March 25, 2006 Spanish steps

Leon from the airThe photograph is one we generated using the Google earth program of Leon.

We have been back now for almost a week. It was a busy period starting Sunday night when we arrived in Leon. We stayed at Vera’s house, the Irish lady who lives in Spain and organised the whole week on top of looking after us. Tony and the girls were able to use Vera’s third car while Anne was pre-occuppied with meetings and teaching.

The occasion was a project meeting for www.teaching-culture.de where two courses are being piloted for teachers from all over Europe. This was the residential week after they have been working online since last October. After Leon they will be trying out lesson ideas for the next three months. So we were a large group of partners, students and family.

Meanwhile Tony and the girls went to a stuffed animal museum which is much better than it sounds. They also visited some caves in the mountains. Mia was a little reticent beforehand but agreed to go in the end and had a great time. Gwen and Mia also went to a Spanish school for a couple of hours. It is a school where they teach through the medium of English 40% of the time so Mia was doing science while Gwen was following one of the teachers and being questioned by the Spanish children about Denmark and so on.

The Spanish tempo was difficult to adjust to with lunch at about 3pm, dinner at 8.30 (too early for the Spanish so the restaurants were empty at this time) and late nights and early starts.

Life carries on apace. Tony was at a BTO meeting in Thetford today and Mia is staying overnight at a friends. Tomorrow Mia is taking part in a gymnastics display to mark the end of her gym classes which she has been doing on Wednesday evenings. Gwen is going to 2 birthday parties in the next week and Anne is going to a 2-day conference in northern Denmark on Monday and then giving a talk at conference in Mallorca at the end of the week. We should be all together again by Saturday evening April 1st.