Swine flu

Swine flu or gripe porcina as they call it here is in the news with headlines like "La pandemia es inminente". On the television there are lots of images of people wearing face masks, but I haven't seen anyone wearing one yet. I don't know if this is a real problem yet or just media hype. Only time will tell.

Websites I love and hate

I love:
1. Google
2. Yahoo
3. You Tube
4. Facebook
5. Wikipedia
6. Blogger
7. Baidu

I hate:
1. Windows Live
2. MSN
3. Myspace

The World's top 10 websites

According to alexa (as of today) they are:

1. Google
2. Yahoo!
3. You Tube
4. Facebook
5. Windows Live
6. MSN
7. Wikipedia
8. Blogger
9. Myspace
10. Baidu (The Chinese Google)

My daily routine

I get up early and have breakfast (a cup of tea and a ham and cheese roll). Then I make another roll for Thomas's "merienda". After that I switch on the computer. I use Firefox and tabs to check my facebook first, followed by Yahoo Mail, Gmail and Hotmail, making sure to delete all the spam as I go. Then I check the two e-mail accounts of the Instituto de Cultura China. Once Thomas is awake I listen to Jango (I used to listen to last.fm but now you have to pay) while I work.

Sant Jordi

Yesterday was Sant Jordi when men are supposed to give a rose to their wife or girlfriend in return for a book, but I saw quite a lot of women buying roses so I don't know what they were up to. At Thomas's school some of the older children had made little books, some of which were incredibly professional-looking. (Children's book writers of the future)

In the morning we dropped into the Come In English bookshop and bought some books for Thomas and a poster of opposites which we have now put on the wall of his bedroom and he seems to like it and can already say many of the words.

Then we took a walk down Rambla Catalunya and saw the AFAC stand and had a chat with them about putting a link on their website for the school. Most of the main bookshops were there - BCN books, Alibri, Happy books, but I didn't see Dismar or Casa del Llibre anywhere. The CIU were also handing out bookmarks to promote themselves.

In the evening we all went to Casa Asia for a book presentation of some Chinese books for children by the publisher Maguregui (Liao Yanping) but not many people came. I wasn't really surprised as people with children would bve at home with them at that time and were probably tired after walking round the streets all day.

Chinese classes in Barcelona

We offer Chinese classes for adults and children from 3 years of age upwards in the centre of Barcelona. All our teachers are native speakers with a good level of Spanish and experience in teaching mandarin to non/native learners. Groups are between 6 and 15 students. See www.institutoculturachina.org for more details.

El Corte Inglés

Today we went to El Corte Inglés, the English Cut, to buy some food. After battling our way past all the perfume counters and jewellery stands we dived down into the basement and set about finding some bargains. Nowhere else in Barcelona can you find Bourbon biscuits, I believe and the fish counter is fairly reasonable but they won't clean sardines for you. We also picked up some herby chicken wings and a quiche, a camembert and a tin of chilli con carne, as we can't make our own as nowhere sells red beans that I know of. Anyone know any different?