Sleepy Sara

I must warn you this entry should be shuffled around I´ve just re-read it and there are paragraphs which should come later or earlier or be together which I can´t do cause this program doesn´t cut or paste! Here it is anyway!



I am a sleepy Sara. I´ve had an evening of making asparagus soup-there is beautiful green asparagus everywhere you look here in tight bundles. Then just now I took my cousin´s 2 dogs for a walk. I´m not very fond of dogs at all but I try to hide it because I am their guest. I like walking with them though. I take them for their midnight walk I wear my house clothes which are a faded summer frock and some sandals of my cousin(there is no barefoot here) and stroll along the blocks with those 2 scuffling dogs as if I belong here. The night is so warm and there are other walkers and I feel safe like the street is my domain.



The centre I´m working in is really glitzy. I could see why people could be addicted to working in those kind of centres forever. It is made from an old nunnery with a huge courtyard. Yesterday I went to a lecture in the Sala Mirador which is a room on the 4th floor designed with wrap-around windows so that you can see all around. The lecture was about how cultural institutions have transformed the once very ghettoish neighbourhood of Raval(in which they´re situated) since they opened in 1994. I thought it was funny somehow that it was the SA election year too.



Today I was given my first proper cccb e-mail address of which I am extremely proud. I had to keep the glee off my face it would have seemed unseemly but this is my first job e-mail. The office is large and open-plan and covered with interesting pictures and posters there is that air of opulence that these people can dream up nice ideas and there is a well-oiled and moneyed machine of translators and accountants and graphic designers who will create it presto!

On my first day I was terrified I tried on so many pieces of clothing and none fit right I cussed and agitated and was jumpy in my own skin. In the end I tried to mantain a dignified terrified silence as I sat at my little desk. Short experience has shown me that silence is quite a valued entity and leaves you with lots of options when you are finally comfortable enough to talk. Silence could even be mistaken for being enigmatic or intelligent. Then I went to the evening lecture I mentioned and things improved.

I chatted to an international motley of students, mainly Italian, one of whom I work with in the same department. They are all incomers to the city staying for the long-term and they came to find work and build a new little Barcelonian life. They invited me to come back to their flat for a drink which I did and we walked through the crooked little streets of the ex ghetto in the nearly dusk. Monday is the day that Barcelonians throw out furniture they don´t want so the Italians scooped up 2 nice wooden chairs and other young studentesque people staggered past us with armchairs and TVs in hand



The Italians (and one Tenerifan) made a salad with pear and honey and bits of the epically large chunks of parmesan their mothers had brouht them from Italy. They were very easy to get on with and I felt comfortable with them, I think because mensches are mensches the world-over there is an international community of decents and lovlies which supercedes any idea of cultural difference.