03.30.08
Posted in Lindy Hop at 8:51 pm by tesstess
I’ve been in Spain for the first time in my life. It was a little bit like the first time I was in France, in Paris, and had so tight with time that we ran around to all famous to-have-seen things and then ate at McDonalds. This time I spent my first day as a Tourist, had time to see Park Guell with the Gaudi houses, and then I didn’t see anything more. I didn’t even see the big cathedral!
This are my tourist friends, and also my flat mates during my stay. Torbjörn, Kalle and Katarina. Then the other Torbjörn came to live with us one day later. It was so nice to live with swedes, talk swedish and laugh at swedish jokes.
It started of well and we found the famous chair. It is in mosaic and goes around all this open place. Hard to see though under all tourists.
Torbjörn was a bit sceptic at first, but at last he followed the stream of tourists up at the top, and see how happy he became!
And we took all the same photos as all other touritsts.
This is Barcelona. And this is all I saw of the Cathedral and the sea.
More Gaudi stuff. Incredible those houses.
Well, there is one more thing I didn’t do these 5 days: sleep. Sleeping is a waste of time.
This is what I did: Dance courses (half Lindy Hop and half Authentic Jazz): 18 hours. Social dancing at night: ca 14 hours, and then yes I did some sleeping, but only 14 hours. In four days.
I was most tired the first day, then the dance gave me energy. It’s really like a drug, dancing. Even when I came back to work I was speeded for two days. Totally crazy.
It seems like people who are dancing every week are more tired than the ones dancing every fourth month (like me).
I don’t have so much pictures from the other four days, I was only dancing all the time. Anyway I’ll show you the few ones I got:
Torbjörn and Ingrid practicing on the course material just after a course.
Swedes trying to find shops which are open when we want to buy food, which is not when the normal barcelona population wants to buy food. Luckily we found a small store selling biological food, even if very expensive.
One of the nights there was a “group theme”. So we all dressed out as ship broken sails men. We had a lot of fun. At the dance floor it was easy to spot the swedes, they (we) were everywhere! And it was extra easy to see us since we and one other group from scotland (who came in kilts) were the only groups who had realized the group theme dress-code.
After some hours on the dance floor I had to change clothes. The jazz course which I was taking was showing the routine we learnt during the day. This routine was a sensual one, and I was not feeling very sexy in my salesman outfit. The mini-show went good. It was so fun to be on stage again, I really miss it. More than I thought I could. I often dream at night about Jump Session and showing. Well well, life goes on.
This is how the dance floor looked in general.
And this is me after my 18 hours of course. Tired body but very happy mind.
The last night I didn’t need to go to sleep since there were no courses the next day. The big dance floor closed at 2am, and then we managed to get a ride with a spanish guy to the after party. This place was more like a big living room than a dance hall and it felt like everyone in the whole camp wanted to go. It was hardly possible to move at all in there, the temerature and humidity was so high that the floor got water on and it became imposible to twist, and if you saw two square decimeters free on the dance floor, that was the time to do a swingout. At six a clock the floor was better and the space bigger. I had many really good dances.
It’s funny now when I have started to know a bit the european dance people as well, not only the swedish ones, and you see the same people coming to workshops. It’s a different frienship. Sometimes you don’t even know their name, you just know how they dance and that’s enough.
At some point that night we were worried about how to get home since the underground stopped at 2am. Well, at 6.30 in the morning the problem was no longer there since the morning traffic already had started.
After 2,5 hours sleep it was time for “lindy in the park” and all gathered and danced on a square to live music. I had lots of energy and could have continued many more hours. Don’t ask me what the people in the front are doing.
Slutet gott, allting gott. I’m already longing for the next camp!
Posted in Garden, Valbonne at 8:06 pm by tesstess
A couple of weeks ago I took these photos of our garden. I wanted to have them to compare with when later we have planted flower and everything is full of colours.
The most interesting photo is this one:
Can you guess what it is? It’s a hiding place, not obvious? When looking in between the back rests of the two chairs the frog will look back at you! He was sitting there quaking, really cute. Some days after he had moved to the pipe of the water can, not very safe either. Today I heard him in a crack in the wall. Funny that it’s still around. I guess he will go and join his friends when they start quaking later on in the spring.
My geranium/pelargoner are not too happy these days, but I have given them some engrais/näring now to boost them a bit. I’m also afraid I have let them too long when I was cutting them… but these are the ones behind where we hang the clothes so I really wanted them to hang down later when they are flowering. We’ll see if it was a good or bad choise.
Here is a small plant that we hope will survive, it was so cute last year.
And here is a big one which now is FULL of flowers. The only problem is that we probably should have cut it down because in the middle it is all empty, as you can see. Now it hurts our hearts to much to cut of the branches full with buds and flowers. Does someone know how this plant should be cut?
These two have so much energy this year. The first one tries to break the border and the second one (hm, don’t remember the swedish name now) we are really surprised about since it was so sad last year.
And these two to end with, our favourite one, the fushia which will soon start flowering, and then continue until late fall. And the cyklamen who have given as much flowers as you can see here all the winter.
03.09.08
Posted in Every day life at 8:20 pm by tesstess
It’s alive! We put out the frog some weeks ago now, and I’ve been a bit worried because the temperature the last week has gone down to three degres during the night. But just now he was quacking! Outside!
Anthony should have been skiing today, but unfortunately he is sick with fever. We’ve been coding on his webpage all day and it’s coming alive more and more.
The only time we lefte the house was to go go to the garden store, ca 4 minutes with car, and there we dreamt a bit about what we will do in our garden when it gets warmer. We only bought a litte bit fertiliser for the flowers and berries. I’m longing so much to put my hands in the ground and plant! We’re thinking of maybe try to grow some small tomatoes.
I tell about our very simple, very expensive but very good dinner. A pasta sallad with small pasta shells, magret du canard fume, mango in small cubes and small leaves of spenat/epinard. (*checking if it is in Klas lexikon*: but no, it was not there, I had to ask for it, what a luck that I allready knew it, but I cannot remember what it is in english…).
Kram
03.02.08
Posted in Climbing, Visitors at 11:52 pm by tesstess
well, then it goes another way.
This weekend Katarina came to visit me. On saturday, we had found a place to make a promenad on horse while Anthony would go skiing. Anthony realized on the friday that we only have one car so we had a problem, but this problem we solved by asking the neighbours to borrow a car from them which was not a problem. Then, friday evening when I was getting Kat at the train talked on the phone with Anthony who just had remembered that he let his skiis for reparation earlier that week and that it would be a bit hard to go skiing without skiis. Ok, so the car problem was solved another time. And a third time on saturday morning when the woman from the horse place called and said it was cancelled, I think because of the wind, it was almost storm. Me and Kat were really dissapointed, we long so much to be with horses both of us.
So instead, the saturday was spent inside, me and Kat doing pearls, and Anthony working on his website. You’ll see not too far from now (I hope) the new site of Anthony that his doing with some coaching from me. It’s a site about all his sport activities, where he will enter data about the things he does, and also have a kind of blog functionality.
Today, sunday, we have been climbing in Castellaras (one hour from us, above Grasse) with two other friends. Katarina said she was a bit scared of hights, but on her second try she was up at the top (which was infact quite high) fast as a squerril.
The sun were shining, and with 20 degrees in the shadow you can imagine how much it was in the sun with no wind. Almost to hot to climb! Luckily it came a bit of nice warm wind later in the day and made it perfect.
I must say it felt a bit strange to see the snow on the other side of the valley… in contrast to the heat and the flowering fruit tree (Anthony thinks it’s apple or pear).
We finally moved out the frog this weekend. He talked to us the morning before so we know it was alive when we moved the big plant out on the terasse. It feels good to have kept it alive all winter!