Puzzle

Slowly the puzzles of life here are getting together, and after I'll change from red to brown as a chameleon (you can guess: yes, I'm sunburnt), things will be better.

My new Spanish teacher has changed his tactics into the "no matter what I ask, Dori has to answer"-methos.... -.-




The high level of integration into work has started as well. Tomorrow I'm doing the 'how to open a gmail account etc. etc.' workshop.

Me. (Almost) alone. In Spanish. OMG.
i'll go studying...

Adventures accompanied by pictures

Thanks to the new friendship, Frank has told me that it's very much recommended for those who stay here for a longer period, to get a temporary ID. Especially because with that it's cheaper to travel between the islands as well. Of course, for that you need to fill out a huge amount of papers (I think even Lev Tolstoj would be jealous) and to take a visit at the official places to be informed that you need to go to an other place to register -.-


The cream on top is that when we start speaking and they realize that we are not Spanish, we get special attention and an "oohhh, you're foreign"-smile.

We jumped (or so we thought) into the big gastronomy life here:
tried to make the famous papas arrugadas (wrinkled potatoe).
The outcome: salted cooked potato.
And later on it turned out that we didn't make it exactly the way we should have, although I think that the taste is the same anyways :D
 
With the following picture I would like to disappoint those who have the delusion that it never rains here: 

Of course, it doesn't happen so often, but still... Running from the beach while raining is not so funny and romantic as on the movies when the actors are happy or even singing while getting totally wet.

But just to get to the bright side of the story, I went here:

And saw this after climbed up:

and this:

and this as well:

As the weather is good here the Easter Bunny came to visit on Thursday-Friday which means holiday, so no work at all :D


On Thursday we went to El Médano, where both Giovanna and I got back from with a nice pink colour (relax, now we are very bronze).

As a temporal Tenerife-citizen I would like to advice to everyone who plans to visit or move here to buy a BONO, which is a small card that you can travel with on bus, tram. Otherwise you can only get ticket on the bus for about double of the normal price. At least this is my Easter experience...

Friday, without chocolate Eastern egg...
rain, wind, but went to La Laguna, first because it's close, second because we needed to use our new BONO and so to try out the tram here :)

After being here for more than a week we felt obligatory to go out at night. Pretty unfortunate that no places were open :D, so we ended up making American pancakes at 00:30 instead of dancing... And after eating so much and trying to watch a movie: fell into bed... what a night out! :D

As we still don't really know anyone besides each other and the people at the association (and also learning from the night with the failed dancing), I've started the couchsurfing project. So far one, which means ONE, ergo 1 person has responded who is German :D  As he is very nice, he'll be part of my little stories from now on, so let's name him Frank (also because that's his name:) )
Regarding to the quick response, Giovanna and I went out with Frank and his flatmate and his workmates. As everything went pretty well, I rate the evening 5 :D

Easter Sunday in Puerto de la Cruz, can't and don't want to say more than this (besides that it was great):

:)

Happy Easter everyone!

And THE great day has finally come...

If you haven't found out by now: WE HAVE HOT WATER!
And so you know how happy I am:

The other hot-water news of the day: my flatmate was so happy that she tried palinka. The judgement: "mmm, quite good!" :P


Aaaaaaaaaand:
fridge - works
washing machine - works

TV - works (of course, tonight's football is the programme... no comment)

Of course everything got into its place in a Spanish way: on Monday the mechanic came to see what he has to repair, brought two shutters and said that he'll come back mañana (VERY important word, means tomorrow) at 4. He came, of course not on time, but that doesn't really matter, repaired the TV, the fridge and the sinker, but the most important: hot water: mañana at 4. Well, he arrived today around 5:30, but at least he repaired it :)

There are a few phrasis in my quickly developing Spanish that I stick in in every 10-15 minutes, (I think) without seeming to repeating myself:

Vale? - Ok?

No sé - I don't know

Yo creo que... - I think...

Giovanna pointed this out to me yesterday and since then whenever I use any of them, we start laughing for at least 5 minutes. I bet the others think we are crazy... :D

And so you see how many clouds are here during the siesta time:

If you find any cloud on the picture, you get one photo gratis!

Today on my way home from shopping I saw something at the traffic lights that could also have been an evening comedy. An ambulance car was coming so all the cars drove to the side and after it left, they all went back to their lanes. The problem was when a driver didn't recognize a scooter-rider on the way and so the scooterist almost ran into the car, but in the last minute managed to outdistance it, honking and pointing, and then easily passed the red lights :D

That's all for today, the 4-day-long Easter holiday has started so legs in the air!!!

Thank you Nori!

Please be very grateful to Nora Hunyadi at least for one minute because she made it possible for me to upload pictures here
(of course, there'll be a gratis for this)

So here's part of the already-mentioned park:

Square, with broccoli trees in the background:

And the gratis picture :)
(picture by Ama Rilla)

Dora la exploradora

If you didn't know her so far, this is Dora the explorer. I think she pretty much looks like me, don't you think? :)

 

We've discovered in the big shopping mall here that you can buy a waffle maker which bakes - obviously - Dora-shaped waffles :)

On Saturday night we went out to eat some typical Canarian meals, so to be more educated gastronomically as well. We saw a restaurant on Friday, which of course we couldn't find on Saturday evening :D But we managed to have paella and chicken croquettes (VERY delicious), although we've been informed lately that none of them is typical of the Canary islands :D

On Sunday I went for a little walk (and by accident found the restaurant we were looking for the previous night), during which I arrived to this place: 

(as for some reason I can't make my pictures' size smaller, a little meditation for now: imagine an arbor, some stone statues on the side and a few palm trees and everything is very green)

It's a huge - partly botanical - park, with benches, playground, a small lake, I think it's an amazing place, unfortunately it started to rain (yes, for some reason this element exists here too)

I think Santa Cruz can be best described with its trees that I call broccoli trees (see below). They are everywhere and are as green as emeralds:
as I still can't make my pictures smaller, imagine many many boles with broccolis on top. Beautiful, isn't it? :)

And so the first weekend has ended. I think that slowly we get more comfortable with each other, e.g. now it's no problem for our Belgian flatmate to sing aloud any time during the day or during having a shower. Although that could also be because until now only cold water comes from the tap so I think that the neighbours know when we're in the bathroom, because all of us is cursing very loud. But at least by the end of the year they will learn some other languages and will know how to swear in French, Italian and Hungarian :D

Linguistic snacks - chapter 1.

Among the many experiences I forgot to publish one (but probably more).
Just so you know the funny stories that language gaps can cause:
On my bank papers I have 'Office' instead of Szekesfehervar under the question: Authority; as among all the informations and datas I only understood half of the question the bank lady asked me.

Well, I hope noone who works in the bank will ever want to go for vacation to a Hungarian town called 'Office' :D