The Perfect Man - It's all Sarai's fault

Sarai is the one to blame for this post about "The Perfect Man" by Sheila O'Flanagan. She gave me this book as a present from London... Although it took me two months to read the first third (it starts kinda slow), I've read the rest in just two days. I was literally glued to the pages of this book... I read half in my second visit this week to Cristina Enea Park and the rest this morning... putting off everything else... buffff

In my opinion... the story line is not that original, the writing is cheesy, the development of the plot very slow, predictable and, the fact that many scenes of the book take place in the south of Spain, in a tiny village of Málaga, sometimes made me a little bit uncomfortable - made me wonder if the author actually knows what she's writing about... "Sierra Bonita", really? really?

However, it also talks about Dublin and Ireland... And one of the characters is half Irish, half Spanish... Who made me think of someone very dear to me. Moreover, the emotional evolution of the characters is brilliant - I really enjoyed all the subtle, believable changes throughout the novel. Lastly, it is romantic... And hadn't read a chick-flicky-bestseller in years... It was good for me - These last six months I actually forgot there exists something called "romance" out there...

**To Sarai: If this book was part of a strategy to stop this year's ongoing personal-emotional transformation into Samantha Jones... you were smart my friend, very smart... Thank you very much. I love you.

PS - The title is a link to O'Flanagan's official site. It has a very cute-very British ad about the book :)

Brain-deadness

Seriously. What was that? Was that a real interview or was he conducting an experiment on my brain to see how many seconds it took me to change between languages?

This morning I had an interview for an English/Japanese/Spanish  teaching position in a prestigious language school in Guipuzcoa. The interviewer was very friendly, welcoming and interesting and, who also gave me little "gifties" with their logo :) hehe But the interview itself... wow! He made me start telling the story of my fav book in English, and with a snap of his fingers I had to immediately switch to another language, adding French and Basque to Spanish, English and Japanese. Moreover, he made me conjugate obsolete verbs used only in poetry and asked me to come up with synonims for the most random words/concepts... like "body snatcher" and "hushed" (kinda gloomy terms, really).

Oh well, it was a good exercise to test my knowledge and language-skills... But it left me brain-dead for the rest of the morning...

Cristina Enea Park

On my way to the second visit this week to the dentist (who as soon as recognises my voice on the phone asks “what happened to you this time?” haha), I decided to make a detour and cross the Cristinea Enea park, instead of the crowded centre of San Sebastian. It was definitely the best idea I had this week.

The current park used to be the area sorrounding the palace and other private buildings belonging to the Duke and the Duchess De Mandas, who passed away without having an heir. The couple left most of their personal assets to the city at the beginning of the XIX century, with the condition that the park would always look as it did when they lived there.  Honestly, I do not know to what extent the city hall has respected the wishes of the Duke during these last 100 years, but crossing the doors of the park definitely seems to take you to another time.

Although it is in the middle of the city, the silence reigns, only to be broken once in a while by the sweet tweeting of the birds. There are little hidden tracks everywhere, each of them taking you to charming corners where you can read, take a nap, sunbathe, admire the vegetation and forget about the urban chaos prevailing just few hundred metters away. 

Anyways, I could talk forever and ever of this park, which has witnessed some of the most romantic and funniest moments of my teenage years... even a time where I was locked in the park at night and had to climb the walls to get out! Sillyness... The park does ooze an atmosphere that makes you fell like anything and everything could happen between its walls... And the "Be aware of the peacocks" signs and the "frigoteca" are just part of its charm.

On another note, my dear friend Sarai has become part of the oh-always-famous cosmetic company Avon and I thought I could put a link for here in the sidebar. Click on it, and if you like anything, she'll make sure to get it to you. Lastly,  my answer to the question I posted in the last entry... Nope... They weren't handsome at the central office... But a girl can always wish, right? :) Good Night!

PS – The title is a link to the official city-hall-site of the park.

The summer is over...

September first is approaching and my 2010-summer is coming to an end. After my graduation from W&L, my departure from my dear US and the ending of many important things that used to define my life, this summer has been an interesting one, in both positive and negative ways. Although I'll miss the afternoons in the beach, the ice-creams in the Boulevard, the funny Sunday-morning calls among my friends inquiring what happened the previous night and, most of all, the absence of the Basque-never-stopping-rain... I'm glad this phase is over and I can move onto new projects.

Sarai & I - Bus to Bilbao

One of the new projects is writing this blog, which hopefully will keep my English-writing skills from getting too rusty. Other projects include traveling, visiting old friends, improving my recently acquired French-language-skills and most importantly, finding a job related to my fields of study. Currently, I'm facing two weeks of paperwork and planning for my stay in France, in Brossac. I think it will be very exciting to write about it, given that it will a completely new experience.  However, until then, I have to deal with all the slow-paced bureaucracy to re-issue all my documentation, which got stolen/lost a little bit ago. Only today I went to five different locations (some of them even 3 times) to accomplish nothing, given that apparently, telling you which documentation you need to bring can't be done all at once... Why? I don't know... But I just nodded and smiled every time... (sigh).

Nevertheless, on a funnier note, all the going and coming helped me discover something new about my dear Basque village and its surroundings. As you might know, I've never been too interested in my fellow Basque-guys and their style... Or their height...(Usually I'm like one head taller than them... take no offense please!).

Bilbao City - August 7th 2010

However, today I was glad to notice that all the policemen at the different local police stations I went to were amazingly dashing. Were they always like that? Is being extremely good-looking a new requirement to become a policemen here? How can I get one of those to go? Well, this afternoon I have to go to the central police station in San Sebastian to continue all the paperwork... I'll look around and see if I can actually make a generalization about that :) haha Anyways, it's time to go, but I also wanted to say thank you to all of you who shared your time and gave me your support during these months of transition - you know who you are (especially you elephant-crazed person haha). Thanks for a great summer. Love you all!

PS - If you click on the title of this entry, you'll be directed to one of my fav songs which reminds me very much of my senior year at W&L. The pics are from my girl-trip to Bilbao this summer... Good times, good times.