The Tyranny of the Sun

   Today provided a new experience which may  prove both prophetic and salutary. Seeing that the doors had been closed for prayer time and having no phone with me during my lunchtime visit to the nearby Saudi Hollandi Bank, I chose to walk the fifteen minutes back to the school rather than disturb someone at prayer to phone the school for a ride. The noontime temperature was well over 90 F, but I'd been getting quite used to the hot temperatures with my 4:30 workouts, regularly done in 85 to 95 F heat. Besides, I'd walk comfortably seeing as I didn't have a class right after lunch.
   Moments after leaving the bank, I stood waiting for a typical yellow school bus to go by so I could cross the road. It was impossible not to notice that the sun beat down in that relentless way it has here. Untypically, at least in terms of my Ontario experience with yellow school buses filled with elementary students, it seemed no one was seated, and hanging out of nearly every window was a boy dressed in brightly coloured short-sleeves, many holding chip bags and cans of pop outside the windows as the bus rocked around the corner into a busier street. All boys. There were no girls on the bus. Several of these boys had not only their arms out but their heads too and those are the ones I could hear hooting and hollering as the bus slowly picked up speed and moved away.
   Just a few minutes later, a second yellow bus passed me by as I was crossing another street. It was filled with the now familiar black-shrouded figures of elementary school girls, all of them seated, all of the windows closed. The difference in the behaviour of the two sets of children was strikingly obvious and my reaction to it a mixture of sadness, resignation, but hope too, in the end. Boys, it seems, and to some extent males in general, in this place, get to do pretty much what they want. They can be loud, goofy, reckless, expressive, even defiant to some extent, particularly when they are young. Girls, on the other hand, not only can't be like that, not in any public way, they must in most ways be the opposite.
   I wouldn't have wanted to have been a passenger on the boys' bus, but I'm not sure I'd have wanted to be one on the girls' bus either. How stifled, I thought, how repressed. The boys' bus must have had quite a nice breeze through it and their short sleeves made sense. Those yellow buses aren't air-conditioned in my experience. Through the girls' bus no breezes blew, no fresh air, litle or nothing to quell the heat.
   But my experience with the girls was not yet over and it is what happened next that may well prove prophetic in this hot place. The second bus pulled up to a stop sign just as I cut across the street behind it and several girls at the back of the bus were staring at me, some with hands over their mouths, leaning to a friend and apparently whispering clever funny things about the strange pale, bald-headed man on the street. Many had smiles, so I waggled a forefinger at them in a friendly way and smiled too. I could hear laughter at this and two or three waggled fingers back at me, grinned openly, as others quietly waved to me. Several rapped on the back windows as I passed closely by the back corner of the bus while it pulled away from the stop sign.
   All of this I found reassuring. Under the cloak of social expectation, these girls managed to peek out for a moment or two and behave, in a very quiet way, like the boys on the first bus. I had provided them with something that allowed their truer more natural selves to emerge for a few seconds. Their darkened faces had lit up, their smiles emphasized the faces of children, their mildly scampish youthfulness shone through.
   Once out of sight, I expect they returned to their more practised behaviour of obediant girls on an outing in a world which seems in so many ways to not want them to engage with that world. It was, for me, a heartening few seconds we had together as I walked along, trying to keep in whatever shadows the few trees and taller buildings cast onto the sidewalk. Perhaps theirs will be the generation that finally gets out from under the patriarchal yoke.
   Of a more immediate concern, however, I couldn't help being reminded yet again that here it isn't only the heat that's oppressive.

Christmas and New Years: Barcelona and Sevilla: Part One

Let me begin by saying I'm sorry this posting is so much after the fact, but there it is.
Our decision to go to Spain for the Christmas/New Years holiday had more to do with getting out of a country deprived of cultural highlights than it had to do with going to one that had them in abundance. Lucky us, then, for choosing Spain, a country we've wanted to visit for some time, more for hearing about the good weather and cheap good wine than anything else. While these two qualities are accurate reflections of the reality, there is so much more that makes a visit to Barcelona and Sevilla very rewarding: the history as reflected in the architecture, art galleries, traditions such as "the stroll", and the good weather and cheap wine. Not to mention the food. My goodness, the food.

Rose likes the name of the shop, particularly
with me in front of it. Very funny, Rose.

And the people were very friendly and eager to help, if the young staff at our hotel, the waiters who served us our meals, local merchants, and the taxi drivers are anything to go by (Well, except for the first taxi driver who couldn't find our hotel and unceremoniously dumped us three blocks from our hotel with no directions to go by in the dark on a busy holiday night. Other than him, jerk, we never encountered any problems at all.) I'm particularly fond of the woman who served me coffee to take away at a nearby coffee shop/bakery just when I finished a run and, seeing my running gear, commented that I must be doing this for the benefit of my girlfriend. I told her there was no fooling her alright. The waitress, that is, not the girlfriend.

One of many curious shops in
Barcelona.

Wandering through the narrow lanes, cobbled alleys, and varied 'placas' of Barcelona's old Jewish ghetto, Le Barri Gotic, where our hotel was situated, provides many surprises and delights from this watering hole with its whistling faces (they probably squirted water in a previous life) to the four or five scenes pictured below.

Having paella in a Barcelona restaurant is enough to make me want to move to the place. A culinary experience not to be missed. And the tile work decorating the Palau de la Musica Catalana is an equally delightful feast for the eyes. Rose and I did a tour but they wouldn't allow any pictures inside. Check it out online: spectacular. The remaining pictures are just a few of the many we took and are not entirely in order but I hope you can enjoy them and that they convince you that Christmas in Barcelona can be a wonderful holiday. The Picasso Museum, Olympic Mountain, great out of the way bookshops, markets, placas, walks, phenomenal wine, great tapas.

Gorgeous columns at the Palau de la Musica Catalana
in Barcelona. The tour inside is a marvel.

The Gaudi cathedral, Sagrada Familia, which
is amazing to see but somehow verging on the
ridiculous, it seems to me.

More Gaudi.

Some of the gargoyles on the
14th C Barcelona Cathedral.

This fellow sat outside our hotel window
every day we were there.

One of many doors Rose fell
in love with.  

One of a variety of medieval squares.

On Christmas Day we found an Irish pub open serving all
day full English breakfast and Guinness. What more would
a couple want early in the morning in Barcelona, all other
shops being closed?

Our Christmas Day host.

Board games in the sun by the Arc de
Trionf on the gorgeous boulevard of
Passeig de Lluis Companys.

In the beautiful Parc de la Ciutadella people gather to dance
for an hour; others gather to watch.

As we flew over Venice on our way to
Barcelona.

A typical evening in the square from
our hotel balcony. Music, food, and wine.

Golden mushrooms at the nearby Mercat de la Bouqueria,
a giant food market. It's all there.

More of the Mercat de la Bouqueria

And more.

Christmas poinsettia on La Rambla.

La Rambla, one of the great pedestrian streets in the world.
A bit tourist-trappy, but worth the crowds anyway.

After our tour of the Torres Winery in VillaFranca, an hour's
train ride from Barcelona. Well worth the travel.

One of many well lighted trees around
Le Barri Gotic no one of our many night strolls.