Springtime is my favourite time of year. The countryside is so incredibly beautiful with all the wild flowers in bloom.

Exactly, what part didn’t they understand….?

I need my internet to work!!!

It is sooo frustrating to depend on internet and not having it! Since Monday last week, we have been calling our phone company complaining about the line.  Or let’s say non-line….then there is internet, and then there is not!!! And it all started with a nice service gesture from the phone company. They wanted to replace our old router with a new and better one, and since it has just been down-hill.

Today we had our fourth visit of a technician, and they all blame the other; it is a bad router, it is the cables outside and so on. And in the meantime I sit here, infuriated by my phone bills. Spain is on the most expensive countries in Europe to use phone and internet, and still the coverage is rubbish. So I’ll call again tomorrow, to complain, first nicely and later finish off in a very high-pitch voice, which always leaves me a bit embarrassed after I have “slammed down the phone” (I guess one really doesn’t do that anymore!!) without a proper polite goodbye. Ups, I did it again…

The answer will be the same; they will send yet another technician, but they don’t know when…because they are on strike!!!

(Serves 4)

1 broccoli

200ml Greek yoghurt

2 tablespoons sugar

juice and zest of 1 lemon

2 tablespoons mayonnaise (preferably homemade)

1-2 tablespoons good virgin olive oil (e.g. Masia el Altet)

150-200g cubed bacon

2 tablespoons sunflower seeds

½ red onion or 2 spring onions

1 small handful raisins

Break or cut the broccoli into small florets and peel and slice the stem into ½ cm slices. Mix the yoghurt, sugar, lemon zest and juice, mayonnaise, olive oil, salt and pepper together to make a marinade. Stir in the broccoli and leave it to marinate overnight, or for a minimum of 8 hours. Toast the bacon cubes until crisp, lightly toast the sunflower seeds in the oven and thinly slice the onions. Fold it all together with the broccoli and raisins.  Set aside a small amount of bacon, raisins and sunflower seeds to use as garnish when you come to arrange the salad on a dish or plate.

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David in front of his school in Patría.

Because we did not want David to start in school without being able to speak Spanish like Thea had done, we enrolled him in kindergarten when he was 1, 5 years old. Slowly we could hear he started picking up some Spanish words, then he mixed the two languages together and finally he decided to focus only on Spanish. This meant that when his time came to start school he was as fluent as his class mates.

One worry I had about him starting school, was the diaper changing. I asked one of our forever helpful neighbours, and she replied that the children off course were finished using diapers when they started school. My jaw dropped. David would not even have turned three when he was supposed to start school in mid-September. But we made it, thank God for the long warm summer with a lot of intensive potty training.

It was a great little school, based in Patría, only 5 minutes’ walk from our house. The school had 16 pupils from 3-5 years, two teachers and they were all together in one big class room. The moms took turns in cleaning the school in the afternoons, so we were very involved in what happened at the school. A great and safe way to start your school years.

David is a very active boy; he can find it difficult to sit still for a long time. A typical boy, you might say! The Spanish learning system includes a lot of sitting quietly down and listening to the teacher, with only one break during the whole day at school. When David was 4½ years, his teacher said he was a bit worried about David, because he couldn’t sit still for very long at the time. I tried not to laugh when I commented if it wasn’t just a sign of that he was a healthy boy. Obviously two different cultures meeting!!! They once even made him stay inside the class room during the break to finish his assignment. I’m so happy, that when David came home from school he could go outside and run off all his energy until sunset… or longer 😉  But he was happy there, – I think mainly, because off 12 of the pupils were boys and they played football at every given opportunity.

The year when David turned 6, he started taking the school bus to Vejer and then our two children went to the same school.