Russians, the farm and assorted stuff...

   So I'm sitting in the Placa Prim having a coffee when a man walks up and asks me if I can help him with some translation.
    Since my Catalan is sketchy (I start taking lessons Oct. 5) I told him that I might not be able to do that because I don't speak the language very well.
    No, he said, I must have misunderstood. He didn't want me to translate Catalan to English or English to Catalan, he said. He was able to handle that on his own.
    What then, I asked.
    "Well, they are Russian, you are Russian..."
    Russian?
    "What makes you think I'm Russian?" I asked, sincerely puzzled. (I was wearing a polo shirt with a Stonehenge logo on it that I'd picked up in England long ago and carrying a bright yellow-and-black backpack with a Nike logo on it so I figured it wasn't my clothes that made him think that.)
    The man shrugged.
    "Well," he said as he turned to leave, "you look Russian."
    Really?
    My family's DNA is primarily English and Irish. Because I'm an American there are some other strands woven into it, of course, but to the best of my knowledge there is no Russian genetic material in the mix.
    What's weirder still, on three more occasions in the past few days I've been mistaken for a Russian. Yesterday, for example, the waiter at a small restaurant I stopped at for coffee and a snack handed me a menu printed in Russian. (It's not unusual for restaurants and hotels here to have menus and other printed material in Russian and Ukrainian since Reus caters to a lot tourists from those two places.) I gave it back to him and asked for one in Spanish or English. He shrugged and brought me one in English because, apparently, while I might look Russian I surely do not look Spanish.
    Curiouser and curiouser...
    While I've been slowly recovering from the long flight home from New Zealand - a recovery process that seems to be taking waaaay to long, by the way - I've been well and truly fed. We had a second big feast at el Mas a couple of days ago... another giant paella and assorted second and third courses followed by dessert. This time there were more than 20 people at the table, including Josep's cousin Elena who was bombarded with questions about New Zealand, all of which she answered gracefully. As usual, following dinner, there was a lot of conversation and even a card game that had many more rules than I could remember so I just watched. (Elena won it though I'm not quite sure how...)
    While his mom is still in New Zealand working through the end of the month, Josep and I have been getting ready for the start of the school year. We're almost ready but we still need to buy his books for the new year... they've been ordered but won't come in for another couple of days at which point we have to go to a bank, deposit money into the school's account and get a receipt that we will then take to a bookstore where they'll turn them over to us...very complicated.
    He has an orientation day Friday and school officially starts next Monday. He's 13 so naturally he doesn't want to go back to the classroom... I'm 66 and can sympathize. I remember all too well what it was like during that last precious week of summer vacation when I was his age... my friends and I tried to cram every activity we could into those last few days. We played ball in the mornings, we went to the beach every afternoon and stayed out half the night until our moms threatened us with both physical and psychological violence if we didn't come in.
    This is a new generation, however. Josep and his friends seldom go outside. Instead, they've been spending this last week in a state of high anxiety texting one another about what clothes and sneakers are cool this year, whether their cellphones are out of style and need to be replaced with something newer and cooler, the newest game apps - apparently if you don't have them you aren't cool - and more stuff like that. Frankly, since I was never one of the cool kids when I was his age, I can't really relate to what they're so anxious about. In fact, it's a mystery to me why they aren't at the beach every day because the weather has been beautiful, the Mediterranean's waters are still warm and instead of texting one another they could be actually talking face to face. When I mention that to Josep, however, he sighs and then gives me the same tolerant, semi-amused look young folks always give old folks who simply do not understand what life is all about in these modern times.
    Sometimes I feel so out of the loop... kinda like those Russians who were once sent to Siberia...