I’ve been going to German class since October. It’s quite demanding, since it’s 4 1/2 hours a week and (inevitably) heavy on the grammar. I did a year of German in High School, but that was back in the Cretaceous. Since I’m English, I have a head start on the vocabulary and accent, but all the (many) grammatical explanations are in Spanish! So yeah, I’m feeling pleased with myself.
I haven’t sold many short stories lately, because I’ve concentrated on books. So it was a nice surprise to get a royalty statement from an anthology I’d completely forgotten about. $2.79 My plans to buy Australia are on hold. On the other hand, I’ve sold the story?five times before, so it doesn’t owe me anything. And the whole family is going out to lunch tomorrow to…
The almond trees have blossomed early this year. I had an excursion from a cruise ship on Thursday and saw that the almond trees are already blossoming in Garafía and Puntagorda after our exceptionally warm winter. As usual, it’s gorgeous, but I couldn’t get any photos while working on a moving bus. So after working at the observatory on Sunday morning I drove down the Garafía side with my DSLR….
On Friday night San Jose had a drag queen fiesta, and my husband took the chance to dance on stage. He’s been out in carnival with this costume and got great feedback, but this was the first time he performed on stage. So now he has a stage name, “Libelula” which is Spanish for dragonfly. The other two artists performing were “Señorita Clarita” and “Alexandra López”. I thought they were all very good.
Two days ago the top of La Palma was covered in fog and it was cold – just 6 ºC. Today we were back to a cloudless blue sky, brilliant sunshine and about 18 ºC. Much nicer! Today’s visitors were an international bunch: teenagers from Los Sauces on La Palma, The Czech Republic and Greece. I gave the tour in English and made it as simple as possible. But no…
Today I had two groups at the observatory, which meant that I had to get up at 6:30 am (ugh!) to leave home at 8 am. When I arrived at the top of the mountain at 9:10 am, it was 6 ºC and mizzling. As I said to the tourists, “Welcome to the Canary Islands, land of eternal spring.” Of course it’s January, and the observatory is at 2,400 m,…