Viva Espana!

I love Spain. 

That about sums it up.  You take 13 people who pretty much have not seen the sun in 6 months, and I tell you, it's like a drug.  You don't know how much you miss it until you see it again.  See, when people warned me about the London weather, I thought surely they were exaggerating.  Brits in particular love to wallow in the sheer terribleness of the forecast.  But they were not joking.  Not even a little bit.  So, as soon as school gets out - we are off!  To sunny Marbella, Spain!

Marbella is on the coast, and is a gorgeous beachfront city which meanders up on to a luxuriously green hillside.

We stayed about 10 minutes from the beach - in a house tucked into the hills.  All we really wanted was a spot to bask our lily white bodies in the sun.  I'm pretty sure when all of us pasty white people were sunbathing together it caused some kind of a reflection that could be seen from space.  This place was just the ticket:

And of course, what would a vacation be without the Goulds and the Walkers?  This is pretty much what we did all week.

 These two have a nickname at TASIS - "The Frat Boys".  I have no idea what they have done to earn this:

Occasionally (or way too often, if the scale is to judge) we were roused from our sun induced stupor to eat.  We had a fabulous chef who cooked all sorts of local favorites!

And we did venture out for one day on on a Catamaran and a little ocean adventure!

Which the kids loved. 

Everyone got to try the Banana Boat!  And I mean EVERYONE.  There are not pictures of me, Shauna or Paulie that will be made public.  It is impossible to look cute on a Banana Boat after the age of 35.  But the kids managed nicely:

The kids learned how to jump off one end of the boat and swim under it to the other side.  I did not teach them this.

And then relaxed for some (blessedly unsuccessful) fishing from the back of the boat:

Other than our boating excursion, we only ventured out one other time - to the beach!

I ask you, why do children enjoy grovelling around in sand?  How is this comfortable? They have sand in places where there should be no sand.  But yet, every time they see it they wallow in it like baby pigs in warm mud:

I like the beach - but I enjoy it more from a safe, sand free position:

The end of the week was especially sad, because we were saying goodbye to our amazing friends Paulie, John, Eva & Alex.  They moved back to Texas, and it was really hard for everyone to say goodbye!

 

 Sometimes in all the changes of Expat life, you meet people who immediately make it feel like home.  We will miss you, Goulds!

But we will always have the best memories! 

And that ends Year 2 of our Expat Adventure!  Who knew when we took of for our "10 month" tour in Dubai that it would come to this?  Next stop: California for the summer!