Windows are sometimes kept wide open during the day. Usually the problem is letting heat out and wasting energy, but here there is no heat to be let out.
At Sachiko's house, the heat is a tiny space heater that is in the living room and so the door to this room is kept shut whenever the heater is on. This is preferrable to most people's solution: a heater under the dining room table, from which hangs a heavy table cloth, all the way to the floor (there is a typical kind of table cloth, synthetic with long nap, like stuffed animal material from the 70s, usually a green or brown colour. It even has a fancy embroidered edge.) Obviously, the only way to warm yourself is to be stuck sitting at the table. You put your legs under and pull the table cloth up over your lap. (Normally you also wear a housecoat over top of your clothes).
I bought myself a hot water bottle yesterday. I thought, "10 Euros for only another month and a half or two...?" I didn't want to spend it but I don't like needless suffering all that much. Besides, I realized I use hot water bottles even during the summer, for sore muscles. Anyways, it is quite an exciting hot water bottle, as it comes from Germany and has a pretty velour cover. Even the shop keeper at the farmacia was so excited about the new hot water bottles that had just come in that she went off babbling, "Que MOOOONAA!" (how cute) and had to go show them to her friend who was in the store before seeing if I wanted one. I am caressing my hot water bottle right now.

Clothes driers don't exists, for all intents and purposes here in Andalucia. Well, probably if you are really extravagant. But I have never seen one. The majority of people never use one. The only trouble is that although this apartment is beautiful, there isn't a good place in the sun for drying clothes, so they have been sitting in a dark corner still wet after a full day.

The radio in the morning has a comedy talk show, like radios do. Yesterday I listened half asleep to them going on and on in a fake Chinese accent, pretending to be Chinese and joking a lot. Something about Chinese people or issues concerning them was a main theme. This morning it was not the main theme but somehow they managed to imitate an Arab guy, and an Italian. Sponge Bob ("Bob Esponja") was made mention of, as well as something to do with casinos and Indios de America en sus reservas. Probably not all of this was denigrating to the various ethnic groups. They do have a strong sense of the idea that one should not be racist, but they don't quite put that into practice the same way we do. They don't quite see how asking "the one with the feather or the dot" to identify "Indios" is a problem, nor I suppose, imitating someone's accent.

Anyways, I should be off looking for work, but I got up too late and have to meet Sachiko relatively soon to practice Concha's Solea, about which I am very excited, having not practiced with anyone else since August. I am going to work on my "resume", which so far says, "I am professional, I am good at making and fixing stuff, I speak languages." I refuse to put a list of how long my bum has sat in a chair at different places over the years.

Then I am going to go talk to Senor Chavez, who I ran into yesterday leaving his shop, while attempting to go visit him. I am very happy to have people here who recognise me and seem excited to see me.