I Like The Way You Burke It

Wells is home now and he brought me these flowers off the bus. Who doesn’t love tulips?!? We went to Asian Ben’s last night for sushi and curry dinner. We both giggle when we see a Chinese person speaking Spanish because it is just so odd. Then we went to hear The Mending Hearts Duo at the Cultural Center. They are a Western Swing duo from Scotland that we heard first in a bar then went to see them again. So good! That is the second event I have seen at the Nerja Cultural Center. The first event was the movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. And yes, Brad Pitt looks hot when speaking Spanish. There is an event every single day at the Cultural Center, which shocks me because our town is so small.

I joined an art class! This is my professor, Blanca. I have also included a photo of the view from my classroom. There is no lack of inspiration here. I am taking an oil painting class and I have no experience so this should be pretty ugly but soooo fun! We meet every Monday night from 5 – 7. The classrooms are surprisingly close to our house – three minute walk.

Today was a terrific day. First thing this morning (let me stop here and remind everyone that ‘first thing’ in Spain is 9:30 a.m.) we took the dogs through Capistrano Village and up the mountain. There are three natural parks that converge on the mountain range. It is uphill to get through Capistrano and about a 20 minute walk from our house. This walk alone is considered exercise. It was sunny and warm and we hiked very far up and we turned around to see the town and water, which were really breathtaking. See the pictures below. When you are that high on the mountain the rocks are grey and striated, and they look just like elephant skin. The mountain is covered with wild lavender. I felt all Annie Oakley when I picked a bunch of it to hang in our house so it doesn’t smell like socks anymore. Anyway, I thought our hike was lovely and started to head back down the mountain. Oh no. Wells demanded that we go ALL THE WAY to the top of the ridge. I swear, he would hike uphill both ways if he could for the sheer joy of it. I rationalized the uphill part with, “If i go a little higher then i will burn off that extra glass of wine that might fall into my mouth by accident tonight.” There wouldn’t be party if Kate didn’t fall down so I included a picture of my hip from my tumble down the mountain. Sorry so fleshy. I should be tanner in the next few weeks.

[altpwa user=kate.s.burke album=20090226Hike]

Wells finally arrived Nerja today after a long 9 day sojourn. I don’t think I have ever missed anyone so much in my life! He is exhausted after spending 24 hours in JFK airport but we are back to forging our European life and I finally feel like blogging again! (I hit a little depression there for a few days and didn’t feel like writing.) Wells just said, “By the way honey, our house in Atlanta is REAL nice.” Under our living meager circumstances, this comment struck a nerve and made me crack up!

Anyway, you may have noticed a few changes to my blog. In true Kate style – now that I am infatuated with blogging I had to had the best stuff/technology. I have added a search button, funny and interesting links, and best of all (drum roll) a SUBSCRIBE button! This button is located in the top right corner and it looks like this:

Go ahead…it won’t bite! Do it! Subscribe! Simply put your email address in the box and wait for a confirmation email. NOTE THE CONFIRMATION EMAIL ALMOST ALWAYS GOES TO YOUR JUNK MAIL! So be sure to check your junk mail, confirm the email, and then you will receive a notification in your email of new “I like the way you burke it” posts.

Using a clothesline to dry, and a washing machine that takes 2.5 hours per cycle has drastically changed our disposition on what is actually considered “dirty.” For example, shirts worn around the house or out during the day can be clean for say, five days. Workout clothes are now on a two workout cycle before washing (excluding Wells’ socks that have learned to walk themselves to the washing machine after each workout). PJ’s can now be worn for about a week. And it might be safe to say that jeans just might not ever get dirty again. My personal snootiness has really been put to the test with the bath towels. Two uses of the same towel sends me to therapy so this has been a LARGE adjustment. Also, by design the bath towels are a lot less plush because it takes them so long to dry. For this, I am forever exfoliated. Then there is the question of what to do with my wet “littles” as the English call them. I am not about to hang my underwear on the clothes line so I decided to hang them from every door knob possible. And where are most of the knobs you ask? The kitchen! There is one on every cabinet door. This means that in order to get a snack, make coffee or get a drink we have to navigate through my throng…of thongs!

Ok, a lot of people still continue to ask for a proper pronunciation of Nerja. Nerja is pronounced “Ner-HA” or if you want to add the Arabic spin to it and sound like you know what you are talking about you can pronounce it, “Ner-KA.” We say Ner-Ka. Check out our house.

Wells flew back to the states today and left me with a broken washing machine. Yep. I broke it. Those stupid front-loaders are so flimsy and I quasi-ripped off the handle. Nothing a few phones calls and 45 Euros can’t fix, right? This was my repair man to the rescue.

On another note, I survived Friday the 13th without any bodily injury. Whew!

After a carb-rich lunch. Siesta!

We are still waiting for Telefonica to come to our house to set up DSL so we are at a bar and Wells is working and I am, well, drinking red wine. Who guessed it?!?! The first first is that today I signed up for my first tennis lesson. It is on the 18th at noon and I am very excited. Another first today is that I made bean soup from scratch for lunch. Now I know this does not sound all that exciting but I had to soak the beans overnight and I don’t even have salt or pepper or anything in our house. There is no pre-packaging here so everything that you cook is from scratch. I was planning to make chicken for dinner but the grocery doesn’t sell chicken so the only meal that I could figure out was bean soup. The only meat the grocery sells is ham (of course) but I have not found the butcher yet. Still working on that one. The soup was awesome if I do say so myself. I cooked it for a million hours.

The other first today was our first load of laundry. We have a front loading washing aching and no dryer. The clothes literally took about 2 hours to wash and then we had to hang them up to dry. I don’t think I have ever hung clothes on a clothesline and I am pretty sure that Wells does not even know where the “on” button is on our own washing machine at home so he sure didn’t have any experience hanging clothes on a line. He came inside and said, “Kate, I feel like this is sort of ghetto,” after he hung our sheet on the line. Very funny.

1. Smoking is alive and well.
2. Carb  eating is alive and well.
3. Smoking WHILE eating carbs, equally alive and well.
4. Spaniards are dead serious about their Siesta – don’t mess with it.
5. Tall, white boots worn over jeans is all the rage. Wells has much to say on this point.