I don´t want no problems, okayee?

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Week uno.

I´ve hardly had time to gather my thoughts let alone come up with a witty entry in my snazzy new blog. I am writing from Bárzana, Spain, a small town in the Quieros province. I have never seen a place more perfectly nestled, more at peace with its environment. I am afraid of overusing the word ¨beautiful,¨ while I am here, but this place truly deserves the title. Situated in the middle of a national park, the area is sprinkled with red roofed homes in small enclaves across the hills, but is otherwise green and leafy as far as the eye can see. The panoramic views are difficult to wrap my mind around. To me, they look more like paintings sitting on freakishly large easels.

The pastoral tranquility is almost eerie. At times, the people and abodes seem plucked out of some bucolic yesteryear. The animals follow suit--mustached mutts have absolutely no tolerance for your tresspassing. The cows stare at you with an uncomfortable silence as though you just walked in on them doing something private. ¨Can I help you?¨ they seem to say.

So, the reason for my stay: I am here with my dear Lauren Spencer and we are ¨WOOFing¨at a small bed and breakfast. Under the tutelage of a slightly eccentric (i.e. crazy) Spanish man, we are doing a lot of gardening work--Lauren has been doing much hoing (don´t worry we got plenty of mileage out of that verb), and I have been doing what I can only describe as rock wrangling. Rocks are plentiful in the soil here, so today my job was to clear ´em out to make room for the plantin´. Or as Juan-Carlos put it, ¨You put the rockies over here!¨

His English isn´t very good, and my Spanish is non-existant, so we´ve mostly been conversing in some sort of bastard French. When we arrived on Saturday, Juan-Carlos showed us around and at the end of the tour gave us a little preview, in English, of his expectations while we are here. ¨I no want problems, I no have problems, I no need problems, okayee?¨ and then continued, ¨I only want happy, I need happy, do happy...¨ etc. Well, at least the man knows what he wants.

We head to Bilbao next, and from there, (Vicky Christina) Barcelona! Ciao, hunny bunnies.

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Photos

Small enclave
I had to take this one quickly, because a native was staring at us.

Comments

[Laura]

Beautiful is not used too much
the pictures are absolutely beautiful you are so lucky to be in Spain seeing this in person