It's been a month and two weeks and this is how the story of my creative roundabouts started.....
I arrived in Kilkenny full of excitement at its first glanze and in deep joy at the thought that I would be living here. Bursting of ideas, with a lust for realeasing a creative activity. Full of energy. Kilkenny is a fantastic place for arts and creation. Everyday there are live bands acting in most of the pubs and there is a theatre:"The Watergate Theatre" .Apart of a tourism destination it is a centre in Ireland for crafts design and arts. A fertile land for a creative aim.
Those first days of walking around there was a plan, a plan I would have to bring to life, there was the exploring and there was the searching. I didn't know anyone at all in this place when I moved in. The first thing was to get into action and find what kind of activities were on offer to join. In the tourism office I found a booklet:"Kilkenny life", very complete and very exhaustive. Great!!So lets get started and check the index... looking for those related to my interests and look for places to meet people and socialize... first I checked the gyms, in order to see what classes they had, I don't like the machines work out, as it's boring , but I do like dancing so checked the aerobic kind classes. I went to two of the gyms to get the timetable. While visiting them I had some little chats with the reception people, telling how I was new in town and bla,bla,bla , asked them if they have any spanish customers , because that was the main objective to start by. I haven't seen any spanish people during my walkings and I thought it might be only me, but I also thought they had to be some. There are lots of spaniards in Dublin and Galway, we are everywhere, come on!! they had to be somewhere and I had to find them. Spanish people , we love to gather together, we love the laugh and the chat, that's why we tend to get together.
I decided then to place and add in spanish, a little note in two the internet cafes to try to find other spaniards...and four days later I had an email!!! from a spanish girl, newcomer like me!! What a fantastic surprised!!I was delighted. So we arrange to meet at the door of a big department store, each of us spotted the other(usually don't know why , but spaniards we recognize spanish people just at the glanze), so ..she said..is it you..and I said it is me it is me , and we greeted and we were sooo happy to have found each other!!, so we went for a coffe and a little chat. Se was in town just two weeks , just as me , and was also actively looking for spanish people, both of us are from Madrid, both of us from the same area in Madrid!!. She followed me completely in the plan of trying to find more spanish, so now we were a team.
She found in the library an add from a spanish guy(we were sure by his name)offering spanish grinds, so Isabel and me while sitting in a pub terrace called him and arrange to meet him and his girlfriend next day. So then me met!, had a fantastic happy chit chat,very nice people and so then we were four!! getting better!!. Isabel,Julia and Javier her boyfriend were working here. The couple had been in Kilkenny for three months but haven't met any spanish.
As I was not working and looking for jobs I had more free time to walk around and do also a research for spaniards, so while having lunch here, a coffe there, in many places I had little chats about me being just moved here, how I was looking for spanish and a job and have a great fun in many of the places, met lovely nice people who usually ended laughing with me.So soon I had friendly people I knew here and there.
Isabel, my buddie in crime had the same spirit about do something in kilkenny, and I told her I wanted to create something linked to spanish culture here, a Spanish-irish social club. As this city is a center of arts and culture I wanted my spanish culture to have a presence here and get to organize in time cultural and art events with the spanish touch. As I said in a previous blog I felt like anything I can think of I can make it real here.
She followed me completely . I told her to make it properly we should have a name and a web page, we started to work on the name of the club, it has to be something with a meaning for spanish and irish, a mix up word. So after a couple of tries, we came up with this name: ELCRAIC, el means "the" in spanish and Craic is the most popular word in irish, it means "enjoyment and fun", so that was perfect. I found a webpage based in Dublin to register the name and to host the page. Paid for it and started just a liitle bit of the web page, just a brief but born page. Check it out!! : www. elcraic.net, so now we have an entity to be present.
At the same time, I keep my gallivanting around, my chit chats, so soon many people had heard the story of our little project, also I was searching for the spanish community because we knew they had to be somewhere and soon we had hearings about them but hadn't met them.
Everyday I had a story to report to Isabel. One day in a market that it's only held on thursdays next to the Castle an irish lady heard me talking at the fish stand and asked if I were spanish, indeed I'm...Oh I have a neigbourgh married to a cuban girl and she will be delighted about finding someone to talk spanish...she said.....Not a problem, there you go my mobile so she can contact me. The fisherman heard the conversation and said well ...I have ..let me see....he said...at least four spanish customers!!. I was so excited, not surprised as spanish we love fish, so we go where we can find fresh fish.. great... please have my mobile so you can handle it to them.I keep walking to other stand, black olives,tapenade... yummy yummy for a spaniard and there you go.... another chit chat about me being new,looking for spanish people with the girl there, and she said...you know the restaurant "" ..I used to work there with a spanish girl but she probably will be in maternity leave as she was pregnant then...So I went there, to the restaurant and asked for Marta, she is the manager but she was on maternity leave ...see they were out there and we have to find them!!.
Meanwhile, those days I had joined salsa classes. It was on the booklet , I love dance and thought would be a great place to meet people. I met a german girl there, fluent in spanish, and told her about the idea of the club, she tought it was great and was happy to be able to practice some spanish. Isabel placed another add in the library and she had a reply from another german girl fluent in spanish too. We were updating everyday each other with the news.
Evening courses were advertised in the newspapers to start soon. I saw there was one in spanish so told Isabel and Julia we had to go and meet the teacher who probably was spanish, also one evening at salsa class a lady told me there was a spanish girl working in her shop!!!!, so I went next day in the morning to the shop and fiiinaaaally, there we were we made contac with one member of Kilkenny spanish community!!! Yvana has been living here for four years, I was delighted. I told Isabel ,finally the target was achieved , we had found them!, When that same evening I went ot the school to meet the spanish teacher she had already heard about me as she is a good friend of Yvana. Finally we were there. Mercedes , the teacher told me, they are around 14, most of them married to irish and with little irish-spanish children, some of them live outside Kilkenny but they meet once a month to catch up.
So after talking to Mercedes we arrange to meet with some of them the day after in a pub. And it was so great!Julia, Isabel and me finally got to meet them after such a tracking trail ha,ha. We met Mercedes,Yvana and Isa, also Amanda a brasilian girl and her english boyfriend. It was an enjoyable evening. We explained about the club we have created , and they were delighted. Since then we have met two other times, we had chosen a pub for the club meetings and made flyers and place them in some of my new friends around shops and cafes, so it is an spanish-irish-international club and we have only started, I have plans.
We have decided to meet every wednesday and two days ago was the first time. Even some of our german friends couldn't make it, 11 people showed up!, there were brasilians,french,irish,italian and spanish. And we, Isabel and me were so proud and happy!!.
It was a great evening , there were musicians, artist(an irish paint artist I met in one of my walksabouts at the arts office where he is working on a project, he is fluent in spanish and just moved here with his spanish girlfriend) and we all gathered together. And I'm very happy .
This will grow . So this what I have been up to .......well apart from that I have started an evening course in interior design on mondays, quit my tuesday salsa classes as it clashed with the course in "Heritage management" I just started on tuesdays evenings at the Kilkenny Campus, joined the Kilkenny photography society and ...the Kilkenny Musical society soon to start the rehearsals of the musical Oklahoma!!...There you go
More: http://www.hsengine.com/s_Evening+Courses+Courses.html
No comments:
Post a Comment