Rocking Your World 2016; Week 28

Here's my smile for this week, Chris and I, with our friend Gillian, grinning like Cheshire cats again. Anyone would think we enjoy our life here in Spain!!

Needless to say, the occasion involves food again. On Saturday night we all went to our friend Chris's house for a barbecue to celebrate the 'end of term' for the choir. Most of the choir were able to come, along with our partners and a few friends, so there was quite a crowd of us. 

Chris' husband Phil gallantly manned the cookers, and his friend Richard came along to run a very low priced bar.

The man in a red shirt on the left of this picture, is our musical director David Murphy.

He has worked so hard for us all year, so he has now gone back to UK for three weeks for a well earned holiday. Mind you, he has left us with three new songs to learn while he is away!

This is Chris's mum, Jean. She will be 89 next week, and she still enjoys a party.

Chris's husband, Phil, is the man who runs a courier service between here and the UK, and he takes my knitting to Brian of Greenfields Africa free of charge, which is what makes it possible for me to keep going with it. He is back in UK this week, so on Monday I sorted out what I had and he took two bags for me, containing 14 blankets and around 40 baby jumpers, cardigans etc.

They included this set of fourteen lovely stripey cardigans. Aren't they delightful, and so much fun. They are all beautifully finished and complete with buttons. I am sure some little people will love wearing them.

I was also able to send over to Brian, a donation of 100€ collected by my house group since Easter. This is specifically for one of his projects - to continue the fight against jiggers, the sand-fly larvae that burrow into the children's feet and cause them so much pain and disfigurement.

Thursday saw us eating out again! This time we went

out for a menu del día with our house group friends as we won't be meeting again until September. (Everything in Spain stops for the hottest two months of the year). We went to a place called Gnomo Feliz (the Happy Gnome), and we had a lovely meal. They had set up a long table  so that all fourteen of us could sit together. We were in the conservatory, and we could look out over the patio and in the distance was the sea.  

I went outside to stretch my legs and took this picture looking back through the doors at our table.

You can't beat good food and good friends to share it with.

As you can see, the sky is greyer than usual for July, and in fact, by the time we got home it was even darker, and by the night we had a short, sharp thunder storm. It didn't clear the air as much as I had hoped, and once again, it brought a lot of dust and dirt with it, but I am sure the ground was glad to have a drink.

The forecast says we are in for a heatwave this week with temperatures above forty, and only going down to around 25 for the night! Let's hope it doesn't last for too long. 

It is now eleven o'clock at night and I have just been outside to read the thermometer on our shady porch. It is still showing thirty degrees!! Methinks we are in for a hot and sticky night!

At the end of the week it is our village fiesta, and this week there are men everywhere clearing the open spaces, unloading the equipment to set up the street bars, putting up lights and bunting etc. Each year the lights are different, we assume they are hired, and this year there is a very impressive one hung up across the road by the main plaza. I am looking forward to seeing that one lit up.

Of course, along with the lights come the fair rides and the noise, but I don't really mind. There is such a lovely atmosphere in the village for fiesta week, and we go over and join in  for a while most nights.

Part of the fair is always a bumper car ride, and it is the biggest one I have seen. For some reason it is always allowed a set up a week earlier than everything else so it has been going each evening since last weekend. It is across the greenzone from our house so I can see it (and hear it) from where I am sitting typing this. They start on the dot of 9.00 but I am grateful that, until the actual fiesta, they do stop right on midnight each night. I took this one tonight, just as they were opening.

Here is one taken now. As you can see, they have a lot of bright lights flashing, so another grateful is that I am not working on them!!

Last week, I wrote about some of the fruit I am buying and a couple of people asked me what paraguayos are, so here are some I bought this week.

I had never seen these before I came to Spain, but I know they are now available in the British supermarkets under a different name. They look like a flattened peach and taste very similar but a bit sweeter. They have a fairly small stone, and although their skin can be rather tough,when they are ripe they peel very easily. The down side is that, out here, they don't keep well, so I only buy a few at a time and make sure they get eaten quickly - no problem there for me!

There have been no spectacular skies this week, but as I went out to photograph the dodgems tonight, I thought this was pretty enough to warrant a picture.

Well that all for this week. I will link this up with Annie's Friday Smiles, and Rocking your world over at Virginia's blog, and then I think it is time for  midnight dip in the pool and a nightcap before I go to bed.