Mar was at a party a few weeks ago at a squat not far from our flat and met a 17 year old girl named Ellen from Belgium (we think she’s a run away). She didn’t have any place to sleep so Mar invited her to stay at our place for the night. She didn’t speak any Spanish but she did speak fairly good English so I was able to have a couple conversations with her. I had never met anyone from Belgium before. A nice enough girl – very spiritual and really into the whole “life is energy and we are all one” thing. I was building a board game from spare scraps of wood and Ellen wanted to build one too so I let her borrow the saw. She briefly described her game and it sounded very much like tic-tac-toe but she called it “three in a row” and said that it required a lot of strategy. I didn’t see the point of going through all the trouble of actually making a board for tic-tac-toe. But she spoke about it with such enthusiasm – how she and her father used to play it when they were in the woods and if you use very interesting rocks (instead of X’s and O’s) it’s very earthy and natural. So she built her little board and drew the # design on it. We sat down to play and she handed me three very cool rocks that she had found on the beach and she kept three different looking rocks for herself. I pointed out to her that we would need more than three rocks each if we wanted to play a full game and then she explained the rules and I learned an awesome new game! After you place your three pieces (a la tic-tac-toe) you then have to pick up one of them and move it to another square on your next move. You just keep moving the three pieces that you have until you get three in a row. I had never played this before and really thought it was lots of fun. We played for at least an hour (easily beating the amount of time I could stand to play tic-tac-toe). Everyone go out and find six really cool rocks and give it a try – it’s great!