Stormy weather

22 January 2017

It’s been stormy weather here with lots of rain and wind. I hear this is an exceptional year in Alicante, and I assume in the whole of Europe in terms of weather. I don’t think it has rained this much in Alicante for years. And it shows that this city is not at all prepared for rain. The streets are flooded and what is ridiculous, the pedestrian parts of the streets get slippery when it rains so I guess when they planned it they thought, it would almost never rain.

Unlike in Finland, here the storm also affects the indoors. The nights here have lately been rather unpleasant because of the cold also coming into the apartment.. ..and it’s not only the cold but also the humidity, which makes sleeping really uncomfortable when your pyjama and even the duvet feel like they are soaking wet. With my roommates we now discovered that our heating system also has a function of removing humidity and we used it last night. Maybe it helped a bit.

Let’s see how our electricity bill we because I hear heating with electricity can be extremely costly here. Therefore, we still try and be quite economical with the heating. This of course  means wearing three pullovers on top each other at home but well, I’ve already gotten used to that and luckily brought some woollen shirts from Finland after Christmas. This is why it’s funny when people wonder how people survive in the cold Finland because here right now I’m in fact much more cold than in Finland, because in Finland, when it’s cold, we don’t stay outside for long times and have proper clothes for that and indoors it’s never cold.   

We had planned to go to Granada to ski at Sierra Nevada but now, also because of the weather and some roads being closed due to the flood, we had to cancel the trip at last minute. I’m a bit disappointed because I miss skiing, but let’s see if we can reschedule the trip for another weekend.

Now it seems the weather is getting better and besides, quite soon the winter should be practically over here and the spring should begin, I’m already excited!

Oh and by the way, before the storm began, last weekend we made a trip with 15 other trainees to Elche, a neighbouring city. Was great and I saw bananas growing in trees :)

Bananas!

At work everything continues as before, I’m working on interesting cases and get to write a lot, I’m still really happy with what I get to do and days at work go by fast. And now we had a New Year’s lunch with my team the other day. That was really nice, with a four course meal and chatting with my colleagues. Especially I liked the fact that I got a chance to know my colleagues a bit better because during normal working days everyone is busy and my office with three other trainees is in a different place from the colleagues in my team so during the days I mostly socialize only with the other trainees.

I now got a new roommate. A girl from France, super nice! And besides she’s eager to practice Spanish so we only talk Spanish, which makes me so happy. I went to the movies with her last night and she wanted to see the film in Spanish. I didn’t agree at first but we discovered this film was not even offered in English so finally we didn’t have a choice. I was hesitant but finally understood much more than I thought I would and in fact enjoyed the movie, yes!

And tomorrow I begin another Spanish course, it’s great because I really need new vocabulary. Of course even if I manage to make myself understood, I always use the same verbs and try and make Spanish words from English or French equivalents, which is not always successful :D

Another dear hobby of mine here is running, as most of you already know. A few of my colleagues have now been eager to start running with me and running is convenient because nowadays I practically have company for almost every run.

Today the last of my roommates, an Estonian girl, should arrive and finally all of the bedrooms of the flat will be occupied. It’s nice to get to meet another new person but I’m also a bit nervous if living with three other girls will require me to make much more compromises than I have had to make until now, let’s see. (and let’s hope she speaks Spanish ;) )

With love,

Noora