Sid's Travels

Hey all! My last email from Orgiva..... We´ve finally decided to finalize our plans (though how many times have I thought this?) and are now spending 2 days in Granada because you can´t come to Spain and miss it and we don´t want Alex to miss the Alhambra, 2 days in Seville, and then up to Barcelona. No Valencia (yet....it´ll come). Unfortunately, we´re going to miss our sister Pam, who is leaving to Berlin tomorrow. Savannah and I are now obsessed with the idea of Berlin (heard many good things about it) and are looking into going there if feasible.

Almost thought about coming home for New Years Eve as my Trailer Park Boys are going to be at a party in Surrey, BC (!?!) at a pub. I know, I´m a groupie, but the thought did cross my mind! But Surrey?! Why?!! There will also be a Tragically Hip cover band...Sigh....How perfect could a party get?

We never did save any dogs (yet) in Orgiva but there´s still time. As long as we´re in Spain, it could happen....

P.S. Any time you write a message to me on Travellerspoint, the world can see it! I plead ignorance and cannot be held accountable!

Will write again during my upcoming travels!

Shiloh

Time is drawing to a close in Orgiva ...we´ve spent the past couple of days chilling out with Alex and our Swedish neighbours. They are renting the house on the third terrace of the property we´re staying on. What a great couple - easy to talk to (very fluent in English and other languages), educated, artsy... Alex and Juergen (the husband) both have a knack for remembering abstract historical details and so had a great night chatting away and correcting each other on things that no one else would know. We´ve learned a lot about the EU just from talking to them and other Europeans. Sweden reminds me a lot of Canada. They likened their relationship to Finland and Switzerland like ours to the states and don´t have much use for the Euro. In fact, their country voted not to change their currency over to the euro when they joined the union - I had no idea this was an option. Tonight we´re having a live music session at our place with our landlords. Alex has borrowed a guitar and so he and Wes (landlord) are going to jam a bit -- looking forward to that. We´ve decided against Morocco for the moment. Would still like to go but at another date. We are thinking of going east to the coast and then north to Barcelona. We are still waiting to hear about work in Portugal but I´m getting anxious and so am thinking that going to Barcelona seems like a better option at the moment. Actually, I have no idea but that´s what we´re likely going to do anyway.

Christmas will be a new experience this year - we´ll have five of us from Canada together and are thinking of places that we´d like to spend the holiday. Will be strange not to be with family in British Columbia but exciting as well.

And that´s about it for now... thanks for tuning in. Feel free to drop a line ....

Well hello! While devastated over the whole Nick/Jessica fiasco (which we have not heard of in Spain but always predicted) we will pick ourselves up again and keep going. It´ll be difficult but somehow....

In reference to the subject title, I could have sworn I was in all three cities a couple of nights ago when our landlord took us to a rockin´ funk jazz concierto in Granada. We were in a seedy area of town (i.e. East Vancouver) surrounded by people mostly dressed in black (i.e. Seattle grunge) watching some amazing hot twenty-something musicians (i.e. New York club). The first band (aforementioned) kicked ass over the James Taylor Quartet (a British jazz band who had about a much soul as a wet noodle) but it was great regardless. We met up at our sister Pam´s after and spent the night as we had to catch a bus to Malaga (Ant. Banderas´ hometown) to pick up Savannah´s friend Alex the next morning. Poor guy... I was brought back to our sorry jetlagged state when we first got here. All in all, it took him 31 hours to get here with the bus connections, layovers and two flights. But he´s loving it here and is still in a bit of shock that he´s in Spain. I know the feeling! We´ll be here for a couple of days and then head on out. Very excited!

Anyway, that´s the latest....will try to get back to this in a couple of days. Thanks again Kels for the Hollywood update. We´re delightfully insulated from all that crap in our mountain town.

Shiloh (aka Ashley...or is it MK?)

Hola again! I think I left off last week with talking about our Spanish lessons, which sadly, came to an end today. It gets expensive but we have a good base and our reading is improving. We had our class yesterday at the doctors office (my apostrophe button isnt working as you might have noticed) so Savannah could get her rib checked out. I guess a couple of them are inflamed for some reason so, for 70€, she now has a piece of mind knowing that its not something crazy or fatal eating away at her lower ribs. Paying for a trip to a private clinic is, if you can afford it, worth the money. Our teacher, Alix, translated for Savannah, which was considerate of her. I think we gave all the men in the waiting room a good laugh. There were about five men who had to get a work check-up and so they had to listen to four women laughing and talking in a language completely foreign to them. They sat there looking at each other, rolling their eyes, laughing, probably wishing we would shut up. Of course we didnt....we got to talk about Canadian versus US and British politics; we were asked by our teacher if Canada really is the wonderful country it is portrayed to be around the world -- it was a fun and lively conversation.

We had our first interaction with the Guardia Civil, the local policia, and town hall yesterday (nothing bad...kind of funny in retrospect). While I was waiting for Savannah to use a public phone, I noticed a cat on the roof of the library with a plastic bag around its head. Of course we panicked, not knowing who to call as there is no such thing as an animal rescue group in Orgiva (or surrounding area). Thankfully, we were in the square where both factions of the police units are located so we tried the Guardia Civil first. In our improved but still broken Spanish, we tried to say that there was a cat on the roof with a bag around its head and can you help? Do you have a ladder? Not unexpectedly, we were laughed at. It wasnt mean spirited by any means, and we couldnt help laughing ourselves at how silly it sounded, but really, the Guardia doesnt deal with these kinds of things (who does?). He told us to go to Town Hall. I thought that we should try the local police first seeing as they were next door. We had to go through the whole spiel again but miraculously, the really sweet, and patient, officer came out with us to look and called Town Hall for us. By now, we were starting to attract curious bystanders. A bilingual fellow stopped by and told us that no one in Spain, or Europe, cares about its animals or trees (we guessed that one on our own). I dont think he relayed this to the policeman. Finally, two men show up from the city, and, moving as slow as molasses, tried to figure out what they could do. Savannah and I couldnt stop our laughing (trying to be discreet) at the whole situation. What else were they doing? Why not rescue a cat? Thankfully, the bag was easy to get off with a long metal pole (I dont think anyone had put it on him) and the cat ran off and we thanked them all. They seemed kind of touched and embarrassed because we were so grateful. It was the highlight of our day (maybe theirs too? ...doubt it).

We are counting the days until we go to pick up Savannah(apostrophe)s friend, Alex, in Malaga on Friday. I feel like our travelling will really start then (the whole hostel, backpacker thing). I have been researching Morocco, trying to get a better feel of what to expect. I am a little nervous but also excited. I need to find some more long sleeved t-shirts. There is no dress code per se but we will already get a lot of unwanted attention (like all the women do there) and if we can alleviate some of it, that would be nice.

Thanks for reading and I will try to get back to this later in the week.

Hasta luego!

Shiloh

Hola! Such a beautiful day in Orgiva today! And it couldn´t have been lazier if we tried. Savannah and I had our second spanish lesson today at 9:30am, a little earlier than usual as Thursdays are market day here and it gets ¨busy¨ in Orgiva. We bought a kilo of tomatoes for 75 centimos (75 cents so less than 2.00 Cnd...maybe less than 1.50?), which was great, as we go through so many. We´re getting to familiarize ourselves with the locals so we now get some ¨Hola´s¨ walking down the streets (usually from old men as it´s not cool for the younger people to acknowledge the foreigners). We have found the perfect tapa place in town (finally!). There are so many crappy, touristy cafes on the main street so we finally ventured to the side streets yesterday, where all the gems usually are, and found our little haven. It´s almost all old men who speak very confusing Spanish, but aside from curious stares, it´s quite nice. And it´s so exciting to see what the next tapa is going to be! We had battered eggplant, calamares and salad, fries and garlic mayonnaise (new for us...have never had french fries in Spain....).

But to get to the ¨Juan¨ part of the title....sigh...Juan is a 50 year old man who possibly could have been our landlord until we decided on our current place to live. He was so sweet and kind of gruff when we first met him but now that he´s seen us around town a bit, he always smiles and says his hello´s. Well, today he saw us wandering the streets during the siesta and waved us into the bar. He doesn´t speak a word of English but we had so much fun with him! And he thought we were 22! Or 18....wasn´t quite sure. We were able to understand him for the most part and when we couldn´t, he would write in our notebook to help us understand. He told us it was no problemo if we had a novio (boyfriend) but it was a problemo if we were married. I told it was a problem if we had either! Yet somehow, men in Spain (Latin America?) can get away with with saying silly, charming things like that. They are very open (and very shy sometimes) if they like you or think you´re guapa (beautiful). Somehow we managed to have a full conversation about whether or not being gay interests us...we told him it was fine in Canada but he said in Spain, it´s too ¨macho¨ and besides, why would you want another guy when you could have a beautiful mujer (woman?). Regardless of how I felt about that comment, I was just fascinated that we could have that conversation at all! We finally got a picture with him (I carry Mom´s little old camera around everywhere just in case). Sweet horny Juan....

Savannah´s friend is coming in 8 days. Yah! We´re going to pick him up in Malaga...a little south of us. I think that is where Antonio Banderas is from. I keep hoping to run into the ¨Sexiest Man Alive¨, Matthew McCognaughey (spelling?) while in Spain. I know he´s here with his girlfriend Penelope Cruz while she´s filming a movie (the English tabloids told me so). What was Juan saying about the difference between girlfriends and boyfriends and being married? I´m not married Matthew!

Anyway, gotta go! As always, thanks for reading (hi JoAnne!).

Probably won´t update until Monday.... I think the Internet people, no matter how nice they are to us, think we´re losers for the amount of time we come in to update our blogs.

See you!

Shiloh