Carnaval

Our first week of Carnaval in Ribadeo. So happy to see our students all dressed up and having such a fabulous time despite the freezing weather. The only person who wasn't happy was the pig who was up for raffle. This is all about pork say the farmers. The Catholic Church is against such pagan carry-ons but the event heralds the coming of lent. They have pancakes here as well, but all week not just Tuesday.

 

The ladies had been making pancakes all morning and they were very happy to have a customer at last. The cold weather seemed to have kept people at home but my neighbour says that the pancakes used to be free and this year folk don't want to paya euro, even if it is for charity. They were yummy!

Fair fa your cara tan guapa...

 

Our first Burn's Supper in Spain, with MacSweens Haggis bought at the Airport. Our Boss and some friends came to share it with us and we had a fair bit of culture as well. We were quite proud of Andrew's company - Whitespace- who produced a Burn's history in less than 3 minutes - I suppose if you only live til 37 it is possible. It is on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMxIBqpryG0&feature=share

Dionisio Gamallo Fierros No more!

Just when we dicovered a statue of Dioniso in the park (writer & journalist born here) in fact just when we sent out 250 change of address cards saying this was the name of our street, in fact 20 minutes after I pay to register my UK vote at this address, I return to the flat and get a letter saying they have changed the name of our street "Please tell the bank and all your contacts" - aaaargh!
For those of you who have our address just substitute the new name "Praza da Musica" with the same flat numbers. We are sorry for any inconvenience - they're not.

New Year and New Partners

We had a lovely start to 2014 when we were invited to attend the first Sunday service in Dunbar Church of Scotland. One of the elders there was moored behind us in Fort Augustus in July and we kept in touch. Here Mike and his wife pose with us after the service - Emma is holding flowers as the next day they were moving to a new house. We were surprised and delighted that they want to adopt us as partners. What a great congregation, and what a great bacon roll we had upstairs in their fantastic premises. It may have been a place of worship for 1,000 years but inside the church it is the last word in luxury and high technology.

Beasties from my besties

I am very lucky to have such great friends in many time zones around the world. However with some the time is irelevant, when we talk we continue to chat as if we hadn't been apart for months or years. This year all 4 of my besties sent me wee wooden dogs, none of them knew the others had done likewise. Do I love them? Yes. And the dogs.

Sorry we just blogged off...

Our apologies - it has been a furiously busy two months - no time to post news as we were too busy making it happen. However all the pigs are now flying and we too will fly home this week to see our boys and then my Mum.

Teaching English has been busier than we thought - in this first 4 months the academy has grown from 2 kids and 3 adults to 16 kids and over a dozen adults. It is good for the business but also for us. We get our health care costs met and we make lots of new friends. We had a party on Friday night and had a great laugh with Christmas party games and singing.

The Spaniards did us proud sampling the mulled wine, mince pies and Christmas cake. One of them invited me to try something Spanish, and it turned out to be dog biscuits, hope my coat is shiny  and my nose wet.

Mind you after spending last week in hospital I should be in the peak of health!

High up, high in the mountains...

We were certainly pretty high up the mountains in Italy last week as we attended WECs Eurocon as new leaders for WEC Spain. It was a stunning location but that was all we saw as business sessions ran from 8am until 9pm. Food was fab, pasta every day and no type appeared twice. The Centenary Cake on the last day was fantastic and I learnt a secret, make two and the first one is ready  to serve as soon as the dummy one is cut!Left at 3am and it was dark so we didn't really see the sights of Rome but all went well (via Mallorca to save money!)