What the heck happened to January?

Well, it's official. I've failed to attain my lofty goal of blogging at least once a month, which might be excusable had I any type of "actual responsibility" to keep me from it. Maybe I'll make up for it by writing a real long, real senseless one... yeeeahhhh, that's it!

Ahhh, January... the door to the year. This January was a good one, as far as Januaries go. Epic, really. Let me start off by saying Happy New Year! This is the year that Eric and I will have our first child, both turn 30, celebrate our second year of marriage, and watch Rudy Fernandez dominate in the NBA Slam Dunk contest. Beautiful.

January started with a bang, literally. Everyone we know in Zurich was away for the holidays so Eric and I trammed it into downtown to watch the fireworks. The streets were swarming with revelers, lovers, pranksters, and drunk gay guys who tried to throw the porta-potty that Eric was using over a barricade into the freezing River Limmat. Don't worry, I stepped in and sent the guy packing before he got it more than a few inches. He just shrugged and danced off, no doubt dissapointed that not everyone was as caught up in the New Years spirit as he. And unfortunately Zurich's world-renowned fireworks show was severly disabled by low cloud-cover and too much smoke so we couldn't see a single actual firework. We knew they were there because we could hear them, so we slow-danced in the slushy, black snow amidst the chaos and had a big New Years smacker.

On January 3rd, we packed our bags and headed to Spain! My sweet husband insisted that we take a "babymoon"... one last hurrah before the poopy diaper fairy arrives! We flew into Malaga (the hometown of Antonio Banderas!) and then took a train to Sevilla where we stayed for one week in the home of our friend Elias' aunt. Spain was incredible. It was warm, sunny, full of life... and full of food. It was a pregnant woman's paradise. You go to a bar on one corner, use the bathroom, eat delicious cheese, jamon, and fried tapas and then move on to the bar on the opposite corner and repeat. You do this all night long. When I say bar, it's not like a bar-bar. It's a bar, but at 11:00 p.m. there are just as many people under the age of 6 and over the age of 80 as there are in between. Whole families are in there and people are singing and laughing and eating. It's beautiful.

Sevilla had amazing architecture and beautiful scenery. There is an enormous Gothic cathedral in which Christopher Columbus is entombed! The Spanish have great pride in the prosperity and discoveries of their forefathers. Really they have great pride in everything Spanish, right down to the food. Elias considers "jamon" (thinly sliced, specially cured pork) to be holy. Honestly - holy... it MUST be on it's own plate and when you take a bite he just watches you and a smile slowly spreads across his face and every time he says, "And Bryn, what do you think of this... this jamon? It's beautiful, no?" There were orange trees everywhere. They lined the streets and filled plazas... and there were flourescent green parakeet-looking birds just flying around. There were street exhibits for the sculptures of Rodin and Dali. And did I mention the tapas? Sevilla was wonderful. You should go.

While there we celebrated the festivities of The Three Magic Kings. It is the part of the Spanish holiday season in which gifts are exchanged and people feast. Instead of Santa, the 3 Magic Kings come on January 6. The night before there is a huge parade, unlike any I have ever seen where hundreds of children ride on big floats and dump bags and bags of candy onto the crowd. It was crazy and I was all for it. I was down on my hands and knees, crawling between people's legs and fighting with little kids to grab as much candy as possible because I'm eating candy for two.

After Sevilla, we went to Cadiz for 2 nights. Cadiz is said to be the oldest Western city, dating back to 1100 B.C. It is also the city that Columbus's second journey to the New World dispatched from. It was the perfect combination of old world architecture, history, white sandy beaches, and tapas. It was chilly, so we spent more time in the bar than we did at the beach, but hopefully we can go back when the weather is warmer.

The other exciting development that blew in with the month of January was getting our new apartment! It's great and feels like home. I found a bunch of second-hand furniture on my various Expats-in-Zurich web forums and we got the rest at IKEA. Eric rented a van and drove around picking things up, so all I had to do was pick out what we "needed". He only backed into one post and I only picked out a few things that are absolutely without-a-doubt unneccesary, so I'd say we both did a pretty good job.

The only bit of turbulence the experience brought was meeting the UK's biggest d-bag. I found a couple of items in the expat classifieds that someone was selling way down the lake. Our van rental day didn't work with their schedule so they agreed to deliver the stuff to us if we paid for travel expenses. I thought "Sure, fantastic, lovely!" I really don't even know where to begin with this guy because it was all so great. The first thing is he was a carbon copy of David Brent from the BBC "the office". Between each sentence, and frankly between most words, there would be a long pause and he would just stare at you like you were the daftest bloke in all of limey Zurich.

We bought a chair and a sideboard... but he brought an extra box of kitchen crap that they had in the cellar and said he would sell us the whole box for 20 CHF. I saw some baking dishes right on top so I was like, "Okay cheerio, you got yourself a deal". Despite my immediate "yes we'll take it", he felt compelled to pull out and describe in detail every item in the box.

Pulling out a small ordinary serrated knife: "Now, this looks like an ordinary knife. Very. Useful. I have 2 at work. Brilliant knife. Cuts nearly anything. Incredible."

Pulling out a cheese slicer: "Now this is a (said very slowly) Thick. Cheese. Slicer. Raclette. (Apparently nothing on my face gave any indication that what he was saying had actually registered because he continues on about the cheese slicer for some time as if I have the brain capacity of a petrified tree stump... and eventually sells it to himself...) You know, (he shakes his head grimly) the wife put this in here. I'd like... I'll keep this."

Pulling out a tea kettle: "Right. You're Americans. We call this a tea kettle. (Very long, intense stare in the eyes) Fill it with water. Boil. Brilliant."

Pulling out some weird bent skewer tong things: "Right. (He clearly struggles for a moment here) This is useful for... numerous things."

Pointing at a box: "Right. Do you ever make... Toasted. Sandwiches. ("Like grilled cheese?" I ask... he looks at me like I am the less-gifted cousin of a bag of gravel and shakes his head. Disgusted, he gives up and doesn't bother finishing this description.)

Anyway, what we bought from them required 2 trips so we got to see him again later in the week. I dont have the strength to even begin on his child rearing advice... but it began with "Right. Do you know even the slightest thing about having children?" and went on for a good 20 minutes while he went into every room to investigate which baby items we had and gave things a good shake to make sure they were properly assembled.

So, that about wraps up our whole month of January. Here we are, February 3rd. My mom is coming in 9 days to spend a month with us, helping out with the baby. It's hard to believe that little baby is supposed to be here in 2 weeks on the 18th. I'll put up some new pictures on our Picasa site tonight after Eric gets home from work so everyone can see this monstrosity. Consider yourselves warned, 'cause it ain't pretty.

Sorry for the long delay between blogs. I'll try to stay on top of it better with baby updates. As for this one... long and senseless. Mission Accomplished.