Wow, we’re here in Spain – it’s an unreal feeling after so much dreaming and hard work to actually be here! Our first week in Spain was spent in Rincon de Victoria, a town east of Malaga. We had a great apartment and our host, Fidel, was fantastic. He met us at Malaga airport (after waiting for us for an hour and a half) and we followed him back to Rincon de Victoria. The car we hired is a lot bigger than we imagined, great for all our gear but scary to drive down small lane roads on the wrong side! Peter drove us back (no problem after 30 something hours flying and not much sleep) then Fidel took him out in his car to get some groceries (about 7.00 at night) and show him a bit of the town. Fidel had come from his home to meet us (3 hours away) then hung around with us for ages, getting us settled. It made all the difference to our start in Spain.

The apartment had a lovely terrace in the sunshine and we sat out there for lunch most days. The morning and evenings were cold, but the weather was sunny – no rain and this is apparently when its suppose to rain the most.

 

 

Our times were all mixed up and we ate lunch at two or three and dinner much later at night than NZ normal, but way too early for the Spanish. We had tapas (‘snacks’) at a restaurant one night after a day of sightseeing at 8.00pm and the waiter/cook/bartender was there by himself because it wouldn’t get busy till 10.00pm. Most restaurants (and shops) shut at 3.00 or 4.00 and open again at 6.00, 7.00 or 8.00, so early dinners are pretty tricky if you want to eat out!

 

We’ve been eating a lot of baguettes and cured ham. They have huge legs of cured ham hanging up at the supermarket – its quite something (so is the aroma!). The other food item that’s going to be on our regular shopping list is muesli with chocolate chips. The first day I had it I thought it was awful, how could they do that to muesli! The second day I thought it wasn’t so bad, by the end of the week I was hooked and we had to go get some more before the box ran out! There is a lot of sugar and chocolate in Spain, so Peter and Amy are enjoying that! OK, perhaps I’m liking it too. Daniel likes all the juice and chippies.

As for homeschooling, well we did get some done the first week. Some maths from our maths book and I managed to get “Story of the World vol 3” downloaded to a pdf. The problem with homeschooling via websites is the when there is difficulty with the internet there’s no access to the schoolwork! Amys ok with that, but Daniel gets a little stressed! I’d like to download some more educational apps to my phone so the kids could do those, but oops, need the internet to do that as well!

Peter has been marvellous, its like having a second teacher to help. He’s the one behind getting the kids to work on their blogs and getting the whole blog up and online. He monitors the kids and he’s there to help with the maths when they get stuck. He even mumbled something about needing to sort out the kids spelling. I just sit and watch and try to stay quiet, it’s like having a holiday from homeschooling while you’re homeschooling. I do try not to be grumpy when he suggests I actually do some maths myself with the kids!

We’ve done quite a lot of sightseeing this week, which the kids have loved. We went to Malaga twice and visited a music museum, the Picasso Museum, an art gallery and Daniels favourite the Car Museum. We wandered around the Roman ruins and the Alcazaba which was a lot of fun. We also enjoyed just walking around the waterfront at Rincon De la Victoria and visiting the underground caves.