And now for something completely different

We said adios to Marga and Yosoy at the end of last week-here we are having dinner in a restaurant in La Barossa (in which the subjunctive was used, and not just by a Spanish person!).
Today we say adios to La Barossa because tomorrow we are off to Sevilla for a month to another language school.

José in the little shop at the top of the road says that when we come back we will know more Spanish than him, but to beware of robbers in the big city. We have assured him that we will be happy simply to know more Spanish than we do now (especially that pesky subjunctive) and that we will take good care. We also cancelled our order for branflakes and activia yoghourt which he kindly stocks for us. The shop is very quiet at the moment-often more staff are there than customers so he may well have to lay some of them off in our absence.

It will be spring when we return and almost a year since we let our apartment in Birmingham and arrived here. How time flies, as we have mentioned before......

Spring and the subjunctive, not necessarily in that order

No blogging of late as we have been busy wrestling the subjunctive to the ground. You need not read the next bit if you are allergic to grammar, however, we now know that this is not a tense but a mood and it is the part of the verb that is used when you want to express something other than an absolute fact-a wish, an emotion, a possibility a doubt for example.

Although we think we understand it now, using it in conversation with someone who is speaking at the speed of the average spaniard (they do not breath while talking and only come up for air at the end of a paragraph) and with an andalusian accent is another matter altogether. By the time we have worked out a)the subjunctive is required and b)which subjunctive it is they are half way through their next but one paragraph. Still, we press on. Today is our last class with Marga and then we go, at the end of next week, to Sevilla for four weeks at a school there-a rather daunting 5 hours a day!

We shall miss La Barrosa, where it is rather spring like-lots of birds twittering. We think they are on their way back north after a winter in Africa. We shall also miss our hot tub which, as you can see, now has its own pergola. We shall miss our rather lazy but very pleasant lifestyle. However, we are looking forward to finding out more about Sevilla, the pleasures of having an apartment there so we can organise our lives a little....and my birthday!

As an aside, we are fascinated by the way in which the next Presidential election in the USA is unfolding. Guiliani, the hero mayor of New York on one side, Hillary, Barack Olbama, the first black to run for president and an Hispanic candidates, whose name I can't recall at the moment, on the other. It's shaping up to be an episode of the West Wing! Meanwhile Spanish politics is pretty dull. There will be a referendum in Andalusia on Sunday about a new constitution which everyone, except the tiny Andalusian party seems to be for. Apart from that things are much as always with the Partido Popular (PP or conservatives), who are not in power, sniping at the Socialists (PSOE), who are, especially about policy towards the Basque terrorists/separatists. To talk or not to talk? Seems a no brainer to us. But we only get to vote for the mayor and town council!

Hasta pronto!