HOLA!

argh! we are trying our hardest to get by in spain without looking and sounding like americans. hopefully our vocab of pleases and thank yous from around the globe (castillian, catalan, french, english, hebrew, indonesian... haven´t tried the last two yet) is getting us by.

well, spain is... WARM! SUNNY! everything you would expect a spain to be! we also had about 15 minutes of thunder and rain this arvo, but it cleared up quickly. since we last posted, we left england (duh!), and many, many thanks (muchos gracias/muches gracies) to the katz household for letting us stay, feeding and clothing us (literally in dan´s case), driving us to airport, etc. where would we be without you? ... maybe would have come to the warmth sooner... hm.

sunday night had a few people round to say goodbye, and played SNATCH (thanks SJ and es)... also played "guess who" with letters of the alphabet stuck to our foreheads, as you do. tried ordering pizza from one place, but they had "technical difficulties"... nope, not delivery guys quitting, not stoves breaking down... they had RUN OUT OF SAUCE!!! eventually got pizza and pesach was sent off in yeasty style.

monday went to aldbury for the may fair!!! again, this was all it should have been, combining morris men, maypoles, horrendus bread at the BBQ, and scones and tea in one scintillating conglomorate. i was very, VERY excited! maypole! maypole dancing! morris dancers (snicker)!

tuesday was going away day... was full of semi-sad goodbyes... sad becuase i´m pathetically attached to dan´s people, despite only having been living with them for a bit over 2 weeks... semi because we´ll see them again in late june or early july (and despite what they say, i´m sure they´re dreading it)... we arrived in gerona in one piece, having had a screaming baby on the plane with us (YUCK YUCK YUCK), but things went downhill for an hour, as the lonely planet taxi numbers didn´t work and the bus wasn´t for an hour, and we couldn´t speak enough catalan OR castillian to confirm our reservation at the pension margarit... GAR! however, we eventually made it in, and the hotel was nice - fairly big, sparse, clean... but, like all of girona, smelled of sewage. that´s not entirely accurate - the toilet stunk of sewage, and the rest of gerona also smelled like that fake coffee syrup stuff (what is it called? i know you know, mum - tell me!)

on wednesday we locked our bags at the train station and wandered through the old quarter of girona... so SO picturesque (picture-skew). there were little staircases (or huge staircases) at the end of every lane, and tiny little alleys leading off to cul-de-sacs dedicated to the virgin mary, and a MASSIVE catedral at the top of the hill! we ate our lunch of fresh tomatoes and bread (bought from a random little market that morning) with the catedral to our backs, looking over the burnt-orange tiled rooftops and other spires to the hills opposite. wow... it was beautiful, amazing, but pretty tiring with all the stairs and hills etc, so after walking along the wall and through the medieval jewish quarter, we went back to the station and caught the train to barcelona (we managed to get tickets! our first major purchase involving the use of catalan!).

the hostel here is very funky and relaxed - there is a courtyard with colourful plastic furniature, a roof-top hammock (both perfect for the consumption of red wine), a nice big kitchen, communal living space, dvd area... why even bother with the sights???

today, we headed off to parc guell... and OH MY GOD IT IS SOOOOO SOSOSOSO GREAT! it is unbelievably fantastic to be able to walk through the places i´ve studied, and touch the columns and sit on the mosaics (we ate lunch looking out over barcelona from above the hall of 100 columns)... we walked around for about 3 hours. fantastic.

this afternoon has been spent writing journals, reading, writing postcards, drinking aforementioned red wine in aforementioned hammock, and now writing to YOU! how special are you? pretty special, i reckon!

on a slightly more practical note, it does cost us to RECIEVE text messages, asl well as send them, so if you want to write, make it as hefty as possible! put it all in the one message, too.

hugs and WARMTH from spain! adeu/adios... til next time!