Time flies – you bet it does.
Today two years ago at 10am in the morning we started in foggy Monforte and arrived at sunny but cold Mer.
With great anticipation we opened the front door to take ultimate posession of our houses with the plan to make them livable and stay.
Now sitting in our salon, the wood burner humming, the central heating taking care of the rest of our houses it is somewhat hard to turn the clock back and relive the beginning.
The slide show we have put together makes it look so easy – well it was and it wasn’t
http://www.lifeingalicia.com/show/v/the_project/
With friends who arrived on the same day just one year earlier we celebrated our arrival – “for good” -.
A Cova a restaurant with fantastic views across the Mino provided a fitting place.
We than went on along the river to the “embalse” in Belazar. Here one can cross the dam by car and just in front of the power station turn right and after 400meters is the club nautico with a small cafe. It was open and we enjoyed a drink accompanied by the great view across the expanse of water formed by this dam.
We stayed for more than an hour and during this time had a full conversation with the owner in SPANISH! Leaving we looked at each other, confirmed that we had really understood 95% and where treated like locals with a strange accent and maybe a speech impairment or two but not like a foreigner.
So here we are, day one of year three and what have we done today? Painting – the room where the new staircase or as I call it “the glorified chicken ladder” ends.
Our friends from Uruguay, who presently live in the rental, are about one week from being able to move to their house. I may well lend a hand as I still remember the feeling of renovating but not living in a place. We had a project manageress before we arrived and it only took us 10 days to carve out a “suitable” living space and move from a hotel to our present home.
Than we had power, water (hot and cold at least in some places) as well as a “cocina economica” as our only source of solid fuel heating. Now, just going up and having a shower in a dry and warm bathroom is so easy, when before one had to fire up the gas jet to thaw the icicles from the shower head.
Great memories.
Expat
The slideshow has been updated to reflect the various stages as it is now 8 years since we arrived.
