Summer guests

I've been busy playing tour guide and holiday host over the past week to my parents, my brother and my niece. They spent much of their time just relaxing by the swimming pool, but one day we took a trip inland to the lakes at El Chorro, near Ardales, where we swam, played on airbeds, did some cliff jumping (fromhigh rocks on an island into the deep water), went out in a pedalo with a water slide on it, and picnicked under the pine trees. Brandy (the border collie) had the time of her life - swimming all day and retrieving objects that we threw into the water for her.

On another day, my Scottish family came to my house to have a South American meal with my Spanish family. Ada made a couple of Peruvian specialities: a fish starter called ceviche, and then the main course was a chicken and rice dish called chaufa de pollo. With my parents, brother and niece in the photo below are Ada and Gabriela (my Peruvian friends that I live with here in Alhaurin) and another friend, Adriana, from Colombia.

Gabriela had her eleventh birthday this week. She and Kasey went to the local carnival together, had a sleepover at my house, went out for chocolate and churros, had fun at the swimming pool and the beach... and went to a couple of birthday parties.

My brother and niece flew back to Scotland yesterday, but my parents will be staying on for another two weeks... probably just relaxing by the pool and enjoying the warm weather.

Sunshine and swimming

Today reminded me a little bit of working with pre-teen camps. My 9 year old niece, Kasey, was joined for the day by 10 year old Gabriela and 12 year old Wendy. With boundless energy, the three of them spent the day jumping in and out of the swimming pool, while Brandy the border collie ran around the edge, barking for someone to throw a beach ball at her. Then, when the girls went indoors to play table tennis, Brandy ran round and round the ping pong table. I think all four of them will sleep well tonight. Gabriela's from Peru, Wendy from Bolivia, and Kasey from Scotland of course, so it was fun to listen to the three of them communicating in broken English and halting Spanish. Not to be outdone, Brandy contributed an enthusiastic woof every now and then.

My job, of course, was to make the meals and bring a steady supply of cool drinks and ice creams. No doubt, I'll sleep well too.

Airport pickup

My parents and my niece are on their way to Spain now and will arrive here this afternoon. My tiny little car, though, only has four seats and isn't large enough to pick up three people and all their luggage. Fortunately, I can borrow a larger car for the airport run today, so that I don't need to spend two hours doing a double trip. My brother arrives on Monday, and my own car will be fine for picking up just one person.

Life on the farm...

My summer job begins today! I've just taken my friends to the airport, as they're off to spend a month in Canada. While they're gone, I'll be walking the dog, feeding the cat, looking after the turkey, rooster and chickens, watering the plants... and of course, swimming in the pool!

As it turns out, I'll only need to live at Villa Victoria for four or five days. My parents, my brother and my niece are coming to have some summer holiday here in Spain. Once they arrive, they'll live here at the villa and I'll move back to my own house and my own animals, but I'll come over to the villa every day to carry out my "farmyard duties" and spend some swimming pool time with my family!

Summer's the time of year when much of my work is done at the computer (corresponding with the first applicants for next year's LDC, and with the people leading PCYMs that are held around the world in the second half of the year.) I also make time for language study, so that I continue to improve my Spanish.

Among other things, I'll be giving some English lessons this summer in the context of a local charity that some people from our church have set up. This NGO, which is called the ABC, gives food to up to 200 needy families every week. The English lessons are part of a strategy to help these people gain some skills that could help them when job hunting. As well as the English classes at the ABC, I'll be continuing to teach some French classes, and also leading some children's prayer activities at church. So, quite a varied summer lies ahead, and "life on the farm" will be only one of the fun parts of it.

Mielie roomys or helado de choclo

Sometimes I really miss mielies. You might call them sweetcorn in your part of the world, and my South American friends from Peru and Colombia call them choclo. But, whatever you call them, the sad reality is that they don't seem to be nearly as widely available here as I expected them to be. There's no shortage of tinned or frozen corn, but it seems that there are only one or two months of the year when we can go to the supermarket and buy fresh corn on the cob.

When I was in Brazil earlier this year, sweetcorn ice cream was a new taste experience for me. This weekend, I decided to get the recipe and try it out for myself. It turned out to be very easy: you just need a litre of milk, a packet of frozen sweetcorn, a carton of cream and the yolk of five eggs. (You can add a little vanilla essence too, if you like.) The hardest part, if you don't have an ice cream machine, is that you need to keep opening the freezer and stirring it around every hour or so for the whole day. But it turned out to be worth the effort. My South American friends were the first to taste the "helado de choclo" and were surprised at how delicious it was. Now they're trying to persuade me to experiment with other flavours too. We'll see.... Tobi (pictured here) thought that salmon ice cream might be worth a try!

Famous last words

It's said that it's easy to find ourselves doing the very things we said we would never do. Well, I always said I would never have a long haired cat, because I didn't want to have to brush it every day and clean up hairs in the house. But, as the hotter weather has arrived here in Spain, all three cats are losing hair and we keep finding balls of it all over the house; I vacuum up at least as much hair every day as we used to have in Cape Town with two border collies. Most of it, though, seems to come from Teddi, who has grown into a very big, fluffy boy. (Last week, at the vet's, he weighed in at more than fourteen pounds!) And yes, you've guessed it! This week I had to go out and buy a new brush - in the hope that I can gather more hair in the brush and less hair in the vacuum cleaner. And so here I am, doing what I thought I'd never do: brushing a big fluffy cat every day. Fortunately, Teddi has always enjoyed being brushed, and so he obligingly rolls over from side to side until I've brushed away most of the undercoat that he's shedding for the summer. Tamba and Tobi enjoy being brushed too, but don't seem to be producing quite as much hair as Teddi. Hopefully this will only be for another few weeks, until they've finished shedding their winter coats.

History repeating itself

When LDC finished at the end of May, most of the delegates and staff headed home right away. With those who stayed in Spain a few extra days, we took a trip inland to El Chorro (Embalses del Guadalhorce) and enjoyed a relaxing afternoon swimming in the turquoise water of the lakes. Looking at this photo where I'm swimming with my friends' border collie, Brandy, I couldn't help being reminded of another summer's day, back in 2005: it was also right after a training school had ended and all the students had gone home, but on that day I was swimming with a different border collie - our little Zola down in Cape Town. You may have heard of "Dancing with Wolves." My version is, "Swimming with Collies." Sadly, Zola is no more; my friend in South Africa had to put her to sleep last year when her arthritis got unbearable.

Speaking of South Africa, It's weird to think that the Soccer World Cup begins today. More than a decade ago, I began praying and working towards a vision to see multiple teams of young people come to South Africa for outreach. When we heard a few years later that the World Cup Football would be held in our nation, we began to talk and pray about hosting teams in 2010. I never expected for a moment that I would no longer be in South Africa in 2010... but I'm encouraged that others took up the vision and many outreach teams (including a team from here in Spain) will be going there over the coming weeks.