Snow

The Siberian cold spell struck hard last Friday, resulting in a white weekend. We have heaps of snow (literally) and all the associated side-effects such as snowmen on the footpaths, charming kids throwing snow balls and a motorway blocked by a truck that jackknived into the toll booths.

It is beautiful. I hadn’t seen snowing so copiously for ages, ever maybe. Birds are more active in the snow, I believe, and each time I catch a glimpse of the outside through the window I can almost feel the crisp cold in my face and the slippery ice-covered ground under my soles.

Yesterday, Isabel and I went to the local library to return some books (and borrow more, since our stuff is still travelling somewhere in England or Europe), buy some groceries and get some cash from the bank. Of course, we took the camera with us. Most of the kids were playing in the little alleys around town, and the gardens and green areas around the town hall square and the library building were pristine and untrod. So after doing our business at the library we succumbed to the call and engaged into a fierce snowball battle which included high acts of treason such as Isabel shooting at me when I was not looking; fairly enough, she slipped and fell on her bum shortly after, so I could ungentlemanly take advantage and castigate her with a well-directed missile into her face.

I still have to unload the photos from the camera, but I promise to post a few.

100 square metres

We have moved into a rented apartment, that one in Zamudio. It feels weird calling it an “apartment”, because this word (“apartamento”) in Spanish denotes a very small flat, and ours is over 100 square metres. After living so many years in a tiny place, this feels huge. Sometimes I even need to get off my ass and walk to another room just to have a conversation with Isabel!

Now we need to fill the space, and Ikea is not too bad a place to start with. We are buying a few metres of bookshelf just to get ready to receive our beloved books after so many weeks crossing the ocean. I gather they come on a ship called the Rangitoto, expected to arrive in Tilbury, UK on the 13th. Let’s see.

Ethnic streaming

You get married. You are excited about living together with another person. You know that sharing your life, your bathroom and your thoughts with somebody else is not easy, but you are sure you can do it.

After some time, stress mounts up. Things are harder than expected. Disagreement leads to tension, tension to dispute, and dispute to resentment. You feel lonely and isolated because you stop sharing your intimate thoughts. You regret the situation and commit yourself to change. You will change yourself so the relationship works.

But you don’t. You cannot change that much. You don’t want to change that much. Could you ask the other person to change? Not really. You start acknowldeging that some degree of incompatibility may exist.