[ Posted by Alia Merali Tue, 07 Nov 2006 20:21:00 GMT ]
Found this really great shop today called tengo idea! Its in Glories off Diagonal, and its such a cool shop. At the moment I have this fascination with any shop that sells things for your home - esp ones where you find great deals. Like a salt pot (cellar) for ?1.20 I mean that has to be a bargain![ Posted by Alia Merali Wed, 04 Oct 2006 12:56:00 GMT ]
Wow so a huge amount of time since I last blogged - and loads has happened. We're still in Barcelona, still in our cosy flat and enjoying the sun, sea and sand!After our barcelona-london-dubai-london-barcelona trip and our annual Guadec conference (which btw was loads of fun - we stayed in a caravan, i helped out with the conference and got a t-shirt to show for it. It wasn't the only t-shirt I got - google were among the ppl giving them out this year!) my friends came over from London. Hamida and Fatema came over - 2 of my bestest friends. We had lots of laughs and late nights and I cant thank them enough for making the trip!
July - I started my TEFL course (Teaching English as a Foregn Language) and Oxford House College. This is where my bike really came in handy and I made the 30-40 mins cycle each way every day for the month! I was quite proud of myself. The course was amazing - I met some great people, learnt bucket-loads and conquered my fear of getting up and talking in front of people (adults). Oh and I have the greatest husband in the world who put up with my hours and did everything (8am-12am day plus studying full time on the weekends!) - apart from the cooking!
After the course we made another quick trip to london - this time only 3 days. 16th August was our 3 year anniversary, and we celebrated it in Valencia! We stayed at the Silken Puerta - a really nice hotel with amazing decor. Check out the pictures on our flickr site. We spent the days visiting the Arts and Science Centre there. The best parts of it were the aquarium with a spectacular dolphin show, and the hemisphere - a huge dome which is a cinema screen. All in all an anniversary to remember.
September came and it was the start of the new academic year and the chance for me to start working. At the moment I am working for a company which provides english teachers to companies. I basically teach their employees during the working day. So far I have really enjoyed it. Its different teaching adults as opposed to teaching children which ive always done. This way though, I get to have fun in a different way - by teaching english through exposing students to different topics that can be discussed - and most importantly have a laugh at the same time.
[ Posted by Alia Merali Mon, 25 Sep 2006 12:28:00 GMT ]
So Ramadhan has started! Its quite exciting. Ramadhan is a a spiritual month for muslims, where we fast (no food or drinks) from dawn till dusk. This enhances our ability to be spiritual and cleanse our soul.[ Posted by Alia Merali Thu, 25 May 2006 16:23:00 GMT ]
Well its confirmed, we'll be going to london for a few days next week...yay! This time I didnt realise how much I was missing it until the opportunity came up to go. We have to go to London so we can catch a flight to Dubai from there for the weekend, so we decided to spend a couple of days there prior to going to Dubai. I'm quite excited, get to see the familiy and especially looking forward to seeing my scrump-diddly-umpcious nephew.
Other things going on - at the end of this month Guadec (Gnome User and Developer European Conference) is being held in Vilanova a la Geltru, which is just around the corner from here. I've been meaning to put my name down to help out for quite a while but just hadnt got round to it. Well today I did - hopefully i'll be volunteering during the conference and providing any help I can do beforhand.
Tomorrow is my last day at Ole Language School studying spanish. Since we are doing BCN-Ldn-Dubai-Ldn-BCN and taking quite a few days I thought I would end them and go on to doing something else. I've been looking into that 'something else', hopefully it works out. I will definately miss the classes and the school. I think ive met one of the best teachers I have ever had in my life and have learnt alot, in a relatively short period.
[ Posted by Alia Merali Wed, 17 May 2006 22:25:00 GMT ]
So Barcelona just won the Champions League Final! They were losing until the 70-something minute 1-0 down, and Arsenal had 10 men, but they kept going and scored 2 goals in succession! It brought back so many memories of last year, being in Istanbul for the final of Liverpool vs AC Milan and wow was that an amazing match!Here the atmosphere around the town is very festive. The minute Barcelona scored you could hear the celebrating from the rooftop terraces and balconies, and the start of the fireworks. This continued after the 2nd goal, and now the honking and fireworks in the street is non-stop!
Last year though, being in Istanbul for the final, the build-up to the match, being interviewed by the BBC Breakfast team, tasting the atmosphere, losing by 3-0 at half time, then coming up to 3-3, going through extra time then finally penalties and winning....was crazy - so unbelievable!
[ Posted by Alia Merali Wed, 10 May 2006 11:27:00 GMT ]
So we got me a bike! 2 weeks ago I got a bike and its been really good fun actually. While growing up i've always had a bike. When I was a lot younger it was a yellow BMX - the coolest thing. Alot of my memories of growing up involve doing things with the bike. We used to continually cycle up and down from our house to the big tree, which really wasnt far, but we lived on a main road and werent allowed to cycle very far. One of the funniest memories I have is when my sister rode into a lampost while looking at someone she thought she knew! We used to take our bikes with us on holidays around the UK, and even all the way to Italy. Well now i have a bike again and its pretty fun, well it was once we figured out that the higher you put the seat the less it hurts to sit on it! Whats pretty cool is that since google maps have taken out a street map for Barcelona you can now calculate the distance that you want to go with GMaps Pedometer, its pretty cool. Last weekend we went to the beach with the bikes to watch an air race. We calculated that we cycled almost 11km. In Barcelona the handiest thing you can have is a bicycle. Its most of the time quicker than using the metro, safer than a motorcycle with all the bike lanes around, and much cheaper than having a car, plus much more convenient, there like isnt any parking spaces anywhere esp in the city centre.[ Posted by Alia Merali Tue, 09 May 2006 10:14:00 GMT ]
New start - we decided to update the blog and so lost the style and maybe all my past posts but I figured its not much of a problem. Id rather lose the posts and spam comments that went with them! Well alot of things have changed in the last 6 months. To update - in December of last year we went for Hajj. The most amazing eperience of our lives. It wasnt like anything I imagined - it was so much better! Then after Hajj we made a big decision - to move to a different country - Barcelona! ZA got offered a job here and we decided to take it for a short while - for the experience it would offer us. We've now been in Barcelona from 16th February 2006 and have already been back to London twice! When we first got here, our biggest worry was getting a flat for approx 1 year, however that turned out to be the easy bit since we had done our research from home and arranged a few viewings. We found our flat on our 2nd day here. The biggest problem for us was transporting our luggage - we had 2 suitcases (28 kgs in each) and a trolley bag (12kgs). British Airways had been very kind to us considering we were only supposed to have a total of 46kgs plus hand luggage. We didnt make life easy for ourselves by renting out a flat which is on the 4th floor (no stairs) which in BCN translates to the 5th floor because the have an extra floor before the 1st! We've both been busy here, ZA started work and I started spanish classes. I can now speak resonably well, however understanding the locals is a bit difficult. Ive also been enjoying myself with getting to know the place during the day. Visiting the fresh food markets is good fun as is walking around the city finding shops for different things. On the weekend just gone we finally had our housewarming get-together! It was good fun, with a few friends, food, xbox, sheesha and scrabble!!