Costa Women Blogs

Hi,   here´s is my latest blog post, an A-Z list on interesting things in Granada. Some are well known must see places and others anecdoctal or personal favourites   Hope you enjoy the read:   http://mollysp.wordpress.com/2011/12/17/a-z-of-granada/   If you are a Costa Women in Granada province hopefully at the beginning of 2012 we will arrange a meet up in the city.   Best wishes to you all in the New Year   Molly

Dear all Costa Women Members. A greeting from Norway and minus 20 degrees… I wanted to share with you our tradition here in Norway, how we celebrate Christmas and hopefully spread some Christmas Spirit with that. As I sit here in the kitchen of my parents house, with my hot cup of the and look out the window – the ground is white and the branches on the trees are frosty, it looks like a winter wonderland! Today we are going to the forrest with the kids to choose and cut our own Christmas tree, this is a great experience for the whole family. We will then take the tree home and decorate it the whole family together and then put all the Christmas presents under. After that we will sit in front of the fire, with some Christmas biscuits and just hang out. My favourite time of Christmas, where nobody has to go anywhere and everybody just relaxes! On the 23rd of December, the day before Christmas for us, we make rice porridge. This is served warm and an almond is hidden inside one of the plates, the person that get the almond wins a present. 🙂 After that we will have some Norwegian Christmas “tapas”; smoked salmon, ‘rakafisk’, sylte (google it) and maybe even taste the main course for Christmas Eve: Ribs! Christmas Eve in the morning we wake up and watch TV, all the lovely Disney Christmas Classics and another couple of moives that I remember from MY childhood! I am so happy to have my children learn the same traditions. We stay in our pyjamases most morning before we get dressed up and ready for Christmas at 5 p.m. Then we hear the bells ring from the church, and that is a symbol for us that Chrismtas has started. We sit down at the table and eat our traditional Christmas food. This is ribs, as mentioned above, meatballs, sausages, potatoes, sour crout, red crout, brussel sprouts and craneberry sause. Yum yum. After dinner, is the time to open all the presents. And, there are usually a lot of presents, however, this year we have done a secret santa (http://www.drawnames.com/) for the adults and concentrated the presents on the kids! Sometimes, even Father Christmas, comes for the kids! And that is the rest of the evening, accompanied by desert which is cold rice porridge with raspberry sauce and sugar. On the 25th of December, we visit family, go for walks, hang out, play games and just to things together – adults and children. The importance is that we do things together! Share memories and time! So, from Norway with wishes for the Best Christmas you want and a Successful, Exciting New Year! Mona 🙂

I am very excited about this weeks interview. This woman is the powerhouse behind an icon to children and adults since we first saw the fairy lights twinkling in our homes. So from a very scratchy and noisy skype call from Spain to the North Pole (those Elves can be loud)… here is my interview with Mrs. Santa Claus! Firstly, thank you so much for agreeing to this interview; I appreciate its a very busy time of year for you. You are welcome my dear and yes we are particularly busy leading up to Christmas particularly since someone wished for a communication service via computer in their Christmas stocking – thanks to the world wide web it hasn’t been the same since! What’s it like being married to a great man who is imitated the world over? Ho ho ho – sometimes I wonder if I have the right one! And of course that child spread the rumour about seeing his Mummy kissing Santa Claus, but we sorted all that out. So many imposters over the years who think they can look, dress and behave like Mr. Claus but to me there is only one Santa and when he comes home at night, ties up the reindeer and shouts I’m ho ho ho home he’s all mine  What do you think you contribute to the whole Christmas event? I bring along my women’s intuition of course – its not easy when some people don’t write a Christmas list so it comes in very useful. You know some people say they don’t believe in Santa – well have they ever NOT received a Christmas present? Where do they think they come from – the South Pole or something? Don’t you find it slightly scary that not only does he sees you when you are sleeping and when you are awake, but he also knows when you’ve been bad or good? Fortunately that only applies to children, or we’d all be in big trouble! All that making a list and checking it twice does get on my nerves after a while. Women are so much better at multitasking aren’t they. When’s your favourite day of the year? That has to be Christmas Eve – Santa’s off delivering presents to the world with the reindeers, the Elves have gone home to their families and I get to rave with my girlfriends here at the North Pole – its party time. Where do you think pole dancing was invented?  When you wish upon a star what do you wish for? Not having to wear red again – I mean seriously every day? There’s only so many outfits a girl can find in red and its not even as if its my colour! Favourite song First song on iTunes is always The Eurythmics’ song – Sisters Are Doin’ It For Themselves (yes yes “behind every great man is a great woman”) Thank you so much for your time Mrs. C – where can we follow you over the holidays? If you want to see where Santa is on up to on Christmas Eve our lovely friends at Norad http://www.noradsanta.org/en/ have the tracker going all night We’ve also got their community manager on the case on @noradsanta on Twitter and https://www.facebook.com/noradsanta One of the Elves has created an app you can download from the website too. We are very modern you know dear, we were using GPS before it even appeared on a Christmas list. (off the record GPS actually stood for Global Positioning Santa but they had to rename it when the Americans got involved) And on that note … ho ho ho merry Christmas 

Powerful Heart Energy Workshop on 4th February 2012   Gratitude Art, in conjunction with Dr. Susan Phoenix and Christine Heckel, will be holding a special Powerful Heart Energy Workshop on February 4th 2012 from 10:00 until 17:00 in the Miraflores Resort.   February is the month of St. Valentine’s Day, so this event will focus on the powerful heart chakra, which can help us to heal and improve our lives. Allow yourself to be taken on a journey of meditation, high into the universe and deep inside yourself. Science and motivation will be provided by Dr. Susan Phoenix, while Christine Heckel’s Tibetan Singing Bowls will provide the soundtrack for an intense meditative experience.   You will also be able to buy Gratitude Art products at this workshop, which is already creating interest, given the success of the last meditation day held by the same team on Friday 11th November 2011.   Celebrate the power of the heart in this traditional month of love.   You can book your place at the Powerful Heart Energy Workshop online at www.gratitudeart.com or by calling 951 712 258 or 600 659 063.    

What have Shakira, Einstein and Sarkozy got to do with the Christmas Nativity scene? Find out here: http://inthegarlic.com/2011/12/who-wants-to-be-a-caganer-2011/

Valerie, did Spain choose you, or did you choose Spain? Six of one, half a dozen of the other.  Italy was my first love but when I was 15 we had a family holiday in Benidorm and I started to learn Spanish. I always felt the urge to come back, and spent part of what they now call the gap year in Valencia.  And then all the time I wanted to come back.  After university, I came to Barcelona to teach English and fell in love with a Catalan. And so I chose to stay.                      Tell us about “creating worlds”? Creative writing is about creating  an experience in the reader’s imagination: a world that feels real, whether Hogwarts, an alien planet , a historical time and place, whatever. Or re-creating it in travel writing, for example. And in advertising copy.  There are simple but powerful tools that writers use to do this, and I share them in workshops and courses.  What could be more awesome than creating a world? Why did you start writing? As a child, I loved writing, but it got buried in academic prowess and teen angst.  Much later, during a very tough time, I did the Course In Miracles prayer to ‘see things in another way’: and suddenly I saw my life as a hilarious sit-com!  I was moved to sign up for a writing course, and then to write the sit-com as a novel. And then that love came back and I understood why I’d always felt there’d been something missing. Who is your favourite author? J K Rowling! Seriously.  But it’s impossible to choose just one.  Shakespeare.  Bill Bryson – very very funny, endlessly curious, and never ever nasty or snide.  Jhumpa Lahiri for sheer intensity.  Hemingway.  Khaled Hosseini.  There are so many authors I admire and enjoy. In the Garlic is your latest book, what is the story behind that Book coming into being? I wrote it with Theresa O’Shea who lives east of Málaga, and we hit on the A-Z formula as a way of bringing together our writings and sharing our experience in a fun and accessible way, celebrating Spain’s quirks and its incredible diversity. Back then there was a lot of pretty bad material on Spain – patronising, dull and inaccurate – and we felt we could do something  much better and above all more fun. There seem to be a lot of expat writers living in Spain; any thoughts as to why this country is good for writing? First, I think the number of writers is proportional to the number of expats, which is huge!  Also there are many different kinds of writers, so it’s difficult to generalise. Many people choose to write when they retire. In the last decade Internet and budget airlines have made it possible for many writers to relocate here.  It used to be cheaper to live here so you could ‘give up the day job’ but not really true now.  And the lifestyle and café society figure largely in ‘being a writer’  – at least in the popular imagination. What has been your greatest challenge, whether personal or business? Keeping myself and my family afloat during my husband’s long illness and after he died. Despite all, holding out for doing what I love and trying to empower my sons to do the same.  The ongoing challenge for me is to overcome my addictive tendencies and focus on my writing or whatever other task is in hand.  Mastering anxiety is a major challenge. If you’re not freaking out with fear, then you can handle anything. To relax would we find you on a beach, mountains, city or shed? Ideally you would find me in the mountains, but now, more likely, by the sea, or in my room (cave) surrounded by books and papers.  Or walking in the city at a relatively quiet time. Best piece of advice you’ve ever been given Always be intellectually honest with yourself.  Said by my classics teacher and mentor at grammar school. A Favourite memory? Waking up in the house we used to have in the Catalan pre-Pyrenees and pushing the shutters open: cool air, blue sky, squirrels in the oak trees,  the leaves glimmering and sparkling in the sun,  fragrance of pines, sound of dogs, children, chainsaws across the valley… bliss after the summer heat in Barcelona. Something you would like to promote? Creative Writing  Magic. I’m planning fascinating new workshops for 2012. If you live far from Barcelona, I can troubleshoot your writing and help you by email and Skype. And there are still copies of In The Garlic available: it makes a great Christmas gift. Check out both the websites for details. http://www.valeriecollinswriter.com If you were to be one woman for a day – who would she be? No idea: It’s taken me a lifetime to learn to accept myself rather than want to be someone else  But if you push me – J K Rowling – again, seriously.  It would be a whole day of that NLP exercise where you model someone by putting their head on your shoulders!  Nigella Lawson maybe too. If you could achieve one spectacular thing in one day what would it be? Finish my novel! Your business or personal epitaph – what would it say? ‘She always did the best she could.’ A friend once said that my catchphrase was ‘We’ll figure something out’. I’d never realised how often I said it! What gift are you most hoping Santa brings you? A Kindle.  But I’m happy to pass on that. I’d really like Santa to bring enough true compassion and caring and connectedness to the world so we can turn around this huge mess we’re in. Where do you see yourself living in the next 10 years? Barcelona and/or some country place in Catalunya.  Thank you Valerie; good to meet you!