Monday 10 January 2011

A holiday photo diary

Hi everybody! How are you? I hope you had a great holiday.
We got back from ours on Jan 5 - just in time to see the Kings' Procession driving past our flat. The kids were SO pleased we made it back in time!

I've just been downloading our photos from the holiday and I wanted to share a couple with you and find out what you've been up to over the last couple of weeks. It seems like such a long time!

We stayed in Cádiz for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day for the first time. And it was great. We had lunch with friends on the 25th and then we went to the ice-skating rink in Plaza San Antonio. Such a great idea (though I'm not so sure about the environmental impact). This is me and the kids hugging the rails at the side of the rink (none of us are expert skaters!)



We flew to the UK on Boxing Day (Dec 26). It had been REALLY cold in the few weeks leading up to Christmas.  Friends and family had been telling us stories of temperatures of -12º in the middle of the day in West Wales! But luckily when we arrived it had started to get warmer.  It was 0º when we landed in Leeds and there was still snow on the ground. Not much, but enough to look pretty.  On our first day in snowed all morning, we had snowball fights and we walked through snowy woods to a pub on the other side of the valley.  When we walked back it was dark - and just a little bit spooky.


 We spent four days in Yorkshire and then we drove to my mother's house in Wales. She lives on the coast and we always go for a walk on the beach with my brother and his family.  He told us stories of the snow covering the beach and the river at the end of his garden freezing over.  I've only ever seen that once in my life, in 1981, when the harbour frooze and I watched the waves washing the snow away on the beach.  There was no snow when we were there, but it was still very, very cold.  Anna whispered sadly into my coat  "I want to go home" "To your grandma's house?" I said. "No, to Cádiz!"



It was great to see everyone and we had a great time, but we were so pleased when we drove over the bridge back into Cádiz.  On the morning of the 6th, after the kids had exicitedly unwrapped their presents from the Kings, we packed a picnic lunch and went down onto our beach, where the sun was shining on the silver waves.  It was so good to be home :) 


So, what did you get up to? I'd love to hear your holiday stories, or see your photos. Fernando, did you organise another zambombá?  Paco, did you go surfing?  Isabel, how's your new home in Cuidad Real? Mercedes, I know you've been blogging, but what else have you been up to?  Montse, how's your new job?  and the online masters course?  Have you got time for it all??  Jaime, are you still following us?  What's it like to be back?  I'd love to hear more of your stories about Philadelphia.

Use the comments, or add a new post, whatever suits you best. I'll be back again next week with another class blog, and in the meantime I'll be keeping a close eye on my email inbox!

And if you're following us from somewhere else, please drop us a line and let us know what the holidays meant for you. 

Speak soon and a happy new year to all of you!  

11 comments:

  1. What a lovely description of your holidays, Ceri! It sounds like you and your family had a great time!

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  2. Hi Michelle,
    Thanks for calling by! It was a great holiday - very, very relaxing - though I must admit I'd had enough of the cold by the end of it!
    Ceri

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  3. Hi Ceri
    Thanks for the description of your holidays. I was thinking of maybe gettign my students to comment and say what they did for their holidays so that your sts could reply. I've also set up a class blog today for my sts so when they've got something on it, we could do a similar comment-exchange thingy.
    Does that sound ok?
    Paul

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  4. Hi Paul,
    Nice to see you here! That sounds great - we'd love to do some exchanging. Just let us know when you're up and running. Good luck and happy blogging :)
    Ceri

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  5. Hi Ceri!
    Great photos! I can feel the cold almost here. I've heard the winter has been really cold in Europe with heavy snowfalls and temperatures below zero. However the coldest day in Cadiz, my car thermometer showed 3 degrees at about 8 o'clock in the morning, not too cold. It's easy to understand why Anna wanted to come back home.

    For me, it's nice to see snow because I've only seen it falling from the sky a couple of times in my life, when I lived in Granada. I remember my flatmates and I running to the street, making a snowman and throwing snowballs each other.

    Well, I had a relaxing holiday, since I don't have a large family, I wasn't too much busy with Christmas shopping, and thanks to the Internet I could avoid going to crowded shops.
    Last Christmas, besides blogging and surfing the Internet, I cooked a lot. I enjoy cooking, I have a great time making food. And as I found that writing a blog is quite easy, I decided to compile the recipes that I cook on a blog.

    All my meals are very easy to cook with basic ingredients and without any complications. If you need any idea for tomorrow lunch you can take a look at it.
    http://lasrecetasdecadadia.blogspot.com/
    (I'm sorry, but it's written in Spanish, although I posted something in English: Go to "desayunos").
    Bye

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  6. Hi Mercedes,
    Wow, you've been busy! I've just been over to visit your blog. It's great. I love the colour of the red cabbage soup. That's one recipe I'm definitely going to try and, of course, I love Barry's breakfast ;)
    You might be interested in visiting this blog, What's cooking at Tim's kitchen http://timskitchen.blogspot.com/ - it's written by a Scottish friend of mine who lives in Cádiz. He cooks local and international dishes and makes the most fantastic bread!
    Going to be posting something again later today, so see you then,
    Ceri

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  7. Hi Ceri
    It's very interesting your friend's blog, I'll definitely cook some of his recipes, and it can help me with a post I'm thinking of making.
    Bye

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  8. Hi again,
    Maybe you could leave him a comment on his blog about it? You know how we bloggers love comments ;)

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  9. Hi everyone; I hope you had a great Chrismas hols like me, thanks a God. Ceri, I´m glad you spent holidays with your family and your friens. That is the most important. I have spent the holidays ïn Cádiz with my family too, I had a great time. I think we went to the ice-skating ring at the some day, I went with my kids, but i didn´t skat. By the way, I was windsufing in December the day twenty-ninth. I also visited Arcos de la Frontera where there are a beatiful views. I´ve been tourism in Cadiz

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  10. Hi Paco!
    What time did you go to the ice-rink? Maybe we were there not only on the same day, but at the same time! (notice the use of on and at?)
    And as to being a tourist in Cádiz, what a great thing to be! We went cycling to Los Toruños last Sunday - what a gorgeous day - I think most of Cádiz had the same idea :) It was beautiful, everything looked so fresh and sparkly. I love this time of year.

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