Friday, October 5, 2012

They are promising another sunny day here in Valencia with temperatures in the 80’s.  It will be a carbon copy of yesterday.  Today Alicia, the wife of our landlord, is coming to put on all the sofa covers that were sent to the cleaners right before we left in July.  She will come with our cleaning lady, Inma, who will assist Alicia and then stay to give the apartment a once over.  It needs it after a two-month absence.

Later today we have an appointment at City Hall to update our certificate of empadronamiento.  Everyone who is resident in Spain needs to have this certificate that indicates one’s current address.  Our appointment will allow us to update our address.  This is one of the necessary steps to renewing our visas, which expire on November 16^th.  For the visa renewal we will need to present the certificate of empadronamiento, proof of medical insurance, and proof of sufficient economic means to sustain us while here in Spain.  We have those bases covered, although I have asked our friend, Salva, who will help guide us through the renewal process thanks to the good auspices of a friend who works in the department concerned with renewal, what specific documents we will need to provide to indicate that we have the necessary economic resources.  As you will recall, the inability of someone to understand our financials that we submitted for our initial visa was the cause of the ten-month delay in getting our first visa.

Susan will catch up with Zahava later today and there is a chance that we will catch up with Brian and Ofelia this evening.  Brian returns from Madrid today having dropped off daughter, Olivia, who will begin her master’s program in fashion design, next week.  Olivia, who is a very talented young woman who speaks five languages, was one of thirty candidates accepted to the program.

Last night’s meeting with the magicians did not happen because they needed to attend a memorial mass for our mutual friend, Paco de Andrés before the meeting.  Pepe was going to call me when they got back to the Cuchara, but when I hadn’t heard from him and as it was getting close to 10:30 I messaged him saying that I was going to go to bed early.

Lunch yesterday was at The Ginger Loft.  Santi was off somewhere taking care of business so we had a chance to have Mike give us an update on the goings on during our two-month absence.  We had a wonderful lunch.  We started with a mango-vermicelli salad with dried shrimp, chicken coconut, herbs and Thai dressing.  The habanero pepper in the dressing gave the salad quite a kick. Our entrée was Vietnamese chicken prepared with an oyster sauce amped up with the addition of ginger and sesame.  Mike also had us try some pork and shrimp wontons that he is thinking of adding to the menu.  They were outstanding.  After lunch we headed home and took life easy until we turned in at 10:30.  Tomorrow we are off to Madrid.