We are alive and kicking!

Greetings to all...from your intrepid blogfuhrer!

Yep, we are alive and kicking. I know that it has been ages since you heard from us; apols for that! We have, as I am sure you have guessed, been rather busy! Now that school is in full swing for me, my days have been taken up with all of my course work. See, those of you that thought I was just coming over here to be a lazy bum were wrong!

Due to the fact that I haven't posted a blog for ages, and due to a few other things, I have been making changes to my daily schedule over the last few days. We had been going into Mahon, the capital, every day on the scooter and had been working there from 9am to 1.30pm every day. Then we had been heading back home for lunch, and usually heading back out in the evenings to Spanish/Catalan classes. Well, over the last few days I have stopped going into Mahon and have been staying home (and so has James!) I have been trying to re-align myself to managing with the opening hours of the San Luis library instead. They have much more restrictive hours than the one in Mahon, which means that I am forced to be more prodctive when I am there. In Mahon it is easy to sit in the library and do all the usual web surfing things, and then to find that it is almost time to go back to the apartment! With the library in San Luis being only open for a few hours each day it does wonders for sharpening the focus! The upshot is that I have been doing more of my class reading and stuff "offline" at the apartment. I also felt that I was not getting as much time to spend taking pictures as I wanted to, and this new change has helped me fix that. I have so far been out taking pictures three days running! I am trying to make myself go out and shoot for a minimum of one hour each day. Good stuff! I think James is also benefitting from the change in work habits too...maybe he'll post soon as to how he is getting on with it.

Anyway, enough of the boring stuff...so what have we been up to? Well, the last time I wrote a proper blog was about 3 weeks ago. Since then we have not done a huge amount of "special" things, other than daily living. My Spanish classes are...well....they are. My Spanish is improving slowly, though not at the rate I would like. I am also trying to fix that with the new schedule, with 1 hour of Spanish reading a day. We will see how that goes. James is doing brilliantly with his Catalan classes (are you all surprised?). He is teachers pet of course!

We have been out for (cheap) dinners a few times....to places like La Bolla and S'Olivera in San Luis. Cheap means about 6 euros each in our new poor status! Surprising how much you can enjoy things though when it becomes a real treat! James has even discovered that he likes the liver at La Bolla! He has yet to order a whole plate of his won, but he has had some of mine a few times now.

We have continued to enjoy our sunday evening routine of dinner with the delectable Denise. We usually arrive around 6.30pm and kick of the evening with Vodka and Tonics, and then settle in to watch Dancing on Ice on television. At the break, around 8.30pm, one of us cooks dinner. So far we have eaten Shepherds Pie, Chilli, Chicago Pizza (made by James), Catalan Beans, Chicken Pie, Trout in Bacon and Garlic and whole host of others. It really is a highlight of our week! We have also been out on other days to see John and Sarah, and had some super nights out with Jenny and Dave (who we spent Chritsmas Day with). Last Friday James cooked a Colombian dish which I don't know how to spell (Chicken soup with potatoes) for Denise and a new friend we have made from Colombia, Jorge. Jorge is originally from Colombia but has been here in Menorca for 30 years; he and James have become fast friends!

The weather here has changed over the last few days to a stormy period. There have been high seas and some rain. It has not been too cold though, which is good! We continue to have the odd fire in the apartment, and have got much better at lighting them! The high seas have presented some good photo opportunities, and I will post those when I get them all sorted out. Our friend Christine from England has also just told us that she is coming out for a few days in March and we are really excited about that. We haven't seen her for a few years, so we are looking forward to catching up! She will be here for 3 days just before Easter. Remember, if you would like to come and visit we would love to see you!

Well, thats it for now! I promise to do better and to post again shortly. Don't forget, if you would like to write to us, you can find the address in one of the archived posts from 2007. Also, come see us!

Hope all are fine and dandy....

David

More pictures...

CRW_0968-2
Originally uploaded by davidnmartin98

Hello to all!
Just a very (very!) short post to say that I just uploaded some new images to my Flickr account, this being one of them. You can head over to flickr by clicking on this image and you can see the new pictures in the set marked ARTO 498.

Enjoy, and feel free to add comments on the images if you want or here on the blog.

I'll write a proper blog post in the next few days.

Love to all!

D&J

Photos available

St Anthony-1
Originally uploaded by davidnmartin98

Greetings all!

Just a short update to say that I have published my images to the Flickr account from Saint Anthony's day in San Luis. You will no doubt have read all about it in a previous blog entry, and now you can see the resulting images. Out of the 300 or so that I took I whittled it down to 38 and they have now been worked and posted to my Flickr account. You can get there with the link http://www.flickr.com/davidnmartin98 The images are in a set called ARTO498. Alternativly you can click on the image of the Donkey and it will take you to Flickr

I also created a slideshow for the images as well. The slideshow is posted at http://www.rapidshare.com/files/87272567/St_Anthonys_Day_0002.wmv So you should be able to download it there.

Hope all are well. Everything is fine here. I'll write more next week!

David