Tuesday 26th November - The morning that Barry left ...

... for summertime. Yes, he's on his way back to NZ -  barbeques, swimming, sunshine, beer on the deck, (have one for me) family and friends. Oh, yes, and work! At this time he should be at Bilbao airport waiting for his flight to London where he'll have a a couple of nights with Emma and Sam before starting the long journey home on Thursday, with a 5 hour stop over in San Fransico, arriving back in Auckland early on Friday morning, NZ time. Well, I think it's Friday morning. I'm in a bar doing this and my diary is at the apartment so I can't check. Once we'd settled into our apartment, my school schedule and become comfortable in Azpeitia and then began going places, having visitors (wonderful) the time seemed to go very quickly and suddenly the 26 November is here.

Yes, I miss him, and yes I know he's only been gone a few hours, that's how it is.

We'd sorted out a pretty good, loose kind of routine here, walking to school, meeting up after school, stopping here and there for a beer and maybe a pintxo or two, he seemed to enjoy his domestic work and I certainly enjoyed not having to do any cooking, shopping, cleaning etc (I'm trying not to think too much about having to do it all myself now), talking about the things we'd like to do and places we'd like to see and he had got into walking 7 - 10kms every day and had lost a fair amount of weight which he is very happy about. So much nicer walking along the river in the countryside than along a footpath beside traffic. We had time to just be with each other because there simply wasn't the busyness which seems to be the reality of our lives in Auckland. It"s certainly food for thought - how we live our daily lives (talking only about me and Barry here) and what we choose to clutter it up with. 

Now it's up to me to make the best of my time here, and he'll be back at the end of March, and then we have lots more traveling to do and fun to have as well as enjoying being here in Azpeitia. I'm very happy to receive emails, ordinary mail, skype calls from anyone and everyone.  Probably I've been a little slack in the email writing department but now I'll make up for lost time.

Winter has well and truly arrived in Azpeitia and for most of the past week and a half it has been raining and cold, not heavy rain just an almost constant light rain, and now we understand why people here always carry an umbrella, so do we now, well, probably Barry won't be but I certainly will be. The river which runs through the town and has had hardly any water in it since we've been here, more like a little stream really, became a raging torrent from bank to bank and the sound of the rushing water was wonderful. The water was very brown at first but in the weekend it changed to clear green and it has gone down quite a lot now. The daytime temperature has been between 6° - 8° and last week Barry said that he saw snow on the hill behind the one next to us when he was out for his walk. I have no idea what the temperature is at night because I don't look to find out. There is no wind though which is a plus. This morning was a fabulous cold, blue sky and sunshine morning but there's no warmth in the sun and I think that the temperature is dropping. Soon I will have to go outside and then I'll surely feel it.

Yesterday I did a blog about Sunday with Emma and Brit but for some reason there was a problem publishing it. It still wasn't done this morning and in trying to find a solution and getting it published I managed to repost the previous one. So, I apologise for the repetition though I won't make any promises that such a thing won't happen again because I don't have any idea why this happened nor how to avoid it happening again. I can only hope that it doesn't.

I'll get blogging  about our time in Barcelona tomorrow, perhaps.  In the meantime I've got to go to the supermarket and then back to school for a couple of classes.