Happy New Year
So it´s the New Year and 2007 is going to be VERY different. Me and Mika spent a quiet time in our house, watching a couple of DVD´s with a bottle of bubbly. In fact we toasted an hour later for Britains New Year, so I was there with you all aswell ;)
Now´we had a busy few days as we had some guests coming to do art workshops. These Art Encounters were very interesting. It was spent making soul cards, these are collages on fairly large cards which represent something of the ´soul´ made from cut up bits of magazine pictures. Though the meaning is as deep or shallow as you want Perhaps one day I can show you some pictures on the blog of what I´ve done.
I also made use of the drawing set Mika´d given me for Christmas. Even though I hadn´t used coloured pencils since childhood, it´s was good to play around with that again and loved getting arty with pictures after such a long time lol.
The people in this Art Encounter had known Mika and her family for quite a while and they´re all Spanish. That was good for me, listening intensely to Spanish I managed to pick up on a few words. I may no speak it but can sometimes undersand it. Also I´ve taken to looking through the dictionary for word of the day just to help me a bit. I´ve had mes (month), barco (ship), compaño/a (partner), cacerola (saucepan) and cadera (hip).
On the 6th, the last day we all went to a posh restaurant, the waiters were almost looking like penguins, specially for Los Reyes Magos; http://www.secret-tenerife.com/2006/01/los-reyes-magos-epiphany-jan-6th.shtml
If I´d known I´d have gone a bit smarter than racksuit bottoms, oh well lol, I looked around and the other customers were mostly just as casual. I had three very big courses , the starter seemed like the main course! But still I managed to scoff it all down, YUM. Mika said she was Stuffed to which I replied "Hello Stuffed, I´m Adam." Sorry, I know it´s an old joke but it still works well...
I´ve also been to the cinema a couple of times, watching english films in spanish! Saw Deja Vu, Densel Washington spoke it very fluently. Mika translated some of the main points so I didn´t get confused with the time-travel or anything. We also saw Eragon. This time I insisted that Mika didn´t translate anything, its amazing what you can pick up in a movie. I reckon I could have understood it without any voices at all, it seemed to have quite archetypal movie ideas that could be easily recognised. But Eragon´s a good film really. It seemed a cross between, Star Wars(there´s rebels v kingdom), Lord of the Rings and Anne Mccaffrey´s Dragonriders of Pern series but even the best sci-fi and fantasy stories are influenced by others. I´m now reading the book the film diverged making it simpler.
Now here´s something funny, Mika talks in her sleep. Usually it´s in french or spanish so I don´t have a clue to what she´s saying. But for once I heard her speak english;
*whisper, whisper, whisper*
"What?" Said Adam.
*whisper, whisper, whisper*
"What?"
"There´s that thing..."
"What thing?"
She whispers "The mask."
Then says "Do you understand?"
"Of course." Because by now I´ve realised.
"What a stupid horrible woman... do you know what I´m talking about, it´s so hard to explain in english."
The mask being a reference to images from the Art Encounter. I told Mika about this and she suggested that it should be blogged lol, maybe watch this space... And although Mika´s very fluent in english sometimes it can be quite an effort, especially as she used to speak spanish or french allday everyday, with me she has to use english. Roll on the days when I get a headache thinking about what spanish or french lol.
We´ve also been carrying on with the gardening, even planted some things like strawberries. We cleared an area called the Goddess Garden. In the past it´s been dug up by wild boar. What we´re doing now is making a fence to stop then from doing that again, then we can start planting some stuff. Sometime in the future I´d like to put pictures on the blog so that you can see what we´re doing, and see the wonderful landscape I´m now living in.
One day we were doing the fence and Mika spotted a bat flying around! Broad daylight, a bat?! We didn´t know why but there it was for quite a while dipping into the pool for drink and flying round for insects. Then I gave Mika something to laugh about. She told me the spanish for bat, murciélago (rattle the R, lisp the C, emphasize the E and soften the G, almost breathing it out). After several attempts I still sound like I´m drunk, so went back to saying bat. The more I learn about other languages the more I´m certain the subject is stupid. There´s no such thing as simple, practical or logical and that maybe humans should either all speak the same language or revert to grunts and growls, so much easier lol.
Now´we had a busy few days as we had some guests coming to do art workshops. These Art Encounters were very interesting. It was spent making soul cards, these are collages on fairly large cards which represent something of the ´soul´ made from cut up bits of magazine pictures. Though the meaning is as deep or shallow as you want Perhaps one day I can show you some pictures on the blog of what I´ve done.
I also made use of the drawing set Mika´d given me for Christmas. Even though I hadn´t used coloured pencils since childhood, it´s was good to play around with that again and loved getting arty with pictures after such a long time lol.
The people in this Art Encounter had known Mika and her family for quite a while and they´re all Spanish. That was good for me, listening intensely to Spanish I managed to pick up on a few words. I may no speak it but can sometimes undersand it. Also I´ve taken to looking through the dictionary for word of the day just to help me a bit. I´ve had mes (month), barco (ship), compaño/a (partner), cacerola (saucepan) and cadera (hip).
On the 6th, the last day we all went to a posh restaurant, the waiters were almost looking like penguins, specially for Los Reyes Magos; http://www.secret-tenerife.com/2006/01/los-reyes-magos-epiphany-jan-6th.shtml
If I´d known I´d have gone a bit smarter than racksuit bottoms, oh well lol, I looked around and the other customers were mostly just as casual. I had three very big courses , the starter seemed like the main course! But still I managed to scoff it all down, YUM. Mika said she was Stuffed to which I replied "Hello Stuffed, I´m Adam." Sorry, I know it´s an old joke but it still works well...
I´ve also been to the cinema a couple of times, watching english films in spanish! Saw Deja Vu, Densel Washington spoke it very fluently. Mika translated some of the main points so I didn´t get confused with the time-travel or anything. We also saw Eragon. This time I insisted that Mika didn´t translate anything, its amazing what you can pick up in a movie. I reckon I could have understood it without any voices at all, it seemed to have quite archetypal movie ideas that could be easily recognised. But Eragon´s a good film really. It seemed a cross between, Star Wars(there´s rebels v kingdom), Lord of the Rings and Anne Mccaffrey´s Dragonriders of Pern series but even the best sci-fi and fantasy stories are influenced by others. I´m now reading the book the film diverged making it simpler.
Now here´s something funny, Mika talks in her sleep. Usually it´s in french or spanish so I don´t have a clue to what she´s saying. But for once I heard her speak english;
*whisper, whisper, whisper*
"What?" Said Adam.
*whisper, whisper, whisper*
"What?"
"There´s that thing..."
"What thing?"
She whispers "The mask."
Then says "Do you understand?"
"Of course." Because by now I´ve realised.
"What a stupid horrible woman... do you know what I´m talking about, it´s so hard to explain in english."
The mask being a reference to images from the Art Encounter. I told Mika about this and she suggested that it should be blogged lol, maybe watch this space... And although Mika´s very fluent in english sometimes it can be quite an effort, especially as she used to speak spanish or french allday everyday, with me she has to use english. Roll on the days when I get a headache thinking about what spanish or french lol.
We´ve also been carrying on with the gardening, even planted some things like strawberries. We cleared an area called the Goddess Garden. In the past it´s been dug up by wild boar. What we´re doing now is making a fence to stop then from doing that again, then we can start planting some stuff. Sometime in the future I´d like to put pictures on the blog so that you can see what we´re doing, and see the wonderful landscape I´m now living in.
One day we were doing the fence and Mika spotted a bat flying around! Broad daylight, a bat?! We didn´t know why but there it was for quite a while dipping into the pool for drink and flying round for insects. Then I gave Mika something to laugh about. She told me the spanish for bat, murciélago (rattle the R, lisp the C, emphasize the E and soften the G, almost breathing it out). After several attempts I still sound like I´m drunk, so went back to saying bat. The more I learn about other languages the more I´m certain the subject is stupid. There´s no such thing as simple, practical or logical and that maybe humans should either all speak the same language or revert to grunts and growls, so much easier lol.
posted by Treegod at 2:19 AM
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