Fantastic so far.

So far my busy week has been a blast. The hours aren't as bad as I feared, I really like the people I'm looking after, and I get to learn about photography too. Oh, and I get to take photos myself. Here's a few of them.

The day started with a press conference about Fotonature, and I was there to translate for Jane Menyawi, the National Geographic photo editor. So I had three TV cameras pointing at me, which was pretty intimidating.

Then we went to Los Tilos, where I got this photo of the Canarian bell flower, and the Palmeran Chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs Palmae).

And a wonderful view, which is hard to photograph. That's my shadow on the foreground at the bottom.

And this is a National Geographic photographer, shooting through railings.

Of course the locals thought we were crazy, or at least this one did.

Meanwhile, my husband is installing cables in a small space for a new scientific instrument, and bashing his head on the ceiling.  It's not a fair world.

El Hierro again

Well that was a fun weekend before my busy week. It turned out that they did indeed want the translation to English. I'd looked up the difficult words on Thursday night, in case, so I did the translation midair and during my stopover in Tenerife. Then when I got to El Hierro, we went to a cyber cafe where my friend proof read the translation and I emailed it off. I finally got to see Tacorón, down at the southern tip of the island, and got chatting to an old lady about her cats.

We had several good walks,too, but I think my favourite photo op was the old men playing cars for coffee beans in the bar.

Warp speed 11

This morning I took a group around Grantecan - Normal enough and fun. I got home and just had time to eat before I took my son to the dentist, followed by the hairdresser's and supermarket (the only place to park near the hairdresser's is the supermarket car park.) As soon as we got back, we grabbed one of the cats, and took her to the vet. And as soon as we got back from that, I started packing my suitcase. I'm escaping to El Hierro for the weekend to visit a friend. And when I read my email, I found a rush translation job. Only they're asking me to translate to German, which is decidedly optimistic given my level of (in)competence in German. So I emailed back, saying "Did you mean English? I can do English?" And seeing as they're in a hurry, I looked up the phone numbers to chase it in the morning. I'm the webmaster for a small non-profit, and somebody's having trouble unsubscribing. More emails required. I need to leave by 9:30 tomorrow morning. I'll get back on Sunday evening. I have Monday to get organised again, and then I really get started. I'll by interpreting and looking after a couple of photojournalists from National Geographic for a week, showing them around the island. This is fantastic, but the hours will be killing. I haven't got an itinerary yet, but I might be putting in anything up to 84 hours in 7 days. Hence the effort to get things like taking the cat to the vet done today. So I think I'd better get to bed. I'm going to need my sleep.

Bark!

My husband fixed a neighbour's heater, and he was delighted. So delighted that he said he'd bring some firewood for us. So I got home from work to find that he'd made good on his promise and come around with about two cubic metres of eucalyptus bark, which he'd left in front of the fireplace at our son's suggestion. The neighbour doesn't have a car. It must have been quite an effort to bring us all that. Now eucalyptus bark is really good for getting a fire going, and it smells lovely too. But this was perhaps rather more than I wanted. Especially since I couldn't get to the fireplace until I'd broken it all up. Which took nearly an hour. So you might say that the neighbour's bark is worse than his bite.

Some fun: A Local Sardine

Last night I went to a third sardine's funeral, in El Llanito, near San Pedro. (I'm doing well this year.) It's only a small, local party, but it's close and we'd heard that it was good. Unlike most places, the bier was carried by the sardine's widows.  Like most places, the widows were very tall and muscular.

I particularly liked this old lady, who kept insisting on more rum in her drink.

It is good. It's nothing like the size of the one in Los Sauces, but definitely well worth the ten-minute drive. And the fireworks were amazingly good for such a small event.