Basil and nectarines

Dear all,

First let me apologise cause I know my English-speaking friends must be mad at me! My recent posts have all been in Portuguese, but you have to forgive me, come on! There's no one here for me to speak Portuguese with, so I just miss it a lot!!

Now let's go to the news. Things here have just started heating up. Not the weather, although today is quite hot (English weather is really crazy!!!), but things really. Now I finally have the feeling that I'm busy - not as busy as the postgraduate nerd side of me would like, but busier than I was before. I have quite a lot of reading to do now, and I've been studying languages like crazy. First it was French: I'm studying French one hour a day everyday now on my own, to improve really and to be able to communicate without depending so much on gestures when I go to France. Then this week I found a Tandem partner! And this means that I met this girl who wants to learn Portuguese and who can speak French, so we meet twice a week: one hour for me to help her with Portuguese, and hour for her to help me with my French (mostly speaking)!! Excellent, two more hours of my week are taken. And then, to make things even better, I've decided to study Catalan as well, for although I'm going to France, the city I'm going to live in - Perpignan - is quite in the south of France and was previously part of the Kingdom of Catalunya. So, they do speak a lot of Catalan there. I know I won't learn the language in 2 months, but hopefully I'll be able to say "Good morning" and maybe read some signs! And my Catalan classes will take 3 hours of my week!!

Apart from my Babelian news, there's something else that's keeping me going here: the kitchen! Yes, I've cooking almost everyday and I'm really enjoying it. Of course cooking has always been something I liked, but now it's just so good to be able to cook whatever I want, to find out new recipes, make up my own... I've been having a lot of fun in the kitchen, much more than I imagined I would have. So every now and then I'll just publish some recipes (following the example of the cooking blogs I was introduced to this week), so that you guys can see what is it that has been cheering me up through the week.

Today, for example, was amazing. I've just found about this food market here where I could find lots of fruits and vegetables and spices that I wanted to buy. They're cheaper than in the supermarkets and hopefully fresher. I've spent a lot of money, though!! haha! I didn't find everything I wanted, but I was quite happy with my cinnamon, parsley, basil, white pepper and all he fruits I bought today: nectarines, strawberries, bananas... Oh, it even reminded me of my Brazilian Mercado Central... although it didn't have as many things.

I don't have plans for this weekend, though. Tonight I'll watch a film in my friend's house and tomorrow I'll see if I can go to this Latin American bar. Other than that, just reading and cooking (and running, to make it up for the cooking, haha). I'll leave you with one British idea to cook in the weekend: apple crumbling! Easy and delicious! Bon appetite!