Time!

I'm addicted ... to a meditation app. every morning right after waking up, and I set the alarm clock for it, I meditate for anything between 10 minutes and an hour. It makes me calm and happy and I get a yellow star in the app each time I have meditated 10 successive days and 5 yellow stars turn into a red start and lots of red stars become a green star, but I haven’t reached that stage yet. However, this does mean that I do not want to stop, and that's a good thing because I absolutely need that moment of peace before my day begins with a lot of noise and chaos in my head.

Because I do create a lot of have to do’s in my life ... although it has to be said that most of these ‘have to do’s’ are in fact great fun to spend time on, but I do seem to have very little of the latter. So I try and convince myself that I have all the time in the world. They say that what you think creates your reality so the ' I have all the time in the world ' is a keeper in my brain.

In the meantime I spread my attention between contacting guest-writers because they have not yet sent the promised article, locate or create hopefully beautiful photos, invent and prepare a dish every week and make photos of it – which means you know exactly what I am serving my Spanish husband for lunch – I look for special people for interviews, interesting topics for an article, and much more. The result is not one but two web magazines, respectively www.laherradura-cultural.eu, about the special seaside village in southern Spain where I live, and www.almunecar-cultural.eu about the wonderful Spanish town of Almuñécar which La Herradura is part of. And the feedback is fantastic. That makes me happy again.

It is a lot of work but a lot of fun to do as well. It started as a platform to promote my latest book, Reflections from La Herradura, but has grown into a serious culture and tourism information source with nice pictures and interesting facts.

And the ‘I have enough time’ concept seems to work as well as I have found the time to design a tattoo for someone, to design the labels for three handmade flamenco guitars that were created here in the village and I am finding the time to create a few paintings because I need some new work for my upcoming exhibitions. The first in

November in a new trendy restaurant in Nerja and then in December in the official exhibition space of the Town Hall in Nerja. I need an extra painting because today – and that makes me very happy – I sold one of my flamenco paintings. If you are curious you can see some more of my other flamenco ladies here.

Moreover, I found the time to be interviewed by Costa Women, and the interview has now been published on their site where I am introduced to a large group of women on the Spanish Costas. You can read it here if you want to get to know me even better! 

Talking about reading ... my book ‘Reflections from La Herradura’ sells steadily and most importantly, I get really nice reactions. It is in fact a book you can read anywhere. You don't have to necessarily have to be in La Herradura to enjoy it, but there might be a risk that you would like to visit it after you've read it. Curious? Just click here.

So it seems to ‘flow’ as far as my books are concerned and I am even getting a little bit famous! When, a few weeks ago, the doctor called my name to invite me in to take a look at my sore knee I was approached by a Spanish English teacher. His English was excellent and he asked whether I was the writer Renate van Nijen. He had bought and read my book Secret Thoughts and asked if he could purchase 25 copies of it – it had to be really cheap – for his 18 and 19 year old students so that they could read it as part of their literature class and then ask me questions about it when I'm going to give a talk about the book on November 23rd in the school. I have to say that this does slightly feels like a visit to the gynaecologist and I will have to put myself in a similar frame of mind. I don't know exactly what it is to have an outer body experience, but I can fairly easily convince myself that I'm not really there and it then feels as if I watching from a distance. It is both scary and challenging having to talk about Secret Thoughts to a large group of young people, but also fun and a compliment for my work.

There is some news for my book Cheers too as I met someone who has offered to promote it via the social media as a practice for her, and hopefully this will soon bear some fruit, because it is really a book that can help people and to be honest, all that tweeting, instagramming, buffering, linkedinning, etc. remains a bit of abracadabra for me. In case you are looking for some ideas for Christmas presents, all the books mentioned above are for sale via Amazon. 

And there is more good news. My mandala and flamenco images on bags, t-shirts and other products can now also be purchased much closer to home for those living in Europe. Previously, the products were printed on the other side of the world which resulted in very expensive shipment costs, but now you can order products with my images on it in Redbubble.com/es (in Spain) and Redbubble.com/de (In Germany). Considerably cheaper so quickly take a look as they are all good quality and super original. For example... great shopping bags with your own horoscope. A great present don’t you think?  No more plastic shopping bags so it is also fantastic for the environment!

Yes it is almost Christmas. Does time fly or do I have enough time to make all my self-imposed deadlines? Time will tell. Meanwhile, it's already half an hour past midnight, early morning in fact. Time for some peace and quiet in my head. Time for my meditation app.

Miscommunication in Spain

So you’ve made the move or are thinking about making the move. Or perhaps you just love coming on holiday to Spain. Maybe you’ve got yourself a small Spanish-English language book from your nearest bookshop and try to memorize and pronounce a few sentences correctly even though you probably know that being able to ask for something in Spanish is pretty much useless if you won’t understand the answer. You went to Spanish classes? Good for you. You didn’t because you were planning to go to an expat dominated area of Spain? As far as personal opinions go I find it hard to say ‘good for you too’ but that is presumptuous as I know there is a perfectly well functioning ‘sub-society’ if I may call it that, where you can offer your services to people who speak your language, in the Spanish sun. But I have to admit that I find it rather funny to watch those reality TV shows where people start a new life in another country and cannot string a sentence together, if any words at all. And to hear an English lady ask for a chicken in the Spanish local butchers, and just repeating the word in a louder and more angrily tone when the butchers was looking at her as if she came from another planet was slightly insulting but also hilarious. And the Dutch lady who cut a piece of her farmer’s cheese for the Spanish customer telling her it is ‘mucho lekker’ (mucho delicious) and continued the conversation with Dutch words with a Spanish accent was certainly amusing. Talking about accents. I happen to have moved to Andalusia.

Now those of you who come here well prepared with a good few years of Spanish language classes behind you will get a bit of a shock as in Andalusia they seem to speak a different language. They swallow the last letters of most words and the deeper you get into the country side the more they seem to shorten their words. So don’t be surprised to hear ‘maome’ instead of ‘mas o menos’, which means ‘more or less’. It feels as if you have to go back to school again, but don’t worry, after a few years of practice you get used to the word-swallowing and might find yourself leaving out a few of the last letters of some Spanish words during a conversation with a local shop keeper. That’s when you know you are starting to blend in. Language is a funny thing. I personally love languages, which is a bit of a giveaway as I speak … ’drum ruffle’ five languages. This doesn’t mean that I never make mistakes, in fact after almost 13 years in Spain I still throw in the odd Italian word and I also cannot seem to master the ‘take and bring’ (‘llevar and traer’). More importantly I still have to think carefully when I tell people that I am feeling warm, which is a much used comment when you live here. It works perfectly well if you ask for a coffee and add ‘muy caliente’ to make sure that it doesn’t arrive luke-warm which can be the case, especially during summer time, when many Spanish like to dump a few ice cubes in their coffee, but when I told some people that I was feeling ‘muy caliente’ it was received with a lot of amusement. This suggested that I was ‘hot’ and rather in the mood. It is also a challenge, when I write in Spanish on my mobile phone, to avoid the word ‘year’ as my adapted English keyboard does not have the ñ. Year is ‘año’ but ‘ano’ has a very different meaning. You can look that up in an online dictionary. Living in a foreign country may come with language barriers, but nothing that cannot be solved with a good laugh and a smile. Although some Spanish do make an effort to speak English this comes with a challenge for them too. Especially for

Andalusian born Spanish as they tend to swallow the end of their English as well which can make it difficult to understand them. Singing in English can be a challenge for some Spanish singers as well as I found out recently during a concert. Although the voice of the singer guitarist was great, his music fantastic as he enthusiastically sang with a strong American accent, trying to cheer up the crowds, his English was so bad that I could not make any sense of it and judging by the laughter of a group of English people in the audience I was not the only one. It reminded me of when I was young and sang along with the Beatles “obladi oblada la gozon yeah la la la la la gozon” years before I learned English in school. Does all this matter? I guess not. At the end of the day the most important thing is living side by side peacefully and that is exactly what I myself and many expats do. And just in case you are wondering? You are right, I am not a native English speaker, I am Dutch and my English isn’t perfect but I hope you enjoy my Spanish adventures nevertheless! Welcome to Spain!

Art/books/mandalas
La Herradura Cultural

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Spanish Sounds

Thinking about Spanish sounds flamenco music quickly comes to mind, and rightly so, but what about those other sounds? Like young men driving around in their cars beeping their horns to celebrate the winning of yet another football cup. Or the tail of cars, beeping their horns, following an expensive looking vehicle dressed for the occasion with flowers and bows, transporting a wedding couple from the church to the party venue. Or the extremely loud bangs, which unfortunately create a lot of fear in most animals, used to mark the start and finish of a local festival, and this on a daily basis for as long as the festival lasts. Those typical Spanish festivals with live music starting at midnight on the local square, lasting till five or six o’clock in the morning. Most villages also hold an annual main village festival which usually includes a fair with lots of loud attractions, each trying to outshout each other with their own deafening ‘disco’ music to attract people. Those festivals that usually end with a firework display with again an overdose of loud bangs. You could easily come to the conclusion that Spain is a very ‘noisy’ country and that the Spanish are very sound tolerant.