We are getting used to Gaucin. It’s been a full week here now. Half the time we have spent the days going on little adventures within a couple hours drive. On the ‘stay in Gaucin’ days, we explored the castle ruins, went to the community center pool which is lovely and made a few passes by the playpark next to the old convent. At the house the kids gravitate to Legos and crafting/painting.

If we observe another family on our outtings speaking English we start to move in on them slowly and then pounce. Anja and Johan are shy but I’m desparate for us all to interact with others. So I usually start with the kids in the family. Where are you from? How long are you here? How old are you? Those are my kids over there…. We’ve met a few nice and interesting families. But none we’ve seen more than once. Currently we’ve got our eye on a a family from Ireland we might try to date later in the week.

One day we went to Ronda and on the way stopped to see prehistoric caves with paintings. The oldest painting was 20,000 years old! We had to wait an hour until the next tour so we killed time teaching Johan how to play five card draw….he’s been interested in poker b/c it involves coins and betting. The caves were cold, dark and huge. The guide provided lantern style flashlights we walked high and deep into the caves. In addition to the paintings there were giant stalagmites and stalagtites.

When we got out of the cave there was a couple (French maybe) who were weaving grass. Anja was super interested so they explained a bit in broken English then gave her the weaving. He was the ‘plaiter’ as they called it. Not sure if it was his hobby or profession but clearly he was skilled and demonstrated how you’d make the long braid into a basket. Anja was thrilled!

In Ronda we had lunch, saw the first bullring in all of Spain and walked a few of the sites.

Between the drive there and the drive back, we have thoroughly ‘done’ the white washed towns of Andalucia ‘thing’. If there were a checkbox for this, it would be checked…with a wide-tipped sharpie….and highlighted with sparkle paint.

A couple of the other days we went to beach towns along Costa del Sol. Johan and I did a 30 min Segway tour along the beachside promenade in Puerto Banus. YES!

Right now Anja is crafting. Using white paper, scissors, tape and pens to made purses where the design matches both when the fold of the purse is open and closed. She’s made one for every holiday occasion and season. Johan is continuing his series of free handed (using google images as a reference) Pokemon characters on paper then painting them.

Even though our house is NOT equipped with oven hot pads, extra garbage bags, a rubber spatula, pool towels or even (gasp) a microwave, it IS equipped with a very good manual lemon juicer and a huge lemon tree dripping with ripe lovely lemons. The first thing we did when we got here is make a double batch of lemonade. We are now on our third large batch of our stay. Delish!