Can you believe today is Arthur's Day?

That means I got to Ireland tomorrow.
A year ago tomorrow, i mean.
On the 28th of September, anyway.

It doesn't even seem like too much time. My life here has changed that much over the past 12 months, and it feels so settled now, that it is hard to believe it has only been a year since I landed in Cork airport for the first time.
And tomorro has taken so long to come...

I cannot even relate to what was my life last August, to what I used my time for and to what I thought when I closed my eyes before I decided to follow M.'s steps and come, as aupair, to an area at the eastern edge of West Cork (AKA "Farran". It may ring a bell to you. There are some Woods there.).
Of course it never occured to me to go anywhere else but to Inis Fail*. Only the other day my mother was retelling the story of how at 9, in summer, I started learning Gaeilge because I had decided that I would live in Ireland when I grew up.
And here I am.
I tend to think that deserves one big loud FUCK YEAH!
It just takes too much effort to be loud sometimes.

[Will be continued...]

Culinary Experiment: Gravy

So here we are, the three of us, waiting for Omnipotent C to come for dinner. Of course he's late! But the chiken is going to get dry...

[So he came, eventually!]

It's after dinner now...
There was this mystery in our lives before, named Gravy :P Neither M. or I had ever seen real gravy, so we wondered what it actually was, we asked google, and we ended up watching a youtube video about how to throw away half the contents of your kitchen and get some gravy to freeze in return. I was obviously outraged! But it did make me find out what gravy means to be: enthickened roast sauce.

So that was the project for tonight's dinner and the reason why we had C. over- S. does eat well, but a whole big chicken for three can be quite too much!
It's all about being pacient, really: I put the carrots and garlick cloves and onions general veggies in the oven first, with some herbs adn pepper and salt and oil and a cup of water, on a low heat (160º in my oven probably equal 120 actual degrees...) and after an hour I put the chicken and the potatoes, with the corresponden salt and oil, having put the liquid apart first (you keep getting more, it's fascinating- cooking is fascinating, in general!), and let it roast ( heat up, too).

So now the real gravy making part comes! and it's very easy and very tricky too, because... you will see xD

You can eoither make it with olive oil or by gettin some more sauce from the chicken in the oven, that will very quicky start letting grease out of itself and into the sauce. Anyway- you put the grease of your choice in a frying pan and you add a small tablespoon of flour. You fry it, letting it toast a bit- A BIT, I BEG YOU, DON'T BURN IT! I know what I'm talking about! And then you add the rest of the sauce. It will get thick when it boils, what it does quicky. So in that sense you can say that gravy is wha tI had always known as the elavorated version of Spanish Sauce: there, mystery solved!

So yeah, that kept me in the kitchen all the afternoon (well that, and sopu, to be fair).

And it is a new week again tomorrow- isn't life just exhausting?

I'm also quite afraid of next week because new student and so on, starting tomorrow at 9.30. I didn't have the time to prepare the lesson, with all the cooking. We will see... I would like to get someone wish me good luck anyway.

The weekend was great craic, of course, with Dean and Supernatural and another ICC walk adn everything a weekend needs to include (lie- no chess game yet, I home to fix that soon!)

back to life

I was going through high levels of anxiety and feeling quite depressed since before I had to go to my parent's for the exams, but being there was (as always is) better than can expected, and now things are slowly falling back in place here too so my spirits are gradually higher.
The course hasn't started yet but I already have some of the books for my new subjects!! And that is only exiting if you're crazy out about discourse analysis, but hey, don't pretend to be surprised by my nerdyness. I never hid it.

M.'s boyfriend just moved in and I've said this in every possible social media platform but I can't grow tired of repeating it: he plays chess!! He does!! We were playing fridge scrabble yesterday (what, I'm not the only nerd in the house) when he suddenly asked whether I played chess "because it is the kind of thing he can see me doing", and I said yes, and he said we should have a game sometime. Yay!! I'm only afraid we don't have a board. Such sad souls we are...

And the writing club is being slowly worked on, and E. is going to find a way to be in two different places at the same time so he can still be in Cork while he studies in Dublin. I'm obviously very looking forward the development of such a technique.

Also, September is a month for beginnings, so there's lot of new people in town, and several of them are absolutely lovely individuals! To further increase my enthusiasm, some of those lovely newcomers want to be my students- oh joy!
Spanish tapeo meetings are back, along with ICC meetings, there is a Bank of Time to organise... we're all so busy it actually seems Summer was long and quiet,, it makes it almost feel like we did have holidays...