Month 11 of ex-pat living in Spain - A slower pace

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So last month we were left wondering what was wrong with our little rescue dog, but thankfully after a few more days of worry and trying to figure it out, we manage to trace it back to the type of food that he is on. Under recommendation from the vet, we try him on a diet of rice, carrots and chicken, and immediately his stomach seems to get better and the diarrhoea stops instantly. It turns out that our wee dog has a sensitive stomach and therefore we need to put him on a special diet. So now he is on a dog food which is gluten free- and they say dogs are like their owners indeed!! We’re just glad to have got to the root of the problem, and everything seems to be plain sailing from here on in. It’s been a month of discovery and we’ve seen him grow in confidence with every passing day. He loves nothing more than to chase a ball, and sneaking up for a cuddle on the sofa when we let him. He’s also perfected his ‘I’m such a hard done by dog, please feed me’ look, which has definitely got me wrapped around his finger. He eats absolutely anything if we let him, including apples, carrots, pineapple, satsumas, peppers and celery! We’re lucky to have found such a well-behaved and well-mannered dog as he follows his commands and never barks or growls. With other dogs he simply wants to play, all the time (even when they tell him to back off!).

The weather has been absolutely amazing too this month. It has now dropped to a very comfortable temperature of about 24/25 degrees which is so nice to walk about in. But actually we still find it a bit cold and certainly wouldn’t venture into the pool which we may well have done in the past. Work has completely died down now so we are only working part-time hours, which means we spend our afternoons out walking with the dog and stopping for a coffee here and there in the sunshine. It’s not a bad life and I can’t help but feel slightly smug when I hear from family back home how cold and miserable the weather is (sorry guys!).

It’s not all perfect though as we still have to pay the bills, and this is not easy when you are earning less than 100 euros each a week. Thankfully we did manage to put some money away during the summer otherwise we’d be really struggling. Gone are the fancy meals out and there are no more tortillas and albondigas to accompany the café con leches when we go out. Of course the good news is there are lots of free things to do in Spain, so we manage a few day trips with our friend Bianca and her dogs to go for some long walks in the countryside and along the beach. Ideally we’d love to take a road trip somewhere overnight so we can explore further, but this just isn’t possible on our budget at the moment.

The end of the month sees a final trip from friends and family for the year in the form of Greg’s mum and dad. The good news is we aren’t working as much so at least we can spend a bit more time with them (but the down side is we feel guilty we have to rely on them more for paying for food and drinks…). It is a lot harder trying to incorporate a night out when you have a dog in tow, but on the whole we manage it (apart from one Tuesday night when we spend nearly 2 hours walking around trying to find a restaurant still open and that will accommodate a dog, but not at the expense where we will freeze to death outside. In the end we opt for an indian takeaway at home instead). It’s lovely catching up with them and we always love having visitors over as an excuse to have a drink and a nice meal, as well as having the opportunity to show them some nice places to visit. It’s probably been one of our favourite months since we moved over to Spain, as we feel a lot more settled in both work and family life, and we now have more time to actually enjoy the positive things about living in Spain.

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