April 19: Olive Your Attention, Please

Oh, I know, so sad. Making puns like an old man. But I have no friends here and I spend all my time alone, and occasionally puns spring up in my mind and I have no cool people to shut me down.

That pun goes out to Yvanna, because I actually think she’d laugh at it. But wait, she’s cool too…

Anyways, just letting you know that I’ve eaten probably a thousand olives in the past 3 days. Olives are a favourite thing with me even in Toronto (Juli the roommate knows). But in Toronto what I’m really loving in the green olives is the pickled flavour and here, imagine, you bite into the green olive and you actually…gasp…taste the olive oil seeping out of it. Mmmm. These days with me it’s olives for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Also, I’m very proud. Though most people in this village and the neighbouring towns have given me a sense that they know I’m not from around these parts (if you could only have felt the curious eyes on me at the Easter mass – I went running out as soon as was over and sped away in my rental car), I have passed a rite of passage in these parts. If you drive right through this one small town and turn right before you reach the big red sign and find the house with the rusty orange garage door and then knock on it – you can get really good local wine for what comes out to just over a dollar Cdn a litre! You just bring an empty water bottle or whatever. Yes!! When I went through those motions I felt very small town Spanish. And then I went home to drink wine alone.