Noche Buena - Christmas Eve

caganer 

Toni, Sunny, Wookie

Astrid and Jon, December 18, 2010

Dates found in Reus

Linda's watercolor of Cal Viudo in El Perello'

The wind today is the strongest yet this season! (121 kph or 75 mph -hurricane force!!)    We've experienced some blows in the past three years that have shattered two sets of propellers off the wind generator, bent the solar panels, and crunched the solar panel tracker. On the upside, Steve now knows how to prevent or at least deal with these setbacks. At 5am when the wind noise woke me, I decided to run a load of wash rather than waste all the juicy overflow coming into our energy converter. 
Yesterday we drove to Reus (city where Gaudi was born) 30 minutes away. Some beautiful Modernista (Art Nouveau) style buildings, shopping and great restaurants.   On the drive we practiced English and Spanish with our Italian buddies, Gab and Dan (she Daniela, he Gabriele) using my fab Kindle that contains a mega sized Spanish grammar book. Before a visit to the city market (a smaller but no less colorful version of La Boqueria in Barcelona) and lunch at our newly found favorite 10euro lunch spot, Rosa dels Vents, we spied some public works gents cleaning street trees who had, in  the back of their truck, an early Christmas present we couldn't pass up.  Photo shows our haul of dates that, when mature, should be sweet and bountiful enough to last the year.    
Two weeks ago when we last went to Reus, there was a Pessebre market, a bunch of stands selling manger figurines and other holiday decorations. Though we don't have a manger scene, or a tree as a matter of fact, (we do have a cat safe decorated bough of pine, olive, and cedar) we finally have our own caganer (photo). If you don't live in Catalunya, you probably don't know about caganers. The Catalans love to celebrate the life of the peasant and believe there must have been an ordinary person seeing to his needs among, or behind, the stable denizens at the sacred event.
              As this post seems to be turning into our end of year holiday letter, we'll include a few photos of exceptional events of the past year:  
     Here is the first of Astrid and Jon's WEDDING photos we received (Mr & Mrs Hoyt of Chester Vermont celebrate their one week anniversary on Christmas day!).  We watched the ceremony via Skype and we'll post Richard's pix as they come in.
     Dogs and Cat:They sleep together but not quite friends yet: Sunny, our 5 month old male cat born in the Burga Valley at Eva and Robin's, Mas Cubano, has taken the place of departed, Lulu, in our menagerie. 
     My recent watercolor of Cal Viudo, the traditional old mill in El Perello where we take our olives to be pressed.  They now have postcards, tags, and prints of this available.