Welcome to earth cute little happy alien!

My friends Tula & Mark just had a baby. They named him Zac. He is very newborn, very cute and very alien like. But look....he is smiling, I am sure at this age a smile like that usually is followed by a fart or poo but lets not talk about that, lets just talk about happy things, the wonders of life and why this baby has so much damn hair!

New Pink Shoes

here is a picture of my new running shoes. I think it the first pair of real sport shoes I`ve had since i was about 12, and I think they were the brand "apple pie" god I loved those shoes.

Being a runner can be confusing for my image. Today I said to Marcos "I feel like a rum" and he said "OK lets go, get your shoes on" "No, not a RUN", I said, "RUM" He was slightly disappointed at the mis-directed enthusiasm. Rum is the new Vodka, don`t worry, not the bundy rum type of stuff, more like a sweet Cuban Rum called Legendario, that is steeling my heart away from my 10 year vodka relationship.

I taught Marcos a new word the other day, slightly made up by me and one that is bringing a cold sweat to his mothers brow. Its.. "clean dirty" Its basically when something comes out of the dishwasher with some hardened unknown substance, you can´t actually say that its still dirty cause the "dirty" has theoretically been cleaned by the dishwasher so surely any germs have been fought. Therefore although the item is dirty, its actually clean dirty and can still be used without worry of contamination or infection. Thats my opinion anyway, Marcos was disgusted at first but now the term is really catching on.

Exactly 1 month to go till I´m coming home.... Yipppeeeee!!!!!

Farewell (soon) Palacio

Well I am still living in my apartment...not for long though. We were supposed to move out cause the landlords girlfriend got a job in Sevilla. The landlord keeps a "zulu" next to our apartment, which is basically a box room with a bed & bathroom, which he uses when he is in town. So the girlfriend was staying in that until we moved out.... THEN plans changed the day she told her boss "que te jodas" which is a friendly "go f*ck yourself". Understandably she lost her job. So after that we were told we didn´t have to rush so much to move out. We have decided to stay till we leave for OZ (1 month aaargh!!!!!!!) Here is a little pic of the traditional andalucian courtyard that is outside my front door. I sit in here with a little chair to steal internet from someone in the building... Its very pretty and I will miss it when we go.... Farewell Palacio....

Las Americanas

So I joined this "american womens group of Seville" not long ago, at the encouragement of my american friend sarah, its also open to non americans (there is another older Australian from melbourne!), anyone who can speak english, it was just started many years ago by the wives of american army men stationed at Rota. So Sarah also started a spinoff to this group for all the "youngens" in the club and the plan is to meet up once in a while for a big pissup and a good ol time. Thats what sold me, methinks.

So all the younger girls are American, and we are a poster group for the "learning spanish in sevilla" epidemic. All of us came here to learn spanish and all of us now have long term spanish boyfriends/husbands. Actually most of the girl are married, and have been for a while, mainly to avoid the hideous visa/illegal process & associated problems. So we all went out to a few bars in the part of Sevilla called "Triana" drank heaps, ate heaps and had a jolly good ol time. Here is a pic of a few of the girls and me (am eating a montadito . sorry!)

From left to right its Isa, ME!, Hoye, Sarah (the organiser), Amy and Kristen. You can see in front of us there is a keg thing on a table, in this bar each table can pour their own beers, its measured electronically and you pay at the end. there is a screen on the wall that tells you how much you, and all the other tables have had, so you can race other tables. I commented that you could never have this system in OZ cause we would drink like $2000 worth of beer, un-knowingly and then go - shit I don´t have that much money.... it would be very dongerous.

So Marcos just got back from a boys holiday in Sweden, here is a pic of the little hottie diving into sub zero temperature water like the psycho he is. He´ll do anything for a good shot.

Jobless AND Homeless

Its been an unlucky couple of weeks. my company has decided that as there is not enough creative work coming in that they are going to concentrate on offering only a marketing service and that means no more job for kristy. the job that I was supposed to be going to turned out to be all just a bit of hot air. so now this is my first official week of unemployment. To make being unemployed being just that much more fun, our landlord told us that he wants to move back into the apartment, so we have our notice and have to start looking for a new place.

so no job, no home. Thank god Josh & Sarah have been here to drink away the pain. They leave today after 19 days here, a decent stretch, and we´ve had some really good times. those kids are great. They arrived after 3 months in Vietnam, Thailand, Turkey & Greece so the first few days were spent resting and washing everything they owned. We went for a weekend getawy to Portugal. In which many hours were spent lazing on the beach reading such top quality literature as the Jordan biography. here is Josh with his book of the year, looking mighty damn happy with himself at finishing such a challenging read.

The book was actually given to me by Bec (thanks mate) who loves trash just as much as me, the book is actully really funny, though I don´t think that´s its intention and a real insigt into the life of a page 3 girl, I have no doubt that everything in it is true as no human would make themselves look like such an idiot by lying.

On the Saturday night we stayed up till 5.30am drinking red wine and playing the card game "shithead". The next day sarah cursed herself for listening to me that wine that cost 1.75euro was actually really good as she had the hangover from hell. She claimed it was her #2 worst hangover in her life - I felt good so something tells me she just needs to go back to drinking school. We went to the beach but sarah couldn´t even manage to get into her swimsuit, see pic of sarah in summertime black head to toe.

Josh and I got into some seafood at this cute little restaurant in an equally cute little village on the way back to Spain.

Me being unemployed was good news for Josh & Sarah as that meant I could go on a few day trips around Spain with them in their last week. We went to Málaga to see the new Picasso museum which was a little disappointing as there was no big famous works there. We went to Ronda a cute little village which has really pretty views, here is josh and me looking probably more excited than we should be on the bridge of the gorge in Ronda.

And then we went to Jerez to do a tour of the Sherry cellars there which are famous in Spain and sold all over the world. That was quite fun - everyone loves a cellar. There was one bit where they told us that there were lots of mice around the cellars as they like the sweet wines, and they had in one cellar a little setup of a bowl with a tapa of tortilla and a glass of sweet wine with a little mini ladder going up the side. This was of course for the mice and on the walls they had photos of the little guys climbing up the ladder to drink the wine! It was so cute!!

Back in Seville we spent all our time drinking. (Here is me with Josh drinking a beer the size of my head. He was a very happy aussie)

and continuing the "shithead" championship which everyone was now addicted to. The prize was a little wooden bull that I named the "Fran Rivera Toro Cup" and in the final games was won by Sarah. The cup is named after, Fran Rivera, he is my favourite bullfighter, he is a complete hottie and looks great in those tight little embroidered pants.

Adios Amiguitos!

Watch this space

Not me looking perplexed.

I so could be fired....Ok maybe thats a little dramatic, what´s it called when your boss decides to close down the whole creative department (me) but gets you another job in his friends studio?? Am I fired/transferred/retrenched?? I know one thing - I´m being passed around like a crack whore. This information has just come to hand today so watch this space for more info.
xx

12km....and I am ALIVE!

So I completed the run...12km and I am still alive...only just! There was approx 10,000 people, and only 500 of them were women! What a disgrace! At the 9km mark I really though I left my real feet back with the 8km marker guy. Of course my borrowed sneakers didn´t help. Marcos ran with me all the way, even though he could have probably finished it in half the time. He didn´t trust me and knew that I would escape to the nearest bar. Here is me at the started of the race with Lola and during the race, at approx the 4km mark.




The pressure was on in the last 3kms cause the car that goes last - don´t know what its called, wasn´t very far behind! I didn´t actually come last but i wasn´t very far off it. We had to finish in 1 1/2 hours to collect the goodie bag and be allowed to finish at the official finish line which was inside the olympic stadium and I finished in 1h 28mins. Just in the nick of time.
Here is me at the finish line.




As well as the mistake of wearing borrowed shoes, I really didn´t chose my choice of attire with much foresight, as I wore my "comfy" shorts, which literally at every step fell down exposing my undies, which in turn started to drop. At first I tried to keep them up but then got sick of constantly holding my pants. Many a helpful passers by noted this with an "excuse me do you know that you can see your bum/undies" YES i said, but there ain´t nothin i can do about it...I´m just trying to breathe OK. My fame as a professional sportwoman was also noted over the weekend with people saying to Marcos´s parents, "i saw marcos in the race, he was running with a girl with a REALLY red face" Here is a pic of my really red face and the medal of a champion!



Josh and Sarah have arrived! Great to see them and it seems that 3 years hasn´t past at all. We have a week of flamenco, eating and checking out the "australian" stand at the Feria de las Naciones (Nations Fair), which should be interesting and good for a laugh!

Much Love
Kristy

Numero Uno

I´ve started a blog. I know its very self important, but I´m pretty bored at work and I thought it would be a fun way to waste time.

The news from this end is that tonight i am running a 12km race along the Guadalquivir River here in Sevilla. I must have rocks in my head I know, I am being forced into it...it started off as something fun to do, but now Marcos has turned into a full on sportsman monster. He is acting like my trainer and am sure will be met with bitter disappointment when his protege stops halfway through with a "fuck this shit, I´m stopping for a bevvie". I´ll let you know if I am taken to hospital.



In further news, no doubt I will be horizontal for the rest of the weekend wishing for some tigerbalm to drop from heaven, until on Sunday my very good friend Joshua Monaghan and his lady friend arrive to stay with me for a couple of weeks. Am always very excited when an aussie comes to visit so i can pretend I am still in australia and we´ve just taken a holiday to Newcastle or something. (hence the change in landscape). We will probably take a trip to Portugal, cause its not like I haven´t been there 1000 times before but hey its a cool place and gotta show the aussie´s a good time.

Much Love!
Kristy