Tuesday 21 December 2010

Hace frio

Brrr... it's cold isn't it?!

The pictures are of when it snowed heavily in London for a week (around the first of December), you can see; the train station a few minutes away from my house; my road, and my garden. See how thick the snow is on the trampoline? My friends and I jumped on it... 'twas epic!

I'm in Madrid at the moment. It's 11 degrees max and raining. Out of the three times I've been here, this is the first time I've seen it pour down. (Well, I saw it dribble whilst in the car up the mountain but that doesn't count!) The thing is, it doesn't suit Spain to be cold and miserable.

I remember hovering over Madrid airport last week, the beautiful sun shining on my face through the tiny window and thinking "Sun... woop!". It was my first time travelling to another country unsupervised and unaccompanied - I'm a big girl now! The funniest part of my journey was security at Gatwick airport. When queueing (I had to look the spelling up), I was like "I'm a pro at this!": I took my laptop out of my bag ready to put in a seperate tray; put my make up, perfume and cream in a transparent plastic packet; even took my boots off. I walked through the metal detector and... beep beep beep! It was my black denim jacket which had metal buckles on either side that made it go off, imagine that! I also caused a small delay whilst there, but can't be bothered to go into that. It was utter brilliance... end of.

The plane journey was also something different! I sat in between an Italian Tv freelancer who thought almost everything and everyone was crazy ( she had a few good points though) and a Spanish chap with tattoos all over his body (we could only see his arm, but he told us he had it on his leg and back). We just sat on the plane for 2 hours once we had boarded, while they were trying to get hold of the de-icer and then de-icing the wings. Seriously, you would expect them to be a little more organised! The wait wasn't too bad though. I had a few debates with the girl about religion, life and other less important things. As for the chico, he asked me about a book I was reading "The man who mistook his wife for a hat" by Oliver Sacks, he had read it a few years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. I asked him about his tattos and we had a "discussion" about the health aspects of that (pain, skin cancer etc). His reply was interesting: "we may find in a few years that we can't reproduce as well because of the radiation from our phones being in our pockets."

I watched a film on the tele the other night called "Unkown" or "Mentes en blanco" from 2006. It gripped me from beginning 'til end. The story line was brilliant; 5 men trapped in a warehouse with their minds erased by a leaking toxic gas. With no memory of who they are or anything what so ever, and a few blurred flashbacks of the event that brought them together, it is up to them to help each other escape, even though a few amongst them are dangerous kidnappers. I definitely recommend watching it with a friend and a mug of hot chocolate!

I'm meant to be flying back tomorrow morning. Not sure how well that's going to turn out with it snowing heavily in England again. Of course, I don't mind staying in Spain a little longer.