170 – Una Escapada

 

Juan-Jesús was probably about seven, though hard to tell.  He’d been staring at me in the bar earlier, where I’d been chatting to a charming old guy about the provenance of the local jamón.  The old fella had offered some useful tips about villages I should visit between Huelva and Extremadura.  Obviously the child had spotted my accent, and seemed captivated by it. 

132 – Immersion, not Drowning

You know you’ve got a good bunch of people, when the kitty (bote) keeps growing.  Nobody wanted to under-pay, everyone was chucking a bit extra in “just in case”.  The kitty grew.  We began by stopping for ice-creams late at night on the way back to the hotel to use it up but it wasn’t enough, and in the end the final meal was paid almost entirely out of the remnants of the kitty.

122 – Of Acorns, Olives, and Old-Andaluz

The pigs definitely won.  Out of everything in this amazing multi-cultural language immersion week, the pigs definitely won.  And the horses, the dogs, and the miles of rolling countryside and beautiful holm-oaks.  Or maybe the food?   Or perhaps achieving the challenge of a week without a single word in our own languages?   Or possibly …. no, never mind.   It was the pigs.