we chose Galacia for the old culture and architecture.
As far as preparation goes, we have our plane tickets, Evan is waiting on his visa which *fingers crossed* will be here in time! (If not.... I believe we have, what they call in Spanish, 'un gran problema') For my visa we have been told that I don't have to worry about a visa since I have a right to be with my husband.  Hopefully that doesn't turn out to be bad information, but if it is... we will just have to leave the country a couple of times during the year.  Oh darn!
Anyway... Short update, hope you feel enlightened!

Adios!

So northern Spain it is supposed to be windy and rainy and Galicia is the windiest and rainiest of them all!  I'm thinking a combination of Pincher Creak and Vancouver... BUT!  January is the coldest month and the average temperature is..... wait for it.... 15 degrees!  That is what keeps me through the miserable whether we have been having (except for today and yesterday which have been beautiful!)  but beautiful here means 10ish and sunny.  Oh man I can't wait to think that 10 is freezing cold!

The Beginning...

OK... So I'm not the greatest writer and I am a really big procrastinator but I really want a way for my family and friends to check up on me without writing a crazy amount of emails.  Also this will be kind of Journal for my trip.
First, maybe I should explain the whole situation.  My husband Evan (Blae for some, but I will always call him Evan) applied for a program through the Spanish Government where you go to Spain and work at a school 12-16 hours a week and get paid min 700 euros per month to do it.  There are 2000 people from Canada and the States who do this every year.  We finally got our general placement to 'Galicia' which is a fairly large 'autonomous community' (according to wikipedia) in the North-West corner of Spain just above Portugal!  It is one of the most beautiful places in Spain, unfortunately the main reason it is so beautiful is because they get a lot of rain!  Its kind of like the slightly warmer version of south BC... Evan is ecstatic about this because apparently he loves rain, while I can't decide whether trading a little snow for a lot rain is worth it.  I'll keep you posted on that one.  Also the official language is 'Galician' which is related to Spanish but is also quiet different.
Anyway, we have been checking out as many websites and pictures and anything about Galicia that we can get our hands on.  (sometimes it would work better if I could read Spanish).  We have to wait to see exactly where in Galicia we are going but hopefully that won't take too long.  I will tell you as soon as I know!
On another note, I'm a little worried about getting a Visa because Evan is getting a student Visa and I don't think what I will be doing could qualify.  I plan on using this as an opportunity to learn lots but not from a school.  I want to trade my knowledge of English for Spanish and Guitar lessons  Since we should have lots of free time we plan on doing as many amazing, cool things as possible!