Watching What You Say

I´m going to have a little bit of a rant here, so before I begin, a bit of good news is we´ll FINALLY be moving into our new house in the next 2-3 weeks, hopefully we´ll find out tomorrow the date to finalise the sale!! My pinterest House folder is growing by the second and i´ve already mentally spent more money than we´ve got so it´s safe to say i´m pretty excited to be in our own space again!

Now here comes the rant...

At least once a week I/we get asked the question "When are you going to have kids?" Now, i´m a person with A LOT of patience but ENOUGH IS ENOUGH, it has to be the least thought through, most insensitive question i´ve ever been asked in my life.

I´d like to say to the people who ask this:

• You don´t know if we want to have children or not.
• You don´t know if we CAN have children or not.
• You don´t know if we´ve spent the last year trying, but not getting pregnant.
• YOU DON´T KNOW ANYTHING...

I obviously don´t say this, i´d like to, but I don´t. I usually do one of the following:

• Smile falsly.
• Say something along the lines of "Well, we don´t even have a house yet..." (Officially can not say this anymore)
• Change the subject. 

The truth is, i´d love to have a baby, we´re planning on trying as soon as we´re settled in the house but i´m not going to tell every Tom, Dick and Harry my business, what am I supposed to say? "Well actually i´ve spent the past year and a half with the alarm on my biological clock stuck on ring and I can´t find the snooze button!" or "Well actually some days I can´t even face to see children because I want one so bad, and isn´t it ironic that i´m a teacher and i´m with them all day?!" 

You should never ask someone when are they going to have children, you don´t know what that person is going through in their life in regards to that subject. I don´t go around asking single people "And, so when are you going to get a boy/girlfriend?" It´s insensitive, not every single person wants to have a partner, just like not every person who has a partner wants to have children.  

A little word to the wise, i´m getting close to snapping. Yesterday after being asked that question twice in the space of half an hour I plucked up the courage to say something i´ve been dying to say for a long time, I didn´t go full on crazy but the conversation kind of went like this:

Them: "So, now you have a house, when are you going to have babies?"

Me: "Do you know how often we get asked that?"

Them: "Yeh but when I ask, i´m only joking..."

Me: "Yeh, EVERYONE is only joking, it´s not funny..."

It stopped the conversation and we were able to carry on talking about ANYTHING other than the B word. Maybe I should pluck up the courage to speak my mind more often! 

That´s so Hygge

Probably you´ve heard, or better, seen, the word HYGGE flying about lately, it seems to be everywhere. But what exactly is it?!

Hygge (Hue-ga) is a Danish word that doesn´t have a direct translation, it´s more a feeling. Think everything comforting, comforting foods, hot drinks, candles, lying on the soca watching a film with a blanket and popcorn on a cold, rainy day. Think dinners at home with friends, walks in the woods, wooly socks, open fires, flowers, hugs... Just everything that gives you that amazing warming, comfortable feeling inside. THAT is Hygge.

Since watching the Channel 4 series Scandimania a few years ago I fell in love with all things Scandi, I even took a solo trip to Copenhagen just before moving to Spain and i´m dying to take Mr. Millennial there.

So when I heard about Hygge I had to know how I could infuse this Danish way of simple happiness into my rather hectic Spanish/British life. As we´re about to buy a house (in one month and counting) i´m rather obsessively thinking about decorating it, and of course i´m planning on making our new house very Hyggelig, complete with candles, blankets, warm colours, soft lighting, bringing the outdoors indoors and of course lots of Hyggelig food!

Keep an eye out over the coming weeks where I´ll be sharing more of my decorating ideas and see if you can spot the Danish influences.

"Feliz" Navidad...

I just had the worst Christmas of my life. Worse than when my brother and sister both got new bikes and I got an Enya CD, worse than when I worked as a waitress on Christmas day until 3pm, worse than that because I expected great things.

I don´t know why I expected great things to be honest, we´re currently hauled up in my father in law´s house, feeling like teenagers, jumping up from the sofa everytime the front door opens, and not very much like an adult, married couple.

But anyway, i´d been looking forward to Christmas for a while, we´d have fun, spend time with the family, have a few drinks and just enjoy not having to work or think about the new house for a few days (two months down, two to go!)

Then I got sick. It´s not surprising really, working with kids, 1/3 of them having bronchitis, or laringitis or faringitis or something along those lines the past two weeks, my job has basically been ferrying kids back and forth checking temperatures.

So after a few days of feeling a bit crappy, Christmas day on Santa brought me a headache that lasted three days, swollen tonsils, aching joints and of course a temperature of 37 degrees.

While everyone was off enjoying their Christmas dinner with the family, I was alone in bed with a bowl of baked beans and Modern Family on Netflix.

On top of that, I was súper emotional, missing my family, the British Christmas, British TV, Christmas decorations! A plate full of prawns and some half hearted mistletoe does not a Christmas make...

Now it´s two days later, and i´m still not 100%, but trying to focus on better things, putting this Christmas behind me knowing that 2017 is a new year, with a new house and hopefully some other new beginnings for Mr and Mrs Millennial. More in the New Year.

Merry Christmas and Feliz Navidad

New Beginnings

We just signed the contract for our new house, we won´t actually be moving until after Christmas, probably in February but i´m already Pinterest crazy. I have so many ideas, i´m mentally ripping down walls, painting, choosing tiles and dreaming about filling up those temporarily spare bedrooms with beautiful Spanglish babies!

In the next few weeks and months i´ll be sharing my ideas with you all until we get the keys, and then the fun begins!!

A New Project

So i´ve been "off the radar" for a few weeks, that somehow turned into a few months while we VERY quickly sold our flat, moved into my father-in-laws and bought a new house.

We had the idea to sell our flat in August, it was a very trendy attic in the north of Madrid, I would describe it as bachelor pad with girlfriend accents, which is exactly what it was, and we were fine with that until we got married and started talking about having mini-me´s.

We estimated it would take around 10 months to one year to sell our flat, based on location, size, price etc. We uploaded photos to Idealista, and within 24 hours we had a buyer!

SHIT. We had a buyer, and no house to move into! Luckily my father-in-law has space in his house for us, and ever luckier for me it´s four minutes walking away from where I work! BONUS!

So we quickly packed up our things in boxes, rentes a van, said goodbye to the flat and moved the spare room at my father-in-laws, where we have time to relax, and save some money while we kept looking for somewhere to live.

Most Spanish people live in flats, we lived in a flat, almost everyone we know lives in a flat, but we´ve decided to buy an end of terrace three bedroom house which me, as a person so unused to living in a flat that I could easily have a panic attack every time a neighbour gets in the lift with me, am thrilled about!

I´m doing all the important work like making Pinterest boards and dreaming about colour schemes, woolen couch throws and laundry rooms while Mr. Millennial is doing all the boring work like talking to the bank and paperwork...

I´ll keep you updated on the move, which should happen at the latest by the middle of February and then let the decorating begin!!

Summer Lovin´ (or not so much)

I´m going back to work next week, after six long weeks off I´m definitely looking forward to getting back into it, meeting the new kids, having a proper routine again, BUT I´m not looking forward to waking up at 6am, having a class full of crazy kids every full moon (yes that does happen!) Or staff meetings (The bain of my life)´

But I can´t help but think that I should be making better use of my summer holidays, last year I spent most of my time dying from the heat, laid on the sofa in my pants, and I vowed not to do that again this year, which I haven´t thank God but I still didn´t do a great deal.

I had great plans, I was going to do Yoga every day (which lasted about a week) I was going to learn French (yeh that didn´t happen either) I was going to write, write and write. I had visiones of me sitting in a coffee shop with my laptop every day writing THE book, you know THE Book, the one that we all have inside, that everyone says they´re going to write one day... One day...

Well so what did I do... We had a week in Portugal, which was incredibly beautiful, but I actually have no idea what i´ve done with the other five weeks of my time, cleaning, cooking, sitting in my husband´s office scouring pinterest for recipes and house decorating ideas most likely.

The trouble is that in Madrid in July and August, the heat is so unbearable that everyone leaves. Everyone goes to the beach. EVERYONE. Businesses close, your friends are gone, 90% of the people that you see in the street are tourists. And because we generally have one week away with the Spanish fam, we´re in Madrid the majority of the time and it´s BORING here in summer!

It´s too hot to be in the street, or in the house, or anywhere that doesn´t have aircon, no-one is here, there´s only so much internet searching and Modern Family watching you can do before your brain turns to mush.

So yes, i´m probably the only one counting down the days before I go back to work, but it´ll probably only be a few weeks before I´m counting down the days until the next summer holidays!

Some Things That Make Spain TOTALLY Different From the UK

Two years ago exactly I arrived in Spain. In fact about this time (12pm) I had landed and was waiting for my suitcases to come out of the door on the conveyor belt of handsoffthatoneismine and sweatyhandsheartracing doom.

I came on a six month TEFL internship with two suitcases and around 800€ in cash that I was so terrified of losing or having it stolen that I kept checking every five minutes that it was there, which in hindsight probably make me either look like I has around 800€ in cash in my bag, or a terrorist with some kind of exploding purse.

As I landed on that hot day in August with my address written on a piece of paper to give to the taxi driver and enough Spanish to ask someone how they are but not enough to understand the reply, little did I know that all my dreams of travelling the world teaching English were about to come crashing down VERY rapidly, for less than three weeks after my first day arriving in one piece to the most disgusting flat i´ve ever seen I met the man that would change my whole outlook on life.

When I met my husband, I decided instantaneously that this was the guy for me, that all my dreams of country hopping, living out of a suitcase, never having to worry about anyone but myself popped, but in a good way. I lost the need to travel, I stopped in the first country I went to. I also used to be the girl who never wanted to get married and never wanted kids but I suppose my sister was right when she told me "wait until you meet the right man" because here we are almost two years after we met, married and I very much do want kids...

It hasn´t been all fairytales and looking at life through rose tinted glasees though, there are tonnes of diferences between the UK and Spain that i´ve had to get (I haven´t got) used to, here are just a few...

1: KISSING

In Spain it´s custom to give two kisses, one on each cheek. Men kiss only women but women have to miss everyone! I HATE IT Being a Brit, we are not used to kissing and when we go somewhere are there is a group of people, friends or family usually we say Hi and wave in general to everyone, maybe you kiss your parents, or give a hug to your best friend but we don´t kiss 20 people hello and then AGAIN to say goodbye!

2: LATENESS

I hate being late, I´d rather be an hour early than a minute late. This doesn´t seem to bother Spanish people though, we´re going to have lunch at 2pm, so the guests arrive at 2.30/3pm, we´ll start the meeting at 5.30pm so obviously i´m sitting alone until 5.45 when the other people start to arrive and we start the meeting somewhere between 5.45 and 6pm. Come on people I wanna go home!

3: PAPERWORK

No-one has told Spain that computers can hold a lot of information and that most of the annoying things that we had to make appointments for and wait in queue´s for in the past, well we can do those things now online. I´ve been here two years, it took me a year and a half to get around to registering that I live here, I had to go four times to get my national identity card because of all the paperwork I had to take, and trying to get a metro card was like trying to get a passport!!

4: FEVER

People are obsessed here with having a fever, if you sneeze someone will ask if you have a fever, if you have a headache someone will ask if you have a fever, if you cut your arm off, i´m pretty sure that someone will ask if you have a fever! And I work with children, I take at least one every day to see if they have a fever! And if they have a rever they go straight home, however, if they vomit, but don´t have a fever, well drink some water and back to class!

5: MEAL TIMES

In Spain we have lunch around 2-3pm (we have been known at home to have lunch at 5pm) and dinner is around 9-10pm. My family can´t believe this, being from the north of England they are strictly Tea at 5pm tupe of people. And I was too and although I spent my first few weeks here in a constant state of either starving or stuffed, you do get used to it.