Ok I have decided to do the occasional posting on this blog - as you can see it hasn't been updated in a while, but that is going to change. Why now I hear you ask (well you maybe didn't but i'm going to answer it anyway) we have just moved to Barcelona from the Bahamas and I thought it would be good to write about here from an newies point of view.


First a few details about me - I am an expat (not one of those I hear you cry), I have lived away from the UK for 12 years , 10 of those in Holland and 2 in the Bahamas. It's funny when people get an impression of expats you tend to think of slightly snooty perfect women, but honestly I am not like that in fact I don't know many who are. I have 2 kids (3 including the husband) who are now very adept at starting in new schools and have far more confidence and self belief than I ever had at their age.


The reason for moving to Barcelona was work. In the Bahamas you are not allowed to work unless a) you are Bahamian (fair enough) or b) you have a work permit (they are not easy things to come by). Anyway hubby got bored with the sun, sand, sea and beer and wanted to work again - so here we are Barcelona.


Luckily for us some friends from the Holland days are here so for the first couple of weeks we camped out with them, it was meant to only be for a couple of days but the continer hadn't arrived and we had no furniture or clothes or books or toys or.... oh well anything!!!


So here we are finally settled in our own house, the kids are in at school and loving it, hubby is back to living on his computer (if we need to talk to him we send him an IM to get his attention!!!), and i'm exploring my way around the supermakets.


Bearing in mind I have done this before (in Holland we had some very strange meals untill I worked out what was what ..... horsemeat stew anyone) I took along my phrase book - was that busy congratulating myself on how clever I was when I suddenly noticed nothing that was written on the packets is in my phrase book. That's because Barcelona is CATALAN not Spanish so what good is a spanish phrase book ..... no good that's what! What to do, the kids and hubby are expecting food so I pick up a chicken (easily recognisable) and salad and go home. Now I don't know about you lot but usually when I buy a chicken from a supermarket it's all nicely prepared, not here, I take it out the package and it's still got it's head on what's more it's still got it's insides inside it!!!


Being totally girly I shout for hubby (he used to be a chef) who comes through and proceeds to butcher the chicken, all the while he's going on about using the head and other bits to make a great stock - at this point me and kids 1 and 2 are think about going vegeterian. Yes I know I am a total wus and I shouldn't be eating meat if I can't stand the thought that they used to be animals, but i've always been like that if we went past a field of lambs on the way out I couldn't have lamb that evening - it's just the thought of never having another bacon sandwich that stops me - oh and I don't really like vegetables.


It's quite fun in the supermarket now, they seam to have adopted me as some type of project for them - every time I go in they have a new word for me to learn. Today it's the meat counters turn


me: diez (mimes slicing motion) jamon por favor (10 slices of ham please)


her: loncha, loncha diez loncha jamon blah blah blah (slice slice 10 slice of ham stupid)


me: oh Ok loncha


The thing is it's great that they want to help me learn the language and they don't laugh when I try but, my god, I did feel very stupid stood at the counter with about 10 other people all telling me how to say it and then making me repeat it !!!


Still it worked I won't forget that word in a hurry - only thing is when I came home to look it up in the Catalan Dictionary it's not there, guess where it is .... yep that's right it's in the SPANISH one!!