Happy Chinese New Year! And Carnaval! And Valentine´s Day…

Lots of celebrations going on these days, getting myself ready for the Year of the Tiger! There´s going to be a parade and a food festival here in downtown Madrid this weekend, so it should be fun finding the familiar from home here in España.

Today all of our kids dressed up as animals for Carnaval… many insects, farm animals, sea animals, etc. to add to the collection of the savage species of homo sapiens they already are. We had a costume contest and went to see a marching band play (while the children ran around madly on all fours in the gymnasium). I think we have some more festivities coming up in the afternoon. Afterwards I am going to go home and shut myself in from the terrible cold and make some hot chocolate. Speaking of which, I must share the secret recipe…

I´ve been telling people that I feel as if I´m in hibernation mood. Eating and sleeping a lot, not feeling like going outside into the cold, getting tired easily and looking forward to getting into the warm cocoon of my bed… As we´ve always said during our New York winters: ¨It´ll never be warm again!!¨ Hopefully there´ll only be two or three more weeks of this weather and then Madrid will again be the playground of booze and sun like I´d always known it.

"What is the shorter month of the year?"

It´s already February! The time of rebajas shopping, Chinese New Year, more cold weather, and…not much more really. Last weekend we went to see Chicago the musical, versión español. It was actually excellent! Kind of strange when you’re used to the original songs, and then suddenly you hear Castillian Spanish coming from cabaret dancers. I would really recommend going to see it, plus it’s much cheaper than trying to see a musical in New York.

Been eating lots of Japanese, as well as 2 for 1 dinners at Gino’s Pizza. On Thursday night we tried a new Japanese restaurant in Callao called Musashi, pretty good, and then we decided to stop by for intercambio night at Café Madrid. It was kind of strange and fun at the same time, although there were practically no Spanish people there. A good mix of people, more socializing than exchanging. Oh, those intercambio days…

Anyway I’ve been really slow at putting up more pictures from Costa Rica…will need to get on that soon.