Aldeacentenera

It’s the weekend again. The rainy, cool weather persistes with no signs of sunny days ahead. At least the wasps stay away!

Even the local people are telling us that they have never seen such cool, rainly weather in May. We were in Trujillo last night and driving home was more like navigating a boat down a river!

The builders came back in force on Saturday morning to our street. We’d almost forgotten how obnoxious they are. We spent almost a year having to put up with their tinny blaring radio, their tuneless singling, and all the machinery noises from morning to night. It was awful! And of course, they blocked the road for all that time. Only in the past month or so have we been able to drive in one end and out the other.

The ITV is due on our car next Friday. Will it pass? I honestly don’t know. It possibly will as it hasn’t done too many miles since last year, and therefore not too much wear and tear. It’s a terrible procedure going through the ITV. They have it set up a bit like a conveyor belt. You go into the garage at one end, groups of mechanics wait at different points and you’re checked at every one as you slowly go down the line.

I have decided that I am going to learn Spanish. Yes, I have been here a whole year and more, but I still can’t speak even conversational Spanish. I don’t know why - it just won’t happen. Anyway, I am now going to make a concerted effort to actually learn it.

I actually understand a lot of what I hear. I can follow the new on TV pretty good most of the time. I even watch movies sometimes, though I do find that frustrating as they tend to speak too fast and I get lost. Sometimes I long for a good adventure movies in ENGLISH!

I’m going to update this blog a lot more regularly. probably once a week at the weekend. It won’t replace the Spanish Outlook column directly - I got paid for that - but I hope it will give anyone who is interested an idea of how our life is progressing, how it feels to live in rural Spain, and what the country and its customs are like.

We love it here and we hope we can continue to live here. It isn’t always easy though, but it certainly is worth the struggle. My only slight regret is that I haven’t seen the sea since April 2007! I hated all those rough sea trips I had to endure all those years, but I do miss just seeing the sea. There are many embalses around here. It’s not quite the same, but I love it when we are out driving and we come across one. Seeing a large expanse of water does me good.

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