I m in the apartment nearly a week now. It s going well. I m having a laugh with everyone there and my spanish is definitely getting better because they correct every mistake that I make.

They are a colourful bunch. Two of the lads, Juan and Pablo hail from the Basque country and are firm believers that god was from Bilbao. One of the other lads, Aaron is from El Salvador. He plays for the pink team and must definitely live on a different planet. Antonio, the Galician, is an architect and hobby photographer and went on his honeymoon to the carribean on wednesday. Ismael is a local. He´s a film and theatre critic, lover of alcahol, publishing house translator and a latin bohemian rolled into one. Clare and Claire are two french students from Paris. One studies , the other doesn´t. Everybody gets on and last night we all went to celebrate Ismaels birthday. What I will tell you is that we only started the night in earnest at 1am, as did the rest of the city. What I won´t tell you is where we had to meet Aaron but to my relief did not delay there long.

The teaching is going well. I can t stop laughing in the classroom. My students are complete headcases. I teach in the school itself and I teach in some companies aswell. One or two Real Madrid players are studying english in the school as of next week so I´m trying to persuade the secretaries to put them in my classes. I work with a scot though and he lives for his football and is very likely to have a nervous breakdown if he doesn´t get them. I don´t care as long as I get the tickets.

Because it is a long weekend a huge number of people are gone up to Coruña to join the cleaning up operation. Two car loads from a company I teach in went up this morning. For a while I was going with them but then nobody dropped out so there was no room. The flatmates are trying to go this evening or tomorrow morning. If so, I´ll go too. You can t just turn up though. You have to ring the organisers and do a some training there. In true spanish style that seems to make things really difficult.

Last summer, on the Asgard, we sailed into that cove for a few days. We were swimming there for hours everyday. I can recognise alot of the fishermen on the TV because we used to use all of their facilities for showers and drinking water etc. It was a beautiful place. A real shame.