Erik's Blog

Last month, I was asked to participate, as a native English speaker, in a videocast from the local language school, Escuela Oficial de Idiomas de Laredo, about English pronunciation. The man who filmed me and is the brain of the whole videocast, Rodolfo, is really annoyed at his students’ (and, in general, all Spaniards’) lack of care when pronouncing English words. Rather uniquely, Rodolfo has specifically chosen American English as his pronunciation goal; he has worked really hard, and his pronunciation is superb. This is the third installment in his videocast. Here are the first and second.
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The weather today has been very, very odd. Everyone is using the word huracán for what is in store for us tonight. Nora and I spent much of the afternoon outside in the unseasonably warm temperatures and brisk breeze. We saw several dumpsters that had been tied down to keep them in place. There were a few strange occurrences, such as when it rained from a perfectly blue sky.
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Yesterday, I was informed that Nora was expected to be at daycare at 9:00 this morning, dressed all in white, and with moisturizing cream applied to her face so that her face could be painted and she could be dressed as a snowball and paraded around the streets of town. It’s the annual Carnival parade, the time of year when Spanish kids, who have never had the Halloween costume tradition that American kids enjoy, get to dress up as various adorable things and parade around looking cute. Since I’m always a good sport about trying out traditions of my adopted country, I was there at 9:05 sharp with Nora dressed all in white, and my camera and video camera with empty memory cards and full batteries.
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My little town has two photographer shops and two framing shops. In both, the shop windows are filled with examples of their work that has recently been finished and is waiting to be picked up. The main frame (computer joke) shop is right downtown and I walk by there every day. Usually they have certificates, caricatures, cross-stitched scenes, puzzles, and occasionally a painting or two. Yesterday, as I was glancing at what my fellow townspeople were having framed that day, my brain registered that there was something very wrong about one particular certificate. The text reads, “Second prize, shop window competition, 2009″. See if you can spot what’s wrong.
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The evening news lately, with footage from all over Europe, has resembled the March of the Penguins or Never Cry Wolf. In other words, I always end up feeling colder after I watch the news than before it starts. Down here at sea level, we almost never get any snow, but on Saturday night we finally did. When I woke up on Sunday morning, this is the view that I beheld upon opening the blinds.
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The following is a document written by my father, Paul Rasmussen, about his recent trip to visit us in December 2009.

Betsy and I had been looking forward to meeting our granddaughter in August. We would visit southern Spain, where Erik’s Spanish family vacations every summer, and meet our granddaughter then. As her birth approached, however, it seemed like too much would be missed if we didn’t see Nora before then, so in May we traveled to Colindres and stayed a week with Erik, Marga, and Nora. We had a great time, and another great time when we visited in August. In September, however, I felt uncomfortable not knowing when we would visit them again, so we made plans for a visit in May of 2010. In November, May seemed too far away, so we bought tickets for a trip to Colindres in December, returning to Morganton a week before Christmas. This time we flew from Charlotte to Atlanta to Paris, and from Paris to Bilbao. A week after arriving we would return through Paris, flying to Detroit and then Charlotte. Erik said that most if not all of his winter coats would fit me, and I might consider saving space by not bringing a coat, and that is what I did. We packed just two suit cases, one full of presents, and the other with clothes.
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Last week, when I took my walk around town with my video camera, which resulted in some moving photographs, and a photo of a local fruitful business, I also took some other still photos that I like a lot. So here’s a little medley of these photos.
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Recently a small shop in town selling decorative housewares, that had been there for the entire four years we’ve lived here, went out of business. While it was always interesting to look into their shop window, I think I only went in once, and the shopkeeper wasn’t very pleasant, so nothing was purchased. The shop was on a prime corner right in the center of town. I can’t think of a better location for a shop in town. So of course I was pretty curious as to who would jump on that choice piece of real estate. It was empty for a couple weeks, and then the painting started.
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Recently I’ve been particularly enjoying living in a small town. Many of the shopkeepers and bartenders know me, most not by name, and even some not by nationality, but they all say hello and some of the bartenders will even start preparing my drink when they see me enter.
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Last week a sprout of grass sticking out of a bricked town square caught my eye, particularly the shadows it made, so I took a picture of it with my iPhone camera. I liked the photo so much that I decided it might make a worthy subject for a real camera outing, so some days later I took a few more photographs. What’s really sad is that the sunlight in these photos is from noon. That’s how low the sun is in the sky, and how long the shadows are, these days.

Feel free to make your own profound metaphor about Nature resiliently fighting back against human Urban Progress. Or don’t.
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