Hey, Teach!

Hi everyone,
I'm going to have to keep this one pretty short because it's getting late and I still have packing to do for tomorrow!
On Thursday Pedro, Martin and I went on a new adventure. We headed up to the mountains, only about 20km from the french border to a little place called Eugui - the village where his Pedro's mother is from. It took a while to get there but upon arrival we grabbed a quick drink then headed off to see the sites... or site - it's only a little place after all. A couple of kilometres out of the village is an old ammunition factory. It was built in 1766 and was but was used for less than 50 years since the French decided that they didn't really want the factory right on there borders and destroyed a lot of the structure.
The Spanish decided to abandon the factory and nature has swept in to reclaim the land. After looking around this ruin we went over to where a group of archaeologists were working on a new part of excavation. I couldn't understand a word but they had a good chat with Pedro then one of us took us around a bit more to explain how these people would have lived. By the time we returned to the current excavation area the labour force had returned from their lunch: about a dozen young guys ready to do any heavy work. They seemed to be a bit over-enthusiastic in their greetings - Pedro translated a few 'compliments' thrown my way - but after a bit of a laugh we headed off to drink another drink.
Next on out list of things to do was drive to the top of one of the mountains to check out the view. It was definitely worth it! You could see trees for miles, little villages below and across the valley you could see the cloud covered hills. At the top there were also some semi-wild ponies just chilling out - two adults and a foal.
After a tonne of photos we decided it was time for some food. Back in the town we found a nice little bar with a relatively cheap menu. To my surprise, after a brief moment of conversation with Pedro in front of the barman, the guy  asks - in a broad American accent - where I'm from. I didn't expect that one at all. It turns out that the guy (the owner) was from LA and was more than happy to spend some time chatting away to us. He also gave me books! Knowing how travelling with a love of reading can be difficult he gave me a few that he had copies of and said if I needed more I could come back - shame they're so far away. So I am now the owner of....well it's a bit of a funny mix - Shakespeare's midsummer night's dream, Huston Smith's the religions of man (the title says it all) and Andrea Levy's small island about a Jamaican woman who moves to post war London to find it's not all it's cracked up to be. So apparently I seem like a Shakespeare fan with a thirst for religious knowledge and a love for general-historic fiction...interesting.
After our food he then went straight into showing me the herbal tea collection instead of offering the usual coffees....I apparently have that look now too.
Eventually though we had to go so after promising to get in touch next time I'm in the region we headed back home. I actually spent most of the rest of the day in my room half asleep because for some reason I was totally shattered and the heat was getting to me more than usual - not fun.
On Friday I decided it was time for some real work - to make up for  my day out. I was up early, swept, sorted out the animals and weeded the rose beds - the seeds had returned after being pulled when I first arrived. By this time it was getting on a bit so I relocated to the kitchen to help prepare lunch for a french family who'd just arrived. As I was still not feeling 100% I spent some time inside reading before returning to the kitchen - this time to make pizzas. We did have a bit of a laugh at my inability to make a square pizza but once they were finished they really were delicious! The rest of the evening was mostly spent watering the plants and reading some more.
The nerves were a little unsettled on Saturday morning after Linda had told me I was going to be helping her teach a couple of Spanish kids English. There was a 7 year old boy and a 10 year old girl - scary!  Luckily they weren't too bad though - we made animals out of toilet roll tubes before taking them out to the pool, over to the donkey and around the garden. We also spent some time playing a game where you gets points for getting these little metal disks through holes on a board. The kids loved that game do we did that and had them practicing numbers in English while they played. They left around 12.15 and as soon as they were gone it was off to the Chinese store for art supplies - the kids were coming back the following day. I returned to find Iker's dad and grandmother had arrived to take him and his girlfriend home.  They stuck around for lunch and by the time they left it was too late to get started on much. It's pretty quiet without Spain's answer to Romeo and Juliet but one thing I won't miss is that girl's shorts - I'm sure I have head scarves with more material! My evening was spent preparing for the next class and watching an old National Geographic documentary on the TV before going to bed.
Today we had the kids back for another class. Now I had decided to make paper plate dream catchers with them, simple you would think.....think again. I had them make it in the easiest possible way but it still took almost an hour and I had to help them basically make it. We also played the throwing game again, fed the donkey, had the two doing races and trying to start teaching them their new language. They left around 12.30 so it was time for brunch before getting back to work. The afternoon's been pretty quiet, but Martin wanted to take me to another fiesta in a different town so off we went. While we were there we met Martin and Olga's friends who had invited them to the town and they knew of an English woman in the village - a member of their friend's family. Off we went to find this mystical English woman and it turns out there were two - her daughter too! We spoke to them for a while before heading back to the main street for the giants, got a couple of tapas then stopped to listen to the live band before heading home. If it had been any other day I would've been happy to stick around but I was already tired and I still wanted to talk to you guys!
However  I'm definitely going go have to head off to bed now - I'll just be happy if that last paragraph actually makes sense since I'm running on empty as far as coffee is concerned and I'm on the road again tomorrow.
I will speak to you all soon!
Night