Our Andalusian Adventure

Next on the agenda was 'buy a car' for years now we had bought a car relatively new from a dealer paying by monthly payments, now we had to put a chunk of our hard earned cash into buying a car outright and from a person who doesn't speak good english and we do not have a mechanical background. This process did take some time but we still needed a car to get around so this meant we hired a car for 8 days thinking by then we would have found the right one. Unfortunately this did not happen so we ended up hiring 3  the cars were great value but we had to go through the soul destroying experience of driving back to Malaga airport and then waiting for our next hire car .... The worst time was the last when we hired through Goldcar, we had to queue up for over an hour to collect our car!! It was ridiculous. Considering we had already booked online, considering the amazing technology out there now this was very unnecessary. The last car we hired was a Peugeot Panther we thought this would be good as we could use it to move furniture and dispose of garden waste what we didn't realise was how basic they were inside. I also think someone had stole the aerial as we had no radio! We had to endure journeys with no music, one particular memorable journey was after finding a beautiful sideboard for sale on the 'digame' website we needed to collect from Torrox. Now if it wasn't for the GPS co-ordinates we would have never found the place it was deep into the mountain along various tracks. We, well I underestimated the size of this piece of furniture.... With the seats pushed down and the passenger seat right at the front off we went home with Paul's face squashed up against the windscreen, and me driving with my right arm above my head as the furniture leg was poking in my shoulder, i wish we had videoed it! It did give me the giggles though and i'm happy to say we all love the furniture and it was worth the 50 minutes of discomfort. Back to cars after test driving a couple - one was a hyundai i30 and the test drive was another side cracking moment everytime he took his foot off the clutch a little it raced off like something possesed!! We decided against that car. We ended up buying a Mazda 5 from the Toyota garage with 1 years warranty, we don't need 7 seats but it has come in very handy i must say. The sales guy was quite a character too reminded me a bit of a spanish basil fawlty! 

During our second week we also thought it best to pop our heads in to the school and show our faces. The estate agent had handed in the forms back in June but i had had no confirmation. We went to the office and spoke to the 'Director' the girls were on their respective class list but she was adamant they didn't have the forms and we should fill in new one's. As you can imagine i was insistent that she actually had a look for the forms, after several minutes had gone by her secretary popped in and confirmed she had the forms..... With this we then were told there is a meeting tomorrow for everyone for the new school year. We did go to the meeting but it was hard as they didn't translate a word even though they did speak English. So, we left with a A4 piece of paper stating the materials we needed for each, all in Spanish with all kinds of  equipment needed including packs of tissues. We had some good advice from a fellow brit on where to buy the materials which was a god send and since starting the girls are really enjoying it. Olivia (10) really enjoys the relaxed style here as when in the UK she wasn't even allowed to talk to friends in class. There is no uniform, the days are 1 hour shorter and you call your teacher by their first names. They have now been there for 4 weeks and have two trips planned, one is to the Science Park in Granada and having researched it i'd love to tag along, surely they need a extra pair of hands.