Allie in the South of Spain

Us vs. them Recently I was reading a blogpost by a fellow expat living in Seville in which she talked about things she had learned since moving to Spain, mostly pointing out cultural differences which struck her as odd, or annoying, or interesting, or just plain different from where she came from, in this case Britain. This is something I do often times here on my own blog since it offers a kind of catharsis while navigating life overseas. I tended to agree with her observations about Spanish people and culture (her post was obviously written in a light tone) but as I got to the comment section of her blog I could see that quite a few people did not. They (other expats in some cases) accused her of creating a situation of us vs. them, saying she was looking for the negative in her new home. She had idealized her country of birth and thus Spain could not compare. Here is part of one comment to give you an idea to some of the reactions:  Although I recognise some of your points...

Winner, winner, chicken dinner In the last week or so Jose and I have been to two dinner events with his co-workers. The first was a benefit dinner that helped raise money for a group of students who head down to Peru for the summer to work in a small pueblo. It was held at the school and though the food was just so-so, the company (we sat with a lot of other young couples) and the subsequent raffle were great fun. A lot of parents who own companies donate items for this event and most of the time the prizes are desirable, like bottles of wine or olive oil. Last year our table was pretty lucky when it came to the calling of numbers. In fact, our friends won a T.V., the grand prize of the night. This time around we were determined that we would win something as well (even if it was all up to random chance). Our table was hot again this year. I believe that everyone sitting with us won something. The couple who won the T.V. last year won two different items this year. Jose and I...

It´s the day you have all been waiting for Or maybe that is just me. It has been getting hot here in the south of Spain. Like sprawl out on the marble floor hot. That is where you can find Cooper most of the time. He will lift up his head and look at me with a face that says, whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy? I don´t have an answer for him. I am suffering as well. We live in a sweatbox. But there is a light at the end of this suffocating tunnel. Our pool is finally open!!!!! We thought that we would be long gone for the summer before our association actually got things all set to jet. Turns out we were wrong and I am so glad. It was torture to walk by the Olympic size pool with its shimmering, cool water as I was melting into a puddle on the sidewalk. We went for our first swim yesterday and will probably spend the afternoon today. As you can see it we had it all to ourselves for a while. The pool was a big part of the reason we bought this apartment. I cannot imagine surviving the ...

The late spring and early summer seem to be the time for sunflowers here in the south of Spain. As my mom would say, you can´t swing a dead cat without stumbling upon a field full of them. Around where we are living now, sort of in the middle of nowhere, outside of Seville capital, there are a lot of sunflowers (or girasoles in Spanish). It really is quite beautiful.  Spanish people use sunflower oil in a lot of their cooking (especially for frying) so there is definitely a demand for the crop. Right now is when they are still standing up nicely, not dried out and sad looking which is what eventually happens before they are harvested.  The sunflowers are actually quite tall, reaching about hip-height if not more. They are planted in rows which sort of remind me of fields of corn back home except for their smiling, yellow faces.  Sunflowers actually turn to catch the most of the sun´s rays throughout the day, not that here in the south of Spain there ...

The next installation in this series is covering our bathrooms. Our apartment has got two of them, one for guests with a shower and one off our bedroom with a tub/shower combination. One of the things I looked for (since our old apartment just had a stand-up shower) in a new place was a tub. Sometimes in such small spaces this can be hard to find but with our hopes of having kids some day, I knew we needed a bathtub. We decided to change out the floors in our bathrooms just like in the kitchen. I hate having to sweep and mop every day and knew with the light colored tiles that came with our apartment we would constantly be cleaning. We opted for some rustic tiles when we made the switch. Eventually we added mirrors, lights and closed in the shower in our guest bathroom. We also added some storage solutions to both. Here are the before pictures: This is the guest bathroom This is the master bath but the tiles are the same in both Now here are some after photos: Guest...

As promised, here are some before and after shots of our kitchen. It is pretty small, in fact at most 2 people can be in there working but after all the drama with the design (read about it here ) I am very happy with the outcome. Thank you IKEA! Here are the Before pictures: First we switched out the flooring. And then for about a day it looked like this: And finally: Tadaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

When you come into my apartment, you walk through a small entryway (which we are still working on finishing). Directly on the right is our kitchen which is galley style and opens onto a small inner patio where you will find our washing machine and miscellany. If you continue on, you will go into our living room, dining room combo space. It is the biggest area in our apartment and is more or less a rectangle. The space closest to the kitchen has got our small table and chairs while the area closer to our terraza has our sofa and television. This is where we spend most of our time. Today I wanted to share some of our before and after pictures of the living room. It is still a work in progress but I am pretty happy with how things are turning out. When we first moved into our apartment the walls were a yellowish beige color. We painted some walls a dark greyish blue and the others a lighter greyish blue. Neither color comes out very well in pictures.  Here are some before pics: ...

The Reales Alcazares are a complex of royal palaces and gardens surrounded by a wall, right smack dab in the center of Sevilla. The first time I visited them I couldn´t believe how extensive they really are and how beautiful. They are similar to the Alhambra palace in Granada and they mix together different styles of art and architecture, Christian, Arabic, Gothic and Mudejar. Again, another site we are lucky enough to have in our city. Last night, Jose and I went to a night tour of the palaces and gardens. Different actors and actresses led us through the rooms, telling the stories of different kings and queens who had once resided there. Interestingly if the King and Queen were to come to Sevilla, they would still stay in the Alcázar today. It had been hot all day so we were happy to walk around at night and enjoy a cool breeze. Throughout the palaces are a lot of fountains and patios, the overall sense of the place is refreshing. Each room has its own story and the acto...

Deep down I think I have always been somewhat of a minimalist. It is something I have been reading up on lately, playing around with the idea and I think I fit in with this movement, though I am certainly not as extreme as some folks who live out of a backpack and own nothing more than a toothbrush and the clothes on their backs. Minimalists are made up a whole spectrum of people with the overall philosophy being that you can (and most of the time) should live with less. It is good for your finances, good for your home, good for your time and good for your sanity.  I have mentioned before in this blog about moving a lot over the last 8 years and of having to quickly reduce my belongings to those that fit in suitcases. Overall it hasn´t been that difficult of a process for me most of the time. Things don´t hold a lot of sentimental value for me normally, nor do I feel a lot of anxiety getting rid of them. In fact quite often the opposite is true, I get anxious the more things are...

It has been a while since I last posted an apartment update. Let´s be honest, most of our big projects are now done and the last couple of things we have added haven´t been too exciting. Mostly curtains but since I have documented the process thus far, I am going to continue today. As a lot of you know due to my stress over this project, my mother-in-law was kind enough to sew most of our curtains for us. She does an awesome job. Please excuse the photo quality. We get lots of light in our apartment and I think my camera doesn´t know what to do to adjust. Here is our guest room. It is decorated in beige and purple. We obviously need somewhere to hang our coats that isn´t out in the open like that. Please ignore that they are chilling there for now. Next we got the curtains up in our kitchen. I had the hardest time finding a fabric I liked for this space. I ended up with chickens. In a kitchen, I feel they work. Usually these curtains are pulled back but in this picture they d...

This weekend José and I went to his co-worker´s wedding on Saturday. The couple got married in a chapel in the Cathedral which was beautiful. As always, the bride looked wonderful and the couple seemed very happy. Afterwards we headed to a cortijo (an old hacienda which now hosts events) for the reception. We had a great time! The food was really good and we got to catch up with some of our friends from work. Since this was an evening wedding protocol stated that women should wear long dresses. I had a hard time finding one that I wanted to wear and that was on budget. I just can´t handle spending a bunch of money on something I will probably only wear once. I ended up finding a dress at our outlet mall which was long and short at the same time. It had a long, sheer overlay but was a short dress underneath.  Here are José and I on the bus from the ceremony to the reception: And another outside the Cathedral: We wish Enrique and Elena all the best!