Accommodation

Fishing

Golf

Jesus-Tortosa, Spain
February 2006

Dear Friends,

It was a mad last minute scramble, plus trying to get the usual doctor's visits out of the way. Then we get the unexpected call, "Mom, can you pick me up at Barcelona airport"? Turns out Gareth's foot hurt too much to drive from Germany (he had just had the cast taken off a few days before), so he had back tracked and bought an air ticket. This was on the Saturday to start the visitors. So when we went back to the airport on Tuesday morning, Mother was very confused. That is until she saw Athol (my pseudo twin brother -aka as my middle brother) come through customs.

I hadn't seen him in 3 or 4 years since we last visited California, though we do share email and phone calls at least every week. Plus he even makes this website for us (see www.SVMarketeer.com) and I work for him part time making up names for companies and products around the world (see www.BrighterNaming.com). As soon has he saw the house, we pointed out that the big flat roof was very strong, and we were saving it for him to build his retirement add-on up there. Since he is used to a fair bit of Spanish from California (and travels in Mexico and Latin America) there is a possibility of this happening.

Alwyn and Linda (big brother and his wife) called and cancelled, so they were off the list for the party (who was now going to buy all the drinks?), and younger brother Geophrey was not to be heard from till the actual day, when he did call and send great flowers. Cousin Dave, his wife and their 3 young kids were in for the weekend at their place (El Figueral) down the street, and on the party day, Tony (Angeles' brother who helped us so much with the legal paperwork on the property) came with his mother and other sister and her son. Not all of us speak Spanish. Not all of them speak English. But we get along fine. Tony had never actually seen the property, just all the documents. He was surprised how big it actually looked, and was particularly impressed with the potential of our adjoining lot and what we could do with it.

We eventually got Athol back to a train station, and he took off for Barcelona. He didn't want to leave, but work is busy right now and finally starting to take off. But at least with Athol we know he will be back. When we were trying to solve problems around the place, he often said: "Don't you remember how we did things in South Africa"?. Well, he didn't remember I was the youngest (and a girl at that), so no I didn't remember. But it was fun to hear him speak about how similar our "pioneering" is to what our parents went through before. If Mom's memory was better, maybe she could have told me more of this.

Regards,

Roseann and family.