Sheep Guarding Llama

I had a hard time sleeping last night after both Luciana and Liesl sneaked down and got into bed with us about an hour after going to bed.  They came down sometime between one thirty and two in the morning.  By a little before six I gave up on getting any additional sleep and just got up and went up to the kitchen and did some work for a few hours in the morning.  Then around ten or so I switched to Tropico 4 and played for a few hours, which was nice and relaxing.  I made really good progress today on my campaigns.

I had a tough day with there being some major construction work going on in the plaza.  There is heavy equipment out there ripping up the plaza.  Looks like they are going to be doing something really fancy there but it is unlikely that there will be anything but construction until we have long since left here given the scale of what they are doing.  It started yesterday or the day before but today it really took off and was so loud.

The girls’ friends came by today.  We heard them calling out in the street.  “Ciana.  Liesl.  Can you come out?”  It was so cute.  We are really excited that the girls have made friends and are able to go out and do things.  This is really something.

The girls started by going out to the plaza to see the construction that is going on.  Then they told us that they were going to the playground.  So we let them go.  It is going to take a lot of getting used to having them just out and about on their own.

At one point I went to check on them but could not find them.  So I did some wandering around town but eventually found them coming back up to the playground.  They said that they had gone to someone’s house for a bit.

A while later Ciana was brought back to the house by an adult!  This was surprising.  Dominica went with her to see what was going on.  It turns out that the group of kids had gone to the “Casa de Pueblo” which is roughly the community center.  It is near the playground and in the same “complex” so I am sure that the kids that they were with thought nothing of going there but we were not familiar with this place and would not have known where to look for them kids.  Dominica found Liesl in English and computing classes that the other kids were taking.  Liesl was a bit upset because she did not want to go there but hadn’t known what to do and she did not know that Ciana had asked to go home and what had happened to her.

So it was quite an adventure for our girls today and a big learning experience.  This all started so quickly that we have not had much time to work with them as to what to do and what to say and how to handle themselves.

Rachel and Shawn walked down to Órgiva today which is quite a long walk.  It is many miles but, more importantly, it is a massive change in altitude.  Going down is not so bad but returning is rather a crazy walk.

After they returned and I was done with work we went to the Meson for drinks.  We got there early enough that we were able to get tapas since the kitchen was still open.  The guys that we have gotten to know from around town were there – the same group that Ryan and I met on our first night at the Meson several weeks ago.

We ended up buying a round of drinks for the guys.  Then they bought a few rounds for us.  One of them ended up joining us at the table to discuss English rock and roll.  Everyone in La Alpujarra just assumes that we are British as there are absolutely no Americans here whatsoever.  I do not believe that we have met or heard of another American visiting the area yet since we have been here.  Even in Granada we really did not see Americans.

After the bar closed down the guys invited us back to one of their houses to show us the awesome view.  Everyone kept raving about how nice the view was from his house.  So we checked out his one house, which had an amazing terrace.  Then they all took us down to a lower house where he actually lives and showed us that one.

We ended up hanging out there until about four in the morning.  Had a good time getting to know the local crowd.  We are much more a part of the village than we were before.

This is our relaxing Sunday.  Lots of sleeping in and just hanging out at the house.  Dominica and I both played a bit of Tropico 4 today and enjoyed the quiet day.  No travel, nothing needing our attention.  Just a day to relax.

Dominica and the kids stayed home tonight.  Shawn, Rachel and I went out to the meson again to hang out this evening.  A very quiet night there.

We are coming up on the end of our time in Spain.  This is one of our last weekends.  This is the last free weekend that we will have with Rachel and Shawn.  With so much going on recently we decided that this weekend would be a stay at home and relax weekend.  Time to just kick back and enjoy living in Cáñar.  Lots of resting up, lots of video games, lots of just hanging out.  Dominica especially enjoys having Rachel and Shawn here because I have people to go out and do things with without requiring her to go anywhere with me as she prefers to stay in most of the time and I prefer to go out.  So I manage to get a lot of my “going out” done when people are visiting and spare Dominica from me constantly wanting to go out and do things.

Today Dominica and I played a lot of Tropico together.  Rachel did a bunch of reading.  Shawn playing Knights of the Old Republic.

It was a really nice day.  We had a good time.

This evening Rachel, Shawn and I went to the meson in town.  There was pretty much no one there.  We got some delicious tapas with our drinks tonight.  I really loved that we got one that was a slice of tortilla (which I really like at our local meson in general) along with a tomato and onion salad.  Delicious.

A quiet night out for beers.  I still love the draught Alhambra.  Rachel and Shawn tend to get Voll Damm by the bottle.

With me having been gone for so long today was a “need to go to Órgiva” day for Rachel and Shawn as they need access to cash and stuff and we all need to get groceries.  So we made sure that we were up on the early side and the three of us drove down to the city while Dominica and the girls stayed home.  Remember, we do not all fit into the little Opal Corsa at the same time so we have to drive places in shifts.

It was a very warm day but the clouds were coming down from over the hill behind our village.  Rather humid.

We got down to Órgiva and discovered that everything, really everything, was closed.  Both grocery stores and nearly any business that we could see.  Thankfully the ATMs (Telebanco) are outside so we were able to get cash which was the most important reason for the trip.  We tried going to the Moroccan place to get take out to take up the hill to Dominica for lunch but discovered that that was all locked up tight.  (A few weeks later Dominica and I would figure out, after trying to go there again on a Friday, that it is a devout Muslim cafe and of course they are closed on Fridays!)

Some of the restaurants on the main restaurant row were open but they were all completely empty.  We looked around and decided to just go into Nemesis II which Dominica, the girls and I have eaten in before but Rachel and Shawn have not and we just settled at the bar and ordered some drinks and made do with whatever tapas were delivered with them which were nothing fancy, but not bad either.  Mostly meat, so nothing really for me to eat.  We all got beer called “Limón Latina” or something like that, which is a really odd name, but was refreshing and delicious.  We were all pretty surprised by that particular beer find.

After drinks we gave up on doing anything down in the city.  We took our cash and headed back up the mountain for the day.

Lots of work for me today, several meetings too.  I ended up working quite late.  Shawn and Rachel ended up going to Cafe Bar Piqui without me tonight but I was able to join them late in the evening just before things closed up.  Thankfully they had ordered beers and gotten tapas before I got there and neither of them had been too thrilled with eating plates of ensaladilla rusa, which is one of my all time favourite Spanish dishes (and Italian as well) so they eat had partial plates left over for me to eat which made me very happy.

A rather short and quiet night for everyone.  We are ready for the weekend!

After getting back from the bar, Shawn, Rachel and I went up to the terrace with some wine and just hung out of there.  While we were up there, Rachel sneaked down and passed out on their bed.  It was pretty hilarious.  Shawn and I were just like “where did Rachel go”.  When we went down from the terrace we found her completely dressed and passed out.   Like she had just walked into the room and fallen forward onto the bed.  Apparently she was pretty tired.

Today is Thursday and my first day back in Spain after my three days away in London.  It is great to be back.  London is nice and all but it is not my scene for any length of time, especially not when I am the one paying for my time to be there.  The hotels, food, transportation and everything else are just way too much.

Now I have time to hang out with Shawn and Rachel again.  Half of the time that they have been staying with us I have not been around so I have missed a lot of chances to hang out with them.

Today was a busy work day for me, after three days disconnected from the office there is an awful lot of me to be catching up on.

The weather was great today and I have missed our terrace.  It was super windy, though.  Dominica came up and tried to use her laptop on the terrace too.  It was so windy that the wind was moving her screen on her making it impossible to do anything.  At one point Dominica sat a bottle of water next to my computer.  I moved it seconds before the wind blew it over.  That was always really bad.  It was so windy that at one point bread that we were eating got picked up and went flying and hit me in the head!

Once work was finally done it was a quiet night to catch up on sleep.  Dominica and I watched some of The Love Boat before heading off to bed.