thank you my dear..............!!!

thank you g/..............!

actually i was aware that it was my birthday but you were the first one to remember that to me..........

my day was quite normal........i worked in the morning......had lunch at home with juanjo........did some homework with juanjo in the afternoon.........started to watch a film in the evening that made me get bored so i went to sleep.........(anatomie d'une chute, the film was..........)

it surprised me that quite a few teachers from my old school sent me their best wishes for my birthday...........

also i had a big surprise..........

it happens that one of my ex-students in the old school has become an english teacher and she is in a two-month practice period with me........she has to attend all my lessons and teach a few lessons by herself..............

well, she remembered it was my birthday and brought me a present..............a wood box with a selection of typical cold meats, cheeses and a bottle of wine............!!!

her parents own a butcher shop and the make and manufacture their own cold meats under their own brand and, believe me, they are the best cold meats i have ever tried.............!!!!

r.e. mallorca and palma

the island of mallorca is just gorgeous............above all the west and north, which are so green and adorned by el moncayo, a range of mountains.............

lit goes without saying that the beaches are gorgeous all around the island............this is the mediterranean so crystal clear blue waters abound............

regarding the city, it is a lovely city......it has lots of modernists buildings, a couple of them by gaudi, a jewish quarter around the cathedral which has not been gentrified yet as properties there are said to be ones of the the most expensive in europe............

there is an old fishermen village near the city centre.........it is lovely.......or it was lovely..........it is strongly gentrified and only danish and german people live there because the houses are so expensive..........a 200 square metres house costs something between 4-5 million euros..........

the same has happened in every typical quarter in the city centre but in the jewish quarter and in the old 'deuce', which is in its way to be gentrified.........all these pictures i am posting now are in this area.........

i have been travelling to mallorca regularly for the last twenty years, that is since my friend ana lives there..........i have born witness of the process of degradation of the city.........when i see degradation, i mean gentrification.................every nice place and street and corner has been bought by foreign real state lobbies and turned into depersonalized business to satisfy the taste of norh europeans who are, literally, colonizing the city centre........my friend ana is really sad/angry about the situation........she says that living in the city is getting more and more expensive every year.............to tell you an example, one day we went to a bakery to buy two empanadillas and two pieces of cake and that was around 20 dollars when in cartagena would have been around 8................let alone the cost of renting a house........studios in the city centre hire for around 2.500-3000 euros a month................ana is really worried that, if she has to leave the house she is renting now, she might be unable to afford another place in the city centre...............

even so, the city is really beautiful and the island is worth a visit....................