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No more Spanish lessons <\/span><\/strong>Thank you Duolingo, for taking us from speaking not a word of Spanish to being able to make ourselves understood and understand a lot of what is being said to us, even over the phone. But after 575 consecutive days of at least 30 minutes (but often a lot more) of online Spanish lessons, we have decided to stop forcing ourselves to keeping this up. To be honest, I would never have been able to do this for 575 days in a row without the encouragement of Mirjam. And the same is true the other way around. But it became too much of a struggle and the decision to stop has given us a such a relief. We have learned enough to get by for now and once they start again, we will go for conversational lessons in town, probably in September. Meanwhile, we will repeat earlier lessons and review our list of vocabulary regularly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/mirer.es\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/CameraDisplay-461x1024.jpg\"){kind=spacer}
<\/figure>Roll camera!<\/strong> <\/span>Something Mirjam has been wanting to do with her collection of cameras for a very long time. She created a display of a number of cameras she inherited from her grandfather and one that was her mother\u2019s first camera, bought with her life savings of 12.5 Dutch florins.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n Flowering Cacti<\/strong> <\/span>There are quite a few types of cactus that flower, but we didn\u2019t know we had any, until we witnessed this outside our bathroom window. The flowers stay 2 days and then die off. After a month they come back and that\u2019s it for another year. But they are so pretty, even from the back!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Orange Semolina cake with walnut<\/strong> <\/span>One of Mirjam\u2019s best cakes is this orange semolina cake with walnut. It is delicious and Grand Marnier helps keeping it moist and very tasty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Happy Birthday Mirjam<\/strong> <\/span>On May first, we celebrated Mirjam\u2019s birthday. We had a great day in the sun and Mark and Jacky came over for drinks and \u2018bitterballen\u2019 and stayed for dinner. A lovely time was had by all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Velez Rubio<\/strong> <\/span>Because of the pandemic, we haven\u2019t gone out much since we have arrived in Spain. We go grocery shopping once a week and that\u2019s about it. But our lawyer summoned us to come and work through some paperwork and that took us to Oria one sunny morning. Oria is about an hour\u2019s drive west of where we live and we had the choice to go South and then West or North and then West. We go South once a week to get to the market and grocery store, so this was a good opportunity to explore the Northern route. We were very glad we did, because the trip North through the valley is absolutely stunning. Hardly any traffic, no towns at all, a few houses dotted along the hills, gorgeous fields with grass and poppies and the road just meanders through it all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the way back we stopped at a town called Velez Rubio, which is a lovely old town where we walked around a bit and had lunch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is the road back from the motorway through the valley to our house. I sped it up a little, but the video gives you a good impression of what the countryside looks like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/mirer.es\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Cactus1-scaled.jpg\")
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