paraulau de dieu

i´m in spain, and the shift key is wank.

if you didn´t already know, i have been here for the past 6 weeks, living in a little fucking awesome village called la valldan, just off the town of oliana in alt urgell, which is in catalunya, 2 hours away from the fucking awesome city of barcelona. perdone the expletives. its just great to have time on the internet.

i have been in barca for 2 days now, and i´m basically transitting to get to bilbao, which is the final leg (if you call 3 weeks a finale) of my adventure, which is to go caving with them lot in matienzo. its ace.

this whole experience has been nothing short of bloody fantasgormastic. stopped by the local police twice for doing naughty things, but got let off when told we were from manchester.. and they went.. boo manchester!! go barca!! and that just tells you how bloody awesome the spanish people, especially those in the rural areas, have been to us naughty drunken british lot (i have been told countless of times that i should probably start refering myself to the british lot now, i don´t know why).

the churches here are awesome, and i was just at the catedral de barcelona, and was treated to a free concert by the hampshire county youth orchestra.. and i was well excited.. cus it was quite nice..

yesterday was spent bimbling around barcelona with this croatian guy, damir, whom i met through my couchsurf host, vic.. and it was also awesome.. walking by the beach and being all city like with my rolled up shirts, hollister shorts, sandles, and shiny raybans are just what i need after 6 weeks in rural spain.

the pang for the mountains came back in the morning when i awoke to find myself in a bed, under a roof, and no mountains. its become like a heroin addiction this whole geology and incessant walking hiking thing.

my bag is half full of rock samples, and ´my handcarry luggage is stuffed full of geological books, and maps and work stuff.

me and frosty went down to the turistic informacion near the port today, and we asked, donde es la cartografia institut de catalunya? (where is the cartographic institute of catalunya?) and the ladies behind the desk were well shocked and there was about 30 seconds of pandemonium behind the counter before they decided to use the internet to find us our stupidly demanding request. hell, we weren´t even going to go there.. but we thought we could if it was near enough, and buy ourselves some pretty comarcal geological maps, which i managed to get from the generalitat llibreria.

i´m sorry the post is peppered with catalonian or spanish terms, but its so hard when no one hable ingles to you when you´´re out and about, cept when you´re with the british lot. but we´re so used to it now.

yesterday, in macs, when me and damir went for a wee, there was this tanned gentleman behind me waiting in the queue, when i came out, i told him before he entered the loo, arriba muchos colchar (very hot in there), the loo was sweltering hot for some weird reason. he stared at me.. and went.. what?! in an american accent.. followed by a sheepish and slow response of.. i don´t know spanish!! i roared with laughter like a madman for my stupidity, and apologised and i said i thought he was spanish and i just wanted to tell him that it was very hot inside.. and we had a good laugh about it.

life here is pretty good and slow. and the heat is doing my brain some good. going to beach to have my ensalada dinner now. poo.