First week..

After being inspired by all the other blogs, I´ve finally got round to doing one myself. Not sure I´ll get round to writing often, probably each weekend, but that should be enough to keep everyone up to date. Apologies in advance for my writing, which is usually pretty awful!

I arrived Tuesday lunchtime so I´ve been here nearly a week now. Mostly spent the week settling in, getting to know the family, who are dead nice, and getting used to the routine. The kids are both absolute characters. Ignacio, the youngest, spent the whole first evening taking the mic out of me, pointing to everything saying ´in english?´ Spent a lot of time with the children, mostly playing outside, playing football, tennis, board games, swimming. Went out for a meal on Friday as it was Ignacio´s birthday. We went to a tapas restaurant, which was great. I´ve been teaching English to a neighbour´s daughter each day and her mum spends time helping me with my Spanish. My Spanish is coming on nicely. I´ve also been teaching Javier, the oldest of the two lads, English each day.

On the whole, the first weeks gone ok. It´s been a lot harder than I expected. Think I came thinking it´d be a breeze. Thinking that I´d just play a bit of football with the kids, relax by the pool and get a nice tan whilst speaking a bit of Spanish. I hadn´t properly thought through what looking after a four, just turned five year old, and a seven year old entailed. So the first few days were a bit of a shock to the system. The random tantrums drive me up the wall! lol. But I´m getting more used to everything all the time. Tomorrow´s the first day I look after the children completely on my own, as the mum had last week off work to help me to settle into things. Should be interesting!

The town where I´m staying is nice, a very typical Spanish village in the mountains just north of Madrid. This is the family´s summer home, they live in Madrid for the rest of the year. The weather´s good, not too hot as there´s usually a fair wind as we´re in the mountains.

I went to Madrid yesterday, as I have the weekends free. It was quality, although it was ridiculously hot. Typical me..one of the first things I did there was go and see Real Madrid´s football ground! ha. Which was pretty impressive. Then I went into the centre and saw some of the main sights. Seems like a great city. There´s a bus from my town which takes about an hour and a half, so I´m going to try to go most weekends to see as much of it as possible.

Guess that´s about it for now. Hope everyone´s good and having a great summer themselves!
x x x