The Art of Tereré

Whenever my mum, my brother and me are together we sit with some "tereré rupa" (paraguayan version of tapas or snacks meant for before and during the rounds of terere) and our tereré passing hands back and forth...

Tereré is the paraguayan national beverage. It's a cold infusion of yerba mate that is served in a "guampa" which is like a jug or cup  usually made of a cow's horn or wood where cold iced water mixed with all sorts of medicinal plants is pour over the yerba mate and is drank through a "bombilla" which functions as a straw with a filter. The person in charge of serving the tereré will pour water into the guampa and pass it around in a circle to any visiting participants. Nobody worries about sanitation here; everyone drinks from the same "bombilla" or straw.

Doesn't matter your age or social layer... tereré is for everyone

Even children drink tereré.
Photo from Abrilespy

The art of drinking tereré is something every single paraguayo masters, and I might say that before Facebook, Twitter or blogs existed, the "tereré" time was the place to go to chat, meet friends, and learn all the freshes gossips in town, who was dating who and what were the latest news in the surroundings. Tereré time is the "Hangout" of the paraguayans and it is common to be offered a tereré while visiting a house. You could also use tereré time as a psychiatric consultation where to try and solve your most inner troubles or just chill out and talk about football (futbol).

Photo from Abrilespy

It is a social art.

If you ever visit Paraguay you will see the ubicuos "tereré" everywhere. If you want to try it out you just need to ask anyone and you would be welcome to join the "tereré" circle. It links friends, family neighbors, colleagues and strangers. When you have Tereré, life is good. When you have tereré everything is "tranquilo".

.. the most important thing is that refreshing hand that is extended
from man to woman, from father to son, from grandfather to grandson and back again.
Without regards to classes, genres or age, because the tereré is a bond between people.
Photo and text translated from Abrilespy

The "tereré" is refreshing, it is welcoming, it is cool, it is amicable, it is relaxed like most paraguayans. If you have a word to describe paraguayans it would most likely be "tranquilo". " Tranquilo" is not simple to translate... it would be something like relax, no worries, no hurry, be at ease. Tranquilo is not just a word; it’s a state of being, it is Hakuna Matata.

One sure sign to spot a paraguayan anywhere in the world is the sign of the "termo" and the "guampa" that goes to every place a paraguayan goes. If not, ask any paraguayan you meet. It doesn't matter if it is in the United States, in England, in Australia, in Brazil, Colombia, China or the Caribbean.... the tereré will be there with them.

Want a tereré mi cuate?

http://www.ozy.com/good-sht/terer-paraguays-social-tea/1453.article

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A weekend in Madrid

This past weekend I went to Madrid. Since my DH is away on business I took the train and went to the capital city to visit my mum.

Madrid is a must-visit place to a lot of people due to its history, architecture and its night life but for me the one two reason to visit Madrid are:

1º My mum

2º A music concert that allows me to see my mum

My mum at the Tandoori Indian Cuisine

For me in particular, Madrid is not so attractive. I know a lot of people, especially young fellows who are totally enchanted by Madrid and that wouldn’t even think  about leaving the city, but that’s not me. Honestly and risking to offer a highly unpopular opinion I dare say I like Barcelona better, but before explaining why I like Barcelona better, I would rather say why I'm not attracted to Madrid in particular.

One of the things that put me off Madrid is the people on the streets. People from Madrid seems to be a bit bitter to my countryside taste. It is so difficult to find a smile in the crowd! It seems that the “madrileños” have forgotten its “castizo” roots. Walking on its streets all you see is people rushing from one place to the other, frowning and in their own bubble, pushing forward and avoiding all eye contact. People in Madrid seems to have forgotten how to say “Hello”, and “How are you doing?” Maybe it is because I'm use to the people from Andalucía where most of them are open, welcoming and very pleasant.

It doesn't matter if you are in Malaga, Granada, Sevilla or a white little village, you can rest assured that you will find most of its inhabitants will be willing to grant you a bit of their time and for sure you will receive a smile. If you don’t believe me try asking for direction in Malaga and do the same in Madrid and you will notice the difference. … And this comment comes from a South American woman who is used to the politeness of the Southern countries of the New Continent!

Nowadays Madrid is not cheap and in some occasions not hospitable, not very much “Client-oriented” as other big cities in Europe  such as London, Berlin or even Rome. There’s an article in the  Huffington Post mentioning this  facts among others as reasons why Madrid has been the only tourist destination in Spain to have lost visitors in 2013 (Source:  “Foreing turism slows down in Madrid” ).

 Madrid is a city that looks old and in a rush. Everyone is rushing from one place to another. Children, adults, seniors and even dogs!

One of the peculiarities that grabbed my attention what the people that goes to the parks to walk their dogs. You can be in a park with maybe a dozen of people walking their dogs and you’ll be lucky if one or two grants you their greetings and don’t even think about making small talk with other dog owners, the Flying Spaghetti Monster forbids! And this is a fact that hasn’t been noted only by me this weekend I took my mum’s dog for a walk in the park, other people have also mentioned it to my mum as well. It seems that you need to belong to a certain club or your dog needs to be of a proper breed in order to mingle with the owners of the dogs… and if you, as me, comes from a South American background or have the looks of a philipino or African, most of the people immediately assumes you are the maid or the service people and treat you as such…. That really so snobbish  and not nice!

 

Walking Rita in Madrid

If you take your dog for a walk in Malaga be sure you will be greeted, granted smiles and your dog will be patted and greeted as well. For sure. The context and the people are totally different.

I know I can’t make generalizations. Those are never fair to anyone. I know that you find black and white and grey everywhere but it seems to me I have been blessed to be living in a place where people care for each other and where being polite is not yet forgotten.

But don’t get me wrong, not everything seems bleak in Madrid. The capital city is a cosmopolitan place with people of all over the world walking its streets and visiting its historic landmarks and the night, especially on weekends, is colourful and full of life. You can encounter all sort of tourists eager to learn about Madrid. It is the non-touristic places that I refer to in this post, and that’s what sadden me about it all, because is in the non-touristic places where you learn about the true blood that runs in the city veins.

It is quite interesting to sit down and study how our different upbringings and countries of origin conditions how we interact with the world that surrounds us. While someone from Madrid seems to look the world through suspicious eyes, you can see on the same streets people from Africa with joy in their eyes, people from Asian countries  looking down to their feet, South American people loud and mostly polite, Nordic people with curious eyes and English people your typical tourist.

Park in front of my mum's flat

In my opinion, not that anyone have asked for it, I think that Madrid has a lot to offer and its people would benefit quite a lot if only they would be a bit more polite. As my grandfather used to say:  “It doesn't hurt to be polite”.

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London project has officially started

It's been a week since I last posted in the blog but so many things have happened lately I didn't have the chance to do it. I've promised myself to do my best to post at least three times a week here. 

London project has officially started. For the past year we’ve been waiting to know if my DH would be finally going to London for work. After some negotiation he finally came on board into the new project the company he works for is starting in London soooooo… we will be moving there sometime soon.

Bye, bye to Spanish sunshine and countryside and hello to one of the most talked about and exciting cities in the world. This new adventure will be a challenge in so many ways; I can’t really grasp all its magnitude yet.

Sun and beach in September....

It is a bit ironic that when we were finally getting to finish the reforms on the house we bought in Spain, we are living. Options of renting our house in Spain has crossed our minds but for the time being we are not going to be doing that. We'll keep the house here so we can always a place to scape to on a weekend .

Source: dinscreations.co.uk

DH flew to London today. He needs to be completely focus on the new job that’s why we think it's going to be better for me to delay a bit my relocation to London. In the meanwhile we will be seen each other every other week, sometimes me going to see him, sometimes him coming to see me here. 

People say that long distance relationships don’t work but we already prove that theory wrong once and surely we can do it again. (Read: Long-distance relationships really can work and Long distance relationships benefits )

What do you think is the best and worst part of a long distance relationship?

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14 things I love about my husband

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner so I have decided to do a list of the 14 things I love about my dearie husband, to try to express how thankful I am for having this wonderful man in my life.

Here are 14 reasons, in no particular order, for why I love him:

1.  He loves me for who I am and he tells me so often even though most of the        
     time I don't believe him.
2.  He knows how to say “sorry” and is trying hard to teach me to say it too.
3.  He never forgets to kiss me goodbye or goodnight.
4.  He’s loyal and trustworthy.
5.  He supports my dreams and tries to help me achieve them.
6.  He is my other half. I fit so perfectly in his arms whether we’re hugging, or spooning in bed, we fit like we’re custom-made for one another.
7.  He is intelligent, smart, competitive and ambitious which makes our lives    
     very interesting.
8.  He dreams big, and he isn't afraid to reach for things that many people wouldn’t.
9.  He is proud of us.
10. He is not afraid of experimenting things together.
11. He never yells or raise his voice in anger.
12. He has the best taste in music, just like I do.
13. He is a great cook and makes the best mushroom and goat cheese risotto there is.
14. He’s my best friend.

We've been together for eight years and he is still the one I long to see each day and the one that makes my day complete. 

Sometimes I think that we take for granted the good things and the people that we love, I know that I do, because is easy to get entangled in life and harp on any little thing that bother us instead of seeing the goodness around. 

It is one of my New Year’s resolutions to get better at not taking people for granted that and be thankful, not only in my head and in my heart but to actually say it to the face, to the people I love.

So what better than to start with the person I share my life with and let him know how much I truly appreciate him.

I love you dearie!

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Family under construction: part 1

I thought long and hard about opening up and writing this post.  It took me a while to put the words together, and figure out exactly what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it.  

Before anyone asks why I didn't tell you or come to you etc., this isn't about you. It’s about me and what I felt and who I felt I could really talk to and be vulnerable with, and who would be able to empathise or who could relate to what I'm currently going through. That being said… let’s begin.

Dear Husband (DH) and I met in a Halloween party in 2005Christmas. There was a gap in years between the two of us but despite that by Christmas that year we started dating. By May 2006 we were living together and by Halloween 2007 we got married. We’ve have so much fun together and we’ve grown up so much together during all these years that I can honestly say we are better together that we are apart. We have a lot in common and we also complement each other and we are best friends. What more could I ask for?

We have a great life together… we've had wins and setbacks and fun and we've been stressed and sometimes even despair… but being together and being best friends have helped a lot. 

In 2011 we thought we wanted to start a family, to procreate... it was about time we have a mini-me or mini-him in the house ... we thought it would be easy-peasy but life proved us wrong. 

  April that year I was diagnose with a myoma and it was growing alarmingly fast so surgery was required. I went to my doctor and she said that even though the myoma was growing fast I should try to get pregnant because if I went through surgery I might lose my uterus, which literally freaked me out. I’m not one to settle for just one opinion so I seek out another doctor which said to me that pregnancy was practically impossible if I have the myoma growing (and that my struggle to lose weight was also due to the myoma) but he also said that due to the location of the myoma I might lose my uterus. Not what I wanted to hear… now I had one doctor saying I need to get pregnant right away and another one saying that pregnancy was almost impossible.

So I tried a third doctor… and the third time was the charm. I called the Hospital Quirón for a quick appointment with a Gyno-surgeon and they said I was lucky as they just signed up a doctor and he had a day available that same week. This doctor turned out to be one of the most famous Gyno-surgeons in Andalucía… I couldn’t believe my eyes, really.

Went to the appointment with my DH (dear husband) and Dr. Perez-Bryan Hafner received us. He check all the paperwork I brought with me listened to the story and said he needed to see for himself… so up we went for an ultrasound… and he said that the two previous doctors were “alarmists” but this type of cases were his day to day so no problem at all. He said that in his hands the chance of complications that would result in losing the uterus were minimal if not almost non-existent and he scheduled us for surgery in 10 days!

Just a few months before my dear father-in-law Alan was diagnose with stage 4 lung cancer. In May Alan passed away, which was a very difficult moment in our lives. He was the most caring and wonderful person you can imagine and a little bit of light died the day he left us. We miss him a lot…

We had my surgery schedule by May 13^th, but we held the funeral that day so had to postpone the surgery. A week after the funeral we had the surgery and everything went just fine as Dr. Perez Bryan said it would go and he managed to remove the myoma without even touching the inside of the uterus which was a great advantage… we were so relieved!

Recovery was pretty quick, I was out of the hospital in 3 days and after 10 days I was almost completely recovered. The only thing I had from the surgery is a C-section like scar.

In the next appointment Dr. Perez Bryan said we could try for babies in 6 months and that because he didn't touch the inside of the uterus we could have a normal delivery. Then he transferred me to another doctor for the follow up.

6 month later (December 2011) and after all test came back OK doctor said we could start trying for a baby.

To be continued…

Part 2

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