Baking with passion

Well today was the day. It's finally become overcast and is now a bearable temperature, so to celebrate, Laura and I engaged in our long anticipated bakeoff. Armed with our ingredients and utensils we set to work on our battle of the sponge cakes. It was her chocolate cake against my marble cake. As they say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and after some ruthless (yet harmless?) sniping, it was time for the tasting, which I think I can safely say was enjoyed by all - especially Javi, who was so moved by the marble cake that he felt it necessary to propose to me:


Surprisingly it's the second time that a cake of mine has prompted a marriage proposal since I've got here, but the first time I've had that response from a bloke. 'Tis all very odd, and I hope I didn't hurt his feelings to much when I had to turn him down.

The bakeoff ended in a nice diplomatic draw, so there's ample scope for a re-run at some point in the probably not too distant future. I don't think that I've introduced everyone to Amadeo and Javi, so here they are with the aforementioned English contingent (they've taken to referring to us collectively as the 'British Power' group):


Javi is on the left, and Amadeo behind Richard on the right. They're both lawyers from Spain. Not pictured is Antje who kindly took the photo.

Everyone was sat around the dinner table last night, and the predominant language was in fact Spanish, a language in which I am less than illiterate in. Javi has been working incredibly hard on improving his English since he got here and was made a huge improvement these two weeks. By contrast, my Dutch is no better than when I got here and my German is the same. It's only when you spend time in a foreign country that you realise how isolating not speaking the native language can be. It's very odd walking down the street, waiting in a queue, or sitting in a cafe and not having a clue what everyone else is talking about. To be honest, despite that, it's humbling how good everyone else is and how accommodating they are in speaking English all the time. They even get annoyed when they can't think of the right English word to say what they want to say, seemingly not concerned that I couldn't even say my name in their language. I was in a Chinese yesterday and I asked what something on the menu was in English, the guy didn't know and so went and actually asked another customer to find out. It's kind of a catch-22 situation, because it's always easier for them to use English than it is for them to struggle with me speaking Dutch or German, which just encourages me to use English all the time. I've had a few emails about language courses, but unfortunately the University here doesn't offer a dedicated German course, so I'm going to have to go down some informal routes. I said that I'd use my time here to improve my German instead of learning Dutch, and the fact that I haven't so far is starting to weigh on my mind. I feel that I owe it to everyone who's putting the immense effort into speaking my language to at least try and repay the compliment. English isn't the be-all and end-all that it's made out to be.