Happy birthday :-) Happy weekend surrounded by friends

My friend Carmen arrived of Friday night. We prepared a international lunch to celebrate my birthday and Carmen's visit. After we went to a bar all together,.. The club where we were planning to go was full and there was a very long queue to get in so we couldn't,..
On Sunday we went to Brick Lane, we had a Okonomiyaki for lunch (I could read Okonomiyaki in Japanese :-) !!!!) And after we found a concert in a cloth shop. A handsome young guy was singing,...When the concert ended we went to visit Betty (I had been a long time without seeing her!) and we had some beers in Kentish town in the garden of the bar near Betty's place,...
On Monday was my birthday even if I celebrated it on Saturday. We met with Carmen for lunch and all the team came to have lunch at the Portuguese bar. At 6, when I finished work,.. we decided to go to take some beers, I didn´t know but they prepared it and all the team came again and we had some drinks together. And,.. surprise, surprise!! they wrote me a very nice card and gave me a lot of presents!!! :-) They are sooo nice!!!
Carmen left yesterday,.. she was going back to Granada to continue doing her final project,.. It was a pleasure have her here!! Good luck with your project Carmencita!! and next time,... we will visit you in Granada! :-)

Trying to learn Japanese

Few weeks ago I managed to hand in the papers for the Monbukagakusho scholarship. It was not easy though.

I had to gather a lot of papers: official acamedic schores, confidential recommendation letters, certificate of health, portfolio, an abstract of my thesis in English, CV in English and Spanish and the most difficult one,.. an essay explaining what I want to study/research there.

It was a nightmare the fact of getting ready all that papers while I was having the final deadline of the project where I was working on in the office. Adding the difficulties that entails the fact of being in a foreign country at the time,.. I think that was almost a miracle that I managed to gather all the papers in just 3 weeks,...

Of course, I had a lot of people helping me. My sister collecting the recommendation forms and sending them, David collecting the official certificate of my scores and giving it to my sister, my mum doing the certified copies of the official documents, my flatmate Eli tranlating the official document into English, Sharan checking the English of my essay and abstract, Vimal binding the different copies of the portfolio,... and a long etc,... I finally finished writting the day before sending it that was the last day,.. uffff!!! such a stressing time!! but now it is done and I am waiting for the results,.. :S Let's see if I am lucky enough and I can pass to the second stage,...

Probalby I'll receive the results this week,.. and if I pass I'll have to travel to Madrid to take an English and a Japanese exam so,.. since I've sent the envelope with all the papers for the scholarship I started to study Japanese.

I bought several books: Japanese for busy people was the first of them, and after I tried with teach yourself Japanes (45minutes a day during 6 weeks) but 3 days ago I called to the Japanese Embassy to ask about the result and the exams and they told me that the exam will be in Japanese characters not in roman letters as what I was studying. AGhhh!!!! so since 3 days ago I'm trying to learn to read Japanese,...

I've started with Kanji (chinese letters) but Tomo and Audun told me that it was the most difficult part, that I should start with Hiragana. So,.. now I'm starting to learn Hiragana and Katakana. They are two different syllabaries, one that is used for words with Japanese procedence and the other one for foreign names and imported words. They not only mixed these two syllabaries but they mix them with Kanjies as well!!! It's crazy!!! I've already knew these because Tomo explained to me some time ago,.. but once you start learning it you realized even more how difficult it is,..

Let's see what can I do,...

Dol per Juli

És molt trist el fet d'escriure aquestes paraules,.. de fet, es quelcom que encara no em puc crec,...
El diumenge dia 26, quan jo encara estava a Holanda, vaig rebre la mala notícia: Juli Jiménez havia faltat,.. aquella nit, prèvia a agafar el vol cap a Londres, amb prou feines vaig poder dormir,...
Per als que no sapigueu qui era el Juli us diré que a part de ser el pare d'Arnau, el meu noviet de l'adolescència amb el que vaig compartir vora 3 anys, el Juli era una bellíssima persona i un excelent cuiner.
Amb el Juli vaig compartir molts dinars (després de l'institut i abans d'anar al conservatori), l'arròs al forn dels dijous, els viatges amb cotxe cap a la Vall de Gallinera per passar el cap de setmana amb ells, el viatge a Cantàbria i el País Basc quan jo tenia 16 anys, i moltes converses a la casa de la Xara, aquells cops que baixava de Barcelona i anava a visitar-los, a ell, la Carmela i l'Arnauet,.. els quals sempre em van obrir les portes de la seva llar i em van tractar com a una filla més,..
Sento molt aquesta pèrdua, i sento profundament no estar ahí al costat de l'Arnau i la Carme,.. En moments com aquest és una putada estar tan lluny,... Des d'aquí, voldria estar amb tots vosaltres els qui sentiu aquesta pèrdua i en especial, enviar una abraçada ben forta per a l'Arnau, al qual espere veure aviat.