Monday, September 28th - Salou, Spain

Well after listening to my new neighbours in the apartment next door until after 3 a.m. last night, I definitely didn't get up very early this morning.  I cannot believe that people can sit out on their balconies and be so loud and obnoxious at that hour when their neighbours are trying to sleep.  It was most annoying.  They just moved in yesterday and I sure hope this is not going to be a nightly ritual.  I also hope they are not staying long.  Isn't that nasty?

I had my cereal on the balcony this morning and fought a real urge to drag and throw stuff around just to make noise and wake them up but I refrained myself.  Besides, they were up shortly after I was up any way.

My first chore this morning was a simple one.  I wanted to do a load of wash - some red and pink shirts - and get them out on the line to dry this afternoon.  Well, what started at 10 a.m. took until 3 p.m. and even then I had to take each one to the sink and wring it out before I could take it outside.  For some reason, I never got the final spin cycle so they were soaking wet.  I noticed this after the first cycle ran through so I thought I put it just on spin and started it again but then it went through the whole wash cycle again and still didn't spin at the end.  I then tried the quick wash thinking I'd get it but no, that didn't work either.  Eventually I just gave up and had to wring them all out by hand.  Then I put them outside but they certainly weren't going to dry quickly.  I'll be lucky if they're totally dry by tomorrow night.  Needless to say I was not impressed, and i have no idea what went wrong because I'd already done one load of wash and it worked perfectly, including the spin cycle at the end.

I did some blogging while the laundry was happening, and then I had my lunch.  Eventually when I had everything hung up outside I put on my bathing suit and went to the beach for a couple of hours.  I finished my book while I was down there and suddenly faced the dilemma that there were no English language books for sale in town and I had nothing to read.  So I went to the tourist office again.  They gave me the name of one bookstore to try and said probably Tarragona or Barcelona would be better bets.  They also suggested the library so that's where I went as it was very close and I'd been by it a few times. 

They were still open when I got there and right away I saw a sign for novels and one for Spanish and one for Catalan and on the row beside it were signs for English, French and some other languages.  They don't have a big selection but it will certainly be enough to keep me going for a couple of weeks.  I picked up two Ken Follett books, donated the one I had just finished, filled out the form to get my temporary book card and went on my way.  Oh, I did have to give them 10 euros which I will get back when I leave.

I wondered home down a different route, had some dinner and started clearing e-mails.  It was an interesting day on that front too.  It now appears that I might not be going to Malawi after Ethiopia.  I sent an e-mail to the other person who is going and commented on some of the budget items.  I guess that finally got her looking at the budget and she just said, "no way".  The two of us have to cover all the costs and the budget came in at $6,360 for three weeks.  That's food, accommodation, car rental, gas, driver/guide/translator (1 person) and some refreshments for the training sessions we were going to do.  We were already paying for our flights individually so Lynn decided it was just too expensive and called off that part of the trip.  I have to agree that it is expensive but I've been to Malawi and I know how remote these communities and schools are and I know we have to go to them because they can't come to us.  And we can't do it on our own so we need the car and driver/guide/translator and thus have to pay his/her expenses too.  There is just no way around it but the Malawi project was hers so I can't go if she's not going, and Canadian Humanitarian has to do everything through donations so they can't help much other than making the contacts for us.  I'll keep you posted but I think it's safe to say that I will be going to Ethiopia only this time.

And that takes me up to the end of another day, and I don't think I'll try to find anything new to write about just to extend the blog  This is all you get.