Sunday morning matinee

It's 2pm and the city lays deserted, baking in the sun. It's so hot that even the fountains have stopped working. All the people have retreated into the shade of their houses, having lunch and sleeping through siësta. That's what the city was like as I walked home after the Sunday morning concert I have just been to, a concert from Guillermo's band Union de Pescadores. The concert was in Mercado Colón, the art-nouveau market I've told you about before. (See a part of the concert on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1E9FiWAyDkA)I took my book and sat on a bench near the market, amidst a bunch of old folks. One particularly energetic 80-year-old Don Juan started telling me I was such a lovely and beautiful girl... After I gently turned him down, he went on to seduce his other neighbour, a lady I believe better suited for his age... :-D After the concert was done and most of the people were gone, I still sat in the mercado for a while reading my book. I'm reading 100 años de soledad by Gabriel García Márquez, a great book! And if you don't get lost in the complicated genealogy of the story, it's not too difficult for foreigners, either.



Yesterday, Saturday that is, I went swimming with Cécile. I swam for almost one hour and a half. I'm feeling very sporty here in Spain! :-) After swimming, we went to the terrace of my favourite café, café Soret, which is in my street, on the edge of a nice little park. We sat there drinking cinnamon-and-rose-petals tea, working for university and feeling very cosmopolitan! :-)

That night we both went to a party of a Swedish girl who is in Céciles university. Karinn (because that's her name) loves cooking and had prepared a lovely buffet of tabbuleh, a vegetable oven dish and a spinach tart (veggie paradise!). It was a nice party. Way too many frenchies, though. What I observe here in Spain is that nationalities tend to flock together. I just don't get why: if you're from France, why did you come to Spain to meet other French people? Why didn't you just stay in France then? Germans and Italians also have this incredible tendency to flock together. Meanwhile, I'm doing my best to avoid Belgians. I know my task is way easier than for a French or German erasmus student, because there simply aren't that many Belgians in Spain. But still... I know one Flemish girl and that's it! For the rest I really try to be with foreigners, to practice different languages and to get to know other cultures. Am I being snobbish now?