Un día typíco

Un día typíco is lesson two or three of Spanish School 101. You learn how to say things like levanto a las ocho (I get up at 8), desayuno a las ocho y media (I have breakfast at 8.30), salgo la casa a las nueve (I leave the house at 9), and so on. All well and good, until you get into the swing of life in the country, and the vocabulary becomes a bit more specialist...

I've spent the last two weeks at El Rincon de los Cerezos, a farm-cum-rural tourism guesthouse-cum-lifelong eco project, near the Sierra de Guadaloupe, Extremadura. After waking up each morning in El templete, a hexagonal outhouse - in which a yoga workshop is taking place as I type - built on the hillside which over looks the rest of the farm, daily tasks include feeding the animals (dando comer a los animales), milking the goats (ordeñando las cabras), cleaning the stables (limpiando los estables) and checking on the kittens (revisando los gatinos).

¡Que bonito!

As well as the daily chores, we've constructed a yurt (montado la yurta), made goats cheese (hecho queso de cabra), picked wild mushrooms (ricogido setas) and ploughed a potato field (cultivado un campo de patatas), with the help of Don Rafael, the very handsome old donkey.

After a long morning's work (in Spain, the afternoon doesn't start until 3pm), we head back to the house for huge and delicious lunches of gazpachos, cocidos, paellas, and other platos typicos of the region, all made using ingredients from this farm, or traded with the neighbours.

Once we've had a snooze, and brought the animals back to the stable (devolver los animales a el estable), it's time to celebrate another day. Rarely are there fewer than seven or eight around the table for dinner, and there always seems to be an excuse to crack open the cava, or home made cherry liquor.

Despite there being a fiesta todos los dias, there is a particularly big celebration every tuesday evening, as various friends and family get together for no other reason than because it's fun. Last Tuesday happened to coincide with my birthday, well actually my cumpleaños y un dia, and to celebrate, there were no less than seven different postres on the table...

If this is un día typíca en el campo, I reckon this is a life I could easily get used to.