Discovering a new life in Costa Almeria

I can only be talking about one thing - the mozzies have returned.

Over the last week or so we have been watching the mosquito lava hatching on the lakes up at the golf course and we knew we were going to get up there one morning soon and they would be up and ready. This morning we were prepared, both Neil & I covered ourselves in mossie spray - and boy were we glad! They were thousands of them - and they are big.

We start golf at about 9.30am so the mossies are just swarming everywhere at that time in the morning. By 11ish the breeze has got up and it's a lot warmer and there doesn't seem as many about but if you go into a sheltered part of the course where there's no wind, be careful 'cos that's where they are all hiding.

As far as we know, they are going to be spraying the course in the next week to reduce the numbers of mozzies, it's like crop spraying. They do it over the village as well and again, should be doing it soon and I did notice tonight when I was down in La Venta that there were a number of mozzies about - but so far, up at the villa we haven't seen any - but we are ready for them, the little monsters.

Todays bite count (despite all the spraying) is 2 on the right arm and 2 on the neck - I have a feeling that all the 'unprepared tourists' on the golf course this morning in their shorts and T-shirts and and no mozzie spray will be counting many more. When you stood still for a minute you would have a number of them land on you - so we did kill quite a few which made us feel a little better when they were dive bombing us while we were trying to take our shots. And you have to learn to speak through clenched teeth otherwise they're in your mouth - and that's not pleasant!

I have to say that having had a number of bites last year, the ones today don't seem as bad - they are not driving me mad with itching and they haven't come up in such large red lumps - maybe you build up immunity to them like when you have a vaccine - anyway, I'll put some cream on them just to make sure I can sleep ok .

One of the down sides to living in a hot climate!
 

Today is a local public holiday. Anyone who has given up something they enjoy for lent will understand that by now it is getting tough. So, locally there is an old tradition going back to the 17th century to help make the sacrifices of lent more bearable. Families picnic on the beach or in the woods having local food and they make a model of an old woman out of paper with a dress, apron and scarf and which is mounted on a cane. Very often the head is filled with sweets or treats. Locally they filled the head with firecrackers so that at the end of the day, it is set on fire and all the firecrackers go off. In other areas, the model is stoned until the sweets fall out of the head for the children to pick up and enjoy.

A Bodega is a winery or a wine merchant. Our local bodega in Pulpi actually looks like someone's garage where he used to 'fix his mates cars to save them money' and from the outside looks so unlike a winery that you would drive past it if you weren't being taken there by someone in 'the know'.

We have had red wine from there before, they sell it by the percentage strength - 14/16/18. The 14% is a bit raw but the 16% is fabulous and you can buy a 5 litre container for about €6. One word of warning, don't leave it in the plastic container or when you go for a drink a couple of days later it will taste like vinegar.

Our local bodega sell more than wines though, and today one of our friends, who was going over, asked if we needed anything. Now, recently Neil has been making me a lovely cocktail of Cava, fresh orange juice and Cointreau - and in these credit crunch times that may seem a rather lavish drink - BUT I get my bottles of Cava from the supermarket for €1.50 and as we never drink the Cointreau neat we thought we would try some from the bodega. And so we got a litre of 'Cointreau' and a litre of 'Vermouth' which is also useful in cocktails, for a total spend of €10.50 - the Cointreau seems to be way stronger than the genuine stuff and way cheaper. Again it comes in re-cycled plastic bottles that you take back for re-fills which helps keep the price low so our shopping looks like a bottle of water and a bottle of Coke but is actually our litre bottle of Cointreau and a litre of Vermouth from the local bodega.




We just need to be aware of the measures we pour ourselves! Cheers!

All the time we have been here we have managed to get all our deliveries OK. All our Christmas presents were ordered online and arrived OK, even the haggis ordered for Burns Night arrived OK, so when other people complained about not being able to get things delivered I couldn't understand their problem.

Well now I can!

Just over a week ago we ordered a bulk batch of golf balls from golfonline. It goes without saying that they tried to deliver them on Monday when we were at golf. Not a problem, they leave a sticker on your letter box saying they have been and you ring them up to arrange another delivery. Simple - or so you would think.

I rang the number and had a very simple conversation in Spanish, explained we would be in either Tuesday morning or Wednesday afternoon and they said Tuesday morning would be better.

So, we stayed in and no-one came.

So, I waited for Wednesday incase they took my other option, but still no-one came so I rang again. To be fair the young man on the end of the phone seemed quite surprised that the package had not been brought to us and we agreed that it would be delivered in the morning. To make sure he meant Thursday morning, I said this back to him. Yes he said, Thursday morning. Neil stayed in while I went to my Ladies group meeting and then to Pulpi Post Office but when I got back at 1pm, still no golf balls. I rang again, bearing in mind all this is being done in my best spanish, and he said what still no package, it will be there this afternoon.

Well, you've guessed it - no package had arrived by 6.30pm so I rang the office again. This time a young lady answered and, well, why would we be expecting our package to be delivered on a Thursday, they don't have a delivery man in Terreros on Thursday's, could they bring today - Friday?

I explained that we would not be in today but agreed to stay in on Monday and so I thought we were sorted.

That is until we got back from golf this afternoon to find another sticker on the letter box saying that the delivery man had been with our package but we weren't at home!

**/!!//***!!!!! Grrrrrr!!!

So, I am about to ring them yet again to see whether they are still coming in Monday as previously arranged or did today's trip start the whole process again!

Now I understand why people complain about deliveries out here - it is a little trying!

To find out if I am still waiting take a look at http://relocatetospain.blogspot.com

Pulpi Council run a Saturday morning class for the spanish children to have additional english tuition and also the english children to get help with spanish at the local Cultural Centre here in Terreros. This is run jointly by a Spanish lady and an English lady and all the children are between about 4 and 9. There are a couple of teenage boys who are 14, who come and help organise the children and the rooms and all the books and also help teach them things like the days of the week, the numbers and colours.

Last week we were asked if some of us would go down for an hour to help with the children's reading in English, to help with pronunciation and also to help explain some of the parts of the stories they don't understand and so today I went down to help.

The first thing that surprised me was how many children were there, there must have been over 30 of them. They are very boisterous and took a lot of settling. The smaller ones went off to a seperate classroom and the older ones (7 & 8 year olds) found their folders and settled down to learn the different names for items in the supermarket and items of clothing, and as the pictures have both Spanish and English underneath them it's also useful for me.

I was to work with an 8 year old girl who wanted help with her reading and so she chose a book and we sat down in a corner so she could read out loud to me. Her reading was very good and she understood a lot of what she was reading. The bits that she didn't understand I found I was able to explain to her in Spanish quite easily. We did Little Red Riding Hood and Jack & the Beanstalk.

Overall we worked together for about half an hour and when it was time for her to leave she was reminded to thank me and to say goodbye in English. I met a couple of the mothers who also thanked us for going down to help.

What a lovely way to spend an hour on a Saturday morning.
 

Several months on and it can sometimes be difficult to see the progress I am making. OK, so I can ask questions now and understand the answers, I can have basic conversations with people in shops and bars and I can occasionally understand the general topic of conversation between two spaniards, although not the detail but it still seems really hard work to put together a straight forward sentence and having tried watching a couple of Miss Marple DVD's in Spanish without subtitles - I still have a long way to go. 

Well, for the last few weeks I have been helping my friend Lucy to get started with spanish and it's a great way for me to revise the early chapters from the book I use and also to appreciate how much I have really taken in. It's one thing to learn and try to understand yourself but quite another to explain it to someone else.

When I was at work (gosh, that seems a life time ago!) I was told that I was not good at teaching people how to do new tasks as I used to jump stages and assume they knew more than they did. Well, I hope Lucy is able to fill in any missing gaps but it does help if we are at least using the same book. We both have books from the series Practice Makes Perfect - Verbs and after only 2 lessons I had said Lucy would be able to complete the exercises upto page 7 so I was surprised when she told me it had taken her 2.5 hours to complete one question. Tonight we met up to go through them and see where any problems may be. It didn't take too long to identify 2 key problems. Firstly her PMP Verb book is not the same as mine so although we both have a series of 40 questions to do on page 7 - they are not the same questions and secondly, the manner in which the questions were phrased in her book suggested the use of 'Gerald's' as Lucy likes to refer to them (in english they're called Gerund's and for all those who don't now what these are they are the 'ing' words - speaking, walking, talking etc) We english use 'ing' words all the time but the spanish tend not to - 'I speak' and 'I am speaking' are both the same in spanish, hablo - simple when you know how but when you don't hey, 2 hours later!!!

And also, when you ask a question you just use the same words, mix up the order and put and upside down ? at the beginning of the sentence so the reader knows it's a question before they get to the end. So 'él habla inglés' He speaks english turns into '¿habla él inglés? - Does he speak english - no extra words needed. Simple when you know how but difficult to start with as there is the urge to make it more complicated than it is.

So, all being well our Monday nights down in the bar at La Venta will work for both if us - Lucy will start to see an improvement in her spanish despite my poor ability to teach and I will gain extra revision time which will help my confidence in what I have actually learnt so that when I have my own classes and feel totally at odds with things, I can compare to where I was several months ago and at least take heart that progress is being made, as the spanish tell me 'poco y poco' - little by little.