Pudimos! 1-0

It's been 44 years since Spain has been Eurocup Champions!!!!






(photos taken from El País)

We Made it to the Eurocup Finals!!!

Last Thursday we played in the Semi-finals against Russia, and won 3-0. I'm not a huge soccer fan, but I love watching the "selección" play.

This is one of the things I love about Spain...they know how to have fun! Take a look.





This video is from early in the night. A little later on, everyone was in the fountain and people were throwing buckets of water out from the windows...just for fun.

Tonight's the big night. The final match between Spain and Germany. ¡España! ¡España!

See more Eurocup fever here

Hot, homemade meals at last!

Most of you know that I work pretty long hours. This means I don't get home until 8PM most days and some days I'm at work until 9:45 PM. That's the bad part about working at a school that teaches morning, afternoon and night classes. Anyway, because of my schedule I have absolutely no time nor desire to cook anything resembling a hot meal. We've pretty much been living off of salads, pasta, sandwiches, pizza, chinese take-out and the occassional grilled fish when we realized we need to eat healthier.

Last week we received the most amazing gift ever...La Cocinera.



Holy, freakin' cow.

It's like a Crock-Pot on acid.

This machine will cook anything and will have it ready by whenever you want. So far I've made rice with clams, mussels and "berberechos", roasted sea bream, pinenut cake, roquefort bowtie pasta. All I have to do is add the ingredients and press "start". I don't even have to mix...it does it for me. I haven't been this excited since I heard the New Kids on the Block were back together :)

What's in the News

So there are a few hot news stories going on in Spain lately.

1. Transportation / Distribution Strike: due to high gas prices (although I'm sure it's probably a little more complicated than that), truck drivers all throughout Spain have been on strike since June 8th. You can just imagine what the supermarket shelves look like around here. No fruit, no vegetables, no fresh fish, no yoghurt...nada.

2. 65-hour Work Weeks?: the European Union thinks it would be a good idea to raise the work week from 40 hours to 65 hours. What the???? Have they completely lost it?? That means the normal work week would be Monday to Saturday almost 11 hours a day. The world has gone mad.

3. Droughts and Floods: every year on the east coast of Spain the following occurs - one minute there are major droughts and politicians want to transfer water from the River Ebro, completely changing its normal course, and then a month later it starts to rain and doesn't stop, causing major floods and damage. What I want to know is...there's gotta be someone smart enough out there who can figure out how to catch all that water when it rains and store it for later. Like chipmunks.

4. Any Soccer Fans?: I'm not all that keen on it but, today Spain plays Sweden in the 2008 Eurocup. España! España! Ooooweeeh, ooweh, ooweh, ooweh, oooweeeeeh, ooooweeeeeeh

Here comes the sun...

It's a miracle...we can finally emerge from the ark and let the animals go. It's been a looong 3 months of rain.