I love it when a plan comes together.

So after all that worrying, wondering, last minute shopping, packing, and stressing, did we manage to get to the UK for Christmas? Well, I think the title kind of gave it away….

In the end it couldn’t have been easier. A trouble-free drive to the airport and a long-stay carpark driver desperate to get home for Christmas Eve meant that we were in the terminal in record time, waiting for the plane with only about 50 other people. We were 20 minutes early into Gatwick and found Nanna and a warming hot drink (gosh it was chilly!) waiting.

My mum (Nanna) really ‘does’ Christmas. She loves it, and we love her for it. She always makes it magic and this year was no exception. My sister and her boys were there as was my brother, the girls played endlessly with their little cousins, some people made life changing decisions, and other people sat stunned trying to get over the shock…what a fabulous couple of days

Then we headed over to Chris’ parents for Christmas all over again. Grandma also loves Christmas but mostly loves having everyone around. The girls were so excited to see Grandad and also their big cousin who is very cool and still likes to build things out of lego and play silly games. We were then joined by the whole clan – four generations – for dinner, which was wonderful, and let off Chinese lanterns on the village green to celebrate all being together. Having thought the girls would want to play in some snow, they refused to go out for 4 days (“but it’s really cold…??”) and we pretty much had to drag them out to do the lanterns!! What soft southeners they are now  

Our trip back to Spain was just as painless, although after all that snow it was the sale shoppers clogging up the M25 that caused us worry getting to the airport! We had a ‘duvet day’ off at home before opening the shop again. We saw the New Year in – just – with our next door neighbours, and sent our New Year wishes off with some more Chinese Lanterns, releasing them into the dead calm sky from the patio beside our pool. Very pretty.

Here in Spain it’s all about the 3 Kings though – Epiphany – on January 6th. This signifies the Kings’ visit to the Baby Jesus and the gifts they gave him. Most Spanish children are now visited by Papa Noel (Father Christmas) on Christmas Eve, but get the presents from their family for the 3 Kings – it’s a national holiday and all but the tiniest villages have parades and fiestas. In Javea the Kings arrive by boat in the Port and parade through the streets, then do it all over again in the Old Town a few hours later. Nanna had arrived back with us by then, so we all went down to the Port to watch the parade. Costume-wise this was one of the more elaborate fiestas we’ve seen here and involved floats, horses and farm animals too, and lots of sweeties thrown out to the children along the route. Strangely it was at 5pm – very early for Spain – so by 8.30pm we were back home having dinner!

So that’s our festive season – how was yours? Wishing everybody a happy, healthy and prosperous 2011.

All love CRFS xxxx

It’s Christmasssss!!

Or is it?? Hard to tell here in Javea. The lack of Christmas-ness is on the one hand lovely but on the other deeply unsettling - a week today is Christmas Eve and I don’t think I’ve ever been less prepared!

Christmas abroad is a funny thing – this is our 4th, and our 4th different destination -  and I don’t know why it always feels so different; there are again token decorations around town, Christmas parties going on, end of term fun at school and dance, this time it’s even cold (South Africa, New Zealand and Thailand all summery in December) AND we have our own Christmas decs up that we’ve had in the loft in England for years, but maybe you actually do need to experience a UK shopping centre in full festive frenzy to ram the point home… 

Having said that pretty much all my Christmas energy is going into tracking the snow coverage on and around Gatwick airport, where we are hoping to land a few short hours before Father Christmas next Friday night; we then adjourn Chez Murphy a few miles south, with Christmas No.2 with the whole Edmeads Clan to follow. Please, please, please…otherwise it’s back to pick up the kittens for a limp cheese sandwich fest and the awful Xmas telly. No that’s not true actually - we do have a few DVD’s as well

And of course we have a turkey and the trimmings and booze and presents and friends to share Christmas Day with if, despite everything, we can’t get back to the family. Most importantly, we’ll have each other, the Four. Christmas abroad always makes me realise how special so many people are to us, and how much I want to be with them, and how lucky I’ll be to get to do that. Hope you’re the only place you want to be this Christmas…

All love CRFS xxxx

High Summer

It seems a while ago now that we are back to slipper socks and hot showers rather than cold dips, but we did have a lovely summer here in beautiful Javea!  From June onwards it just got hotter and hotter and we came up with inventive ways to keep everyone cool, including regular night swims, and for the smallest family members – ice blocks under a towel help keep kittens from melting!

The girls loved the monster school hols and soon relaxed into them - after a while it seemed crazy that we had ever all left the house by 8.30am! They spent a lot of their time at home in the pool but also did the usual to and froing between friends, a drama workshop for a few days and of course still had spanish twice a week with Bobby – the wonderful lady that taught them when we first moved over. They really like her and she did lots more vocab stuff with them and helped with the lengua bits of their holiday homework! They did go to the english summer school for a couple of days but found it really dull, so we muddled through without it. My parents came out a few times which was a god-send in terms of kid-watching and proper catering, and Chris’ mum and the Kiwi relatives came over at the beginning of July too, and we did get out and about to the beach for a barbie or two:

The shop had a good summer – full on holiday mode so we were busy, between us doing 12 hour days, 7 days a week. Lots of english tourists but also lots of French, Belgians, Dutch, Germans as well as Spanish. The internet was (and is) very popular – everyone seemed to get fed up with the pool by about 3pm and came in to check their Facebook! We have aircon at the shop so it’s quite a haven for both customers and us and seemed the perfect place for the endless printing of boarding cards for certain low cost airlines…

My poor cousin Derek chose EXACTLY the wrong August moment to ’weekend’ in Javea – he arrived in the middle of a big storm that fused our power sockets and so spent the first night moving kitchen appliances. He then helped us move a load of DVD’s into our house! To add insult to injury the girls gave him a daily drowning in the swimming pool, and he had to endure a bbq with our neighbours after a hard days work! We did go out for dinner at our favourite restaurant on his last night for a treat though – thank you so much Derek, you are now officially back to favourite-once-removed-cousin status

In the first week of September we had one of Javea’s major fiestas – The Virgin de Loreto - which celebrates the sea and pretty much marks the end of summer. It’s on for about 2 weeks and it’s all based around the modern church in the port which has a ship’s keel for a roof, so there’s lots of ping pong & chess comps, parades, bull running, toro embolado (maybe not =:o), music and of course the council budget busting fireworks on the last night!

The following day was the first day of school for 3 months – what a shock! ‘Back to school’ is the same wherever you are and required a trip to Carrefour in Benidorm to buy all their materials and some trainers for Fin. Although state schools in Spain don’t generally have school uniform we do have to pay for school textbooks, although here in the Valencia region we get vouchers (the bonolibro) towards the cost of most of them. We also get a free school bus fro primary school children (if you live a certain distance away) and children who travel by bus get free school dinners as well (save an admin fee). Needless to say, my two would still much rather come home for lunch and play with their feline buddies, but this year they are staying all day at least twice a week. Anyway they are now back full time, having been only half days until the 1st October – life is resuming a pattern again, with lots of dancing and drama too, two businesses, two cats and a house that most of the time looks like about 12 people live in it rather than just us 4!!

More soon…..

All love

CRFS xxxx

Pausing for breath

(This is a ‘May/June’ catch up….written but not posted….more to follow……)

May is BIG in the Edmeads house – both the girls were born in this glorious month, and here is it just beautiful at the moment – settled warm days, cool nights, pool just warming up enough to chance it without neoprene protection from hypothermia…

So birthday parties were easy for our first year in Spain – POOL PARTY!!! Cue: lots of wet towels all over the place and trails of popcorn through the house thanks to the ensuing movie night til late. We had a lot of visitors around that time too, thank you to everyone that was here making it special, and many thanks to all that sent cards and gifts – they were very spoilt and felt totally celebrated.

The 18th of June rolled around very quickly, marking the last day of school until mid September! After only 12 weeks immersion in spanish school, the girls amazed us again by getting 80%+ in their end of year tests, making us so proud of them as always. Even more important they have both worked really hard and are going up to the next class in September -Yay! (here in Spain if you don’t make the grade you can be held back). Their Spanish is very good already, Sadie now chats in it – she forgot the word ‘felt-tips’ the other day, could only remember it in Spanish! Fin is also doing great and knows quite a bit more than she lets on, as we discover whenever we’re in shops or I need help with translation of school letters. She has so much confidence now – will happily chat in Spanish to our customers and they think that’s very cute of course!

They had an ‘end of year’ Carnaval at school, a sort of Year 6 revue, but involving the whole school, with the Year 6’s as the much celebrated ‘stars’. Got the letter 2 days before requesting ‘just a simple costume required of the ripped clothes you just have lying about’ and had the usual “oh and btw I need white gloves as well” from Sadie THAT MORNING!……..she did a ‘Cirque de Soleil’ type gymnastics thing and Fin’s lot were re-enacting Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’. It was brilliant and looked like a great finale to primary school for the top class. As 95% of the Yr 6’s will go around the corner to the Instituto next year it wasn’t really a sad occasion at all! We were there most of the evening and then walked to the seafront and had chips on the beach for supper…

They have also done performances with their dance school and stage school, both fab and both girls were very thrilled to be part of a proper production in a full on theatre, costumes, hair and make-up etc, hanging out with 40 odd other kids in the dressing rooms under the stage (can you imagine??!)

For dancing Fin’s urban/street ‘funky’ set was amazing, and Sadie looked adorable dressed up in a Mary Poppins outfit, and then a tailcoat and top hat for tap. Peter Pan (drama) was absolutely magical, both were magnificent, delivered lines with inflection and sufficient volume and generally had a great time. Sadie in particular has a long career in am-dram ahead of her I believe, no nerves whatsoever!

Both shows were in Alcalali – a tiny town inland with only a pharmacy, a florist, a hairdressers and, oh, a full size theatre!! We went with some friends and had a couple of beers and very nice tapas with the children between performances (€30 for 4 adults and 3 kids). The following Saturday they also did the Gotta Dance and Peter Pan pieces in the Javea International Festival – one of the major fiestas of the summer, and as it’s Spain they didn’t even start until 9pm! The standard of the shows was just amazing, and the attention to detail incredible.  

After school finished for the summer we went and picked up two little babies – kittens – that the girls had been promised since before we went travelling. They are adorable, brother and sister, very tactile and playful and have settled almost immediately. Poor things have already been loved to an inch of their lives, and are great for getting the girls to do anything! They’re only little – about 10 weeks now – so stay mostly in the kitchen, but early mornings and in the evenings we let them come in the sitting room – so exciting, they leap about for hours. The house is surprisingly kitten-proof having no stairs and lots of doors to shut.

So that’s about it, we are flat out busy with work, school, small animals and social engagements,

All love CRFS xxxx

In a School Daze

(I know it’s been ages, and I’m sorry this is now a week or two out of date – we have just been so busy. Hope you are all having a lovely Easter weekend and I’ll write about our Semana Santa in June or something…xxxx)

In the week before we left the UK the children went back to their English primary school in the snow, wearing hat, scarves and gloves which have now been consigned to the garage (actually we have plans for Fin’s gloves, but more on that later…) Three weeks ago, after two months ‘off’, they started at their Spanish primary school – a HUGE learning curve for them and us. As much as we wanted to give them a ‘settling’ period in the new house (and new country), in the end this was about as fast as we could have done it anyway. The list of documents required for a pupil to start school in the Communitat Valenciana is as follows:

• Birth Certificates
• Parent’s Marriage Certificate (or document stating they are both legal guardians of child)
• Passports or ID card
• Papers issued by the Town Hall Education Department confirming a place at the school (to get these papers, you need to take the Certificate from the Padron office (Electoral Roll) that states you do indeed live in the correct catchment area.
• SIP number of child (like NHS number, issued in person by the Social Security office)
• Medical Certificate including immusation record (issued by Spanish paediatrician at the Centro Medico)

Having managed to move countries and take over a business within a couple of weeks, you would think that this would be a piece of cake, but sadly not, we have learned that you need at least 2 visits to any given office to get what you were after (especially as said offices often move location without warning, so most of your morning is taken up looking for the new premises, at which point they have gone for a coffee) Oh and don’t forget that (as we found in Asia) what they tell you on the phone is only half the story; ‘yes, you can pick up the SIP number at the medical centre’ requires the pre-requisite ‘but first you need to go to the Social Security office in Denia’. Of course this is all a lot easier if you’re travelling and only have laundry to do for the rest of the day, rather than running a new business as well, but I digress.

 So, eventually we got everything together and presented ourselves, as requested, at the school to complete the paperwork and have a look around. No es problema, we did that, and then the secretary said ‘So I’ll take the children to their classes and you come back and get them at lunchtime, ok?’ Urmm, tried not to look too panicked for the sake of the girls who clearly thought this was a great idea, and off they went. So that was it – they are now in school from 9am-12.30pm and then 3-4.30pm. The rule at school is ONLY Spanish is spoken, so at the moment they are coming home for a siesta, which is giving them a welcome break, but Fin is already feeling the pull of non-stop gossip and play for 2.5 hrs (oh and a bit of lunch as well).  

Next hurdle was the school bus. We submitted our papers (again) to the Town Hall, they thought about it for a couple of weeks and then we went back to pick up the Certificado de Distancia, which clearly states that we live 4.405 kms from the Arenal School. Hurrah! That was on a Friday, Monday morning we turned up at the bus stop, expecting to have to explain our presence, but the Directora had already put them on the list and off they went. (Mother has now bitten nails down to the quick, making typing quite painful…)

So that’s it – they have had an amazing welcome into school from the staff and the kids, the teachers have added an air of normality and the children have all been very friendly and helpful – translating a little and lending books etc. We are now in week 2 of the school bus, and school appears to be completely acceptable. Apart from a couple of very small wobbles they seem to be settled, one of us runs down to school to pick them up for lunch (the bus is morning and evening), there is, of course, also the mass buying of all school related kit – books, pencil cases, ROLLER BLADES for sport, and now the need for a catcher’s mitt, fashioned from an old glove, some cardboard and some duct tape – for baseball practice apparently! The homework is proving slightly challenging due to it all being in Spanish, but once translated they seem able to do it fine, and it’s good practice for me as I try and do it without the dictionary. Although we have made it very clear that until the end of this school year they have only 2 academic goals; make friends and learn as much Spanish as they can, yet again these amazing girls have made us so proud with the way they have just adapted chameleon-like to their new environment.

The rest of life is a jumble of shop hours, stock orders, banking, gas and wood supplies, mosquito net repairmen and making sure we squeeze in some kind of social life too – so pretty much the same as anywhere then! Not much time for blog updating but I will persevere and try and get a few pics up soon as well…

Take care

All love CRFS xxxx

Two weeks? More like 6 months…

It’s 2 weeks today since we took over the shop – OMG. And we’ve only been in Spain 3.5 weeks – WOW. Can’t believe what we’ve achieved in that time, or how much there still is to do.

It’s been a massive learning curve dealing with Spanish suppliers – but have managed to order plenty of wine, bread and sweeties in Spanish so that’s a start! Yesterday I also had a long conversation in Spanish about a freezer and it’s broken seal – unusual vocab but luckily said freezer was there to demonstrate and the guy will call me when he’s got a quote for fixing it.

The girls have settled in great – they have made several new friends already. We have found some dance lessons for both of them and Saturday Stage School as well (in English) which they seem to really enjoy. Their Spanish teacher comes every day next week for an hour – they are learning very fast and have put Spanish post-its on everything in the house!

Despite being slightly daunted by the whole Spanish school induction process we have been to the Town Hall to register that we live in the area, and also to the Casa de la Cultura to hand in the piece of paper so the girls can be given a place at our nearest school. Having done that we then went to the school and handed in copies of birth certificates, marriage certificates, identity numbers, passports, inside leg measurements….you name it. We now only need medical certs and a Certificado de Distancia from the local police so they can get the free bus. Pretty impressed by our luck with officialdom hey? Well it helps that we take cute blue-eyed blond Sadie everywhere with us – she works her magic on them just like she did in Asia! That said, as we attempt to do all of this in Spanish most people are very willing to help us find the right words and seem to shuffle the papers a bit quicker.

Oh and had our first proper Spanish power cut today – half the town blacked-out for about 30 mins for no particular reason. So that was another challenge; finding the button on the bottom of the till so you can open it manually! I was kept entertained til the electric came back on by a helpful couple who were hanging around unable to go home as they have electric gates that are too high to climb over.

Anyway I’m sure there is other more important business or Spanish (or Spanish business) related stuff I should be doing. So that’s it for now, more when we have time. Thanks so much for all your love and support via email, Skype and Facebook etc – all helping us feel ‘normal’ as we cope with the abnormal.

Take Care

All love CRFS xxxx

Well You Didn’t Think That Was It Did You?

Well we gave it our best shot. Since Four Go(ed) RTW in 2007-08, we’ve been back in England for 15 months (the Team Leader did desert us for prettier underwater climes for a bit) but we still want to leave! Despite the recession, we managed to find good jobs, the girls have happily settled into a different school, we moved back into our house, and picked up the threads of ‘normal’ life. So why aren’t we happy with this?!

I know – we should be. But we can always live here, so we want to try living somewhere else. We’ve loved living overseas whenever we’ve done it - in Oz, NZ and then Thailand as part of our big family RTW trip. I don’t think we really realised how much our travels had changed us until now – over a year later. Sure, on our return we knew we’d done something incredible and hoped that we wouldn’t forget that, but now I look at my children – both so adaptable, confident, accepting and worldly wise, and I think how empowered we adults still feel, and how strongly we feel that we want to change the way we live permanently – to be more in charge of the way we work and play, and manage our time better to be free when the girls are, while they still want to spend their free time with us.

So where? Spain ticks all our boxes – climate, culture, language, work, housing, schooling, distance from UK etc, and so Team Edmeads are again ditching the fear factor and heading south in January 2010. It’s with a positive attitude that we make this move, this adventure into a new language and culture, this change to an emptier bank account but a fuller life, this step to share our girls’ childhood while they’re still in it, building on what we learned from 12 amazing months around the globe. Sure it’s going to be a lot of hard work and will be scary and overwhelming at times, but hey, we’ve been there before, haven’t we?

Please join us for another crazy journey

Todo Amor CRFS xxxx

P.S. In case you haven’t found it before, our previous adventures are at: www.fourgortw.co.uk