1st September 2012

Today was our last day at work, we were able to finish at dinner so we could pack our cases and get organised for our long day ahead of us.

Once we got to work we finished off our booklet for the castle and finalised a few pieces of work. We decided we would buy Mar (the owner of the house where we stayed) a bottle of wine to say thank you.

By the time we have finished our work it was time to say goodbye, everybody was really sad to see us go, but a few people from the castle are planning on visiting England next year, so they promised us they would see us again.

We all had a few group photos so we had something to remember each other by and then we set off to our favourite restaurant for some dinner with Javier :)

Once we got home and packed our suitcases we realised we had left our wine at the castle and tried to explain to Javier but this was quite difficult, we finally explained and arranged to pick the wine up from Javier's aunts house who lives at the bottom of the hill where the castle is based.

After a quite conversation with Javier's Aunt, we headed off for our last tea :( we decided to try the famous Kallimocho and to our surprise it was lovely!! While I carried on drinking it, Lee had beer instead. We finished our tea and headed back home, We couldn't wait to get into bed as we knew we would be one step closer to getting home.

31st August

Today we had planned to do our gift shopping for everyone back home! We spent so much money, but that's because we love them so much and don't expect the same in return (just incase the family are reading this) we then bubble wrapped the bottles to the max so that they wouldn't break on the way home. There was more bubble wrap than bottle!

After working our last full day at the castle we headed home to have tea. Using the last bits we had egg and Lee had built up his eggy bread all day! He'd only had it once when his friend had made it for him but he remembers it to be amazing yet simple to make. No pressure!

The eggy bread was another success along with Sarah's chicken and noodles soup, all to accompany our film, Gone, (spolier alert) which is about a girl being kidnapped in her sleep, threw in a hole in the woods and escaping, eventually to kill the person who kidnapped her. ... But now Sarah was affraid of the same thing happening to her, not the best thing to watch before bed.

It's a good job the excitement of going home over came the fear of being kidnapped and threw in a hole.

30th August

We headed into work again but today there was something different! It was freezing! The wind was icy and if you closed your eyes and pinched your nose so you couldn't smell the country air (poo) it felt just like we were back in England!

We worked the full day again and headed into Peñafiel for some tea. We again went to our favourite cafe and had BBQ pizza and BBQ burger! YUM! While watching abit of Madagascar on tv because the owners kids had it on. We didn't enjoy it one bit ;)

Off we headed to our home after tea without our clothes smelling like fire. Today tea was a success, but mainly because we didn't cook it.

29th August

Wednesday, our Monday, work began so we did our usual of meeting Abilio and he took us into work! But this time we had cake and beer! The beer for Abilio for carting us round everywhere and a cake for everyone. We even had little party invites with Peter pan on to suit Javi, the castles very own Peter pan.

Everyone loved the cake and so did we, we have dearly missed a chocolate cake!

We headed home thinking about how we can use up our last bits for tea! We had Sarah's Tuna tagliatelle, in an amount that could feed an army. So guess what was for dinner the next day.

In an experimental mood we put some popping corn in a pot and tried making pop corn! We made charcoal corn... With about four pieces of decent looking pop corn to eat! Disaster! We now had a burnt pot and a house smelling of burnt.

<<<< Abilio, probably sick of driving us around all the time.

28th August

Today was our last day off before we went home, we decided we would go into Penafiel for a few bits. We didn't really fancy spending more money on a taxi so Lee came up with the idea of walking, in the car it only takes 5-10 minutes so we thought it wouldn't take us long.

We set off walking through our village, and then came onto the main road (which is more like a motorway) we followed the dirt track which was next to the road as we thought it would take us directly into Penafiel. We walked and walked until we came across a little forest, we wasn't too sure if we should walk through it, I was a bit worried about the snakes and other creatures that I thought would be in there, but we walked through it anyway and came out alive so that was quite good lol.

After around an hour of walking we finally reached our destination, we headed straight for our favourite cafe (which happens to have really good WIFI) the one where our work. Friend Javier first took us. We wasted a bit of time in here until the shops reopened.

We visited the bank so we could withdraw our last bit of money, and then headed for the supermarket so we could buy a few presents. We got Santos, our taxi driver and Albilio, our work friend who drives us the castle every morning a few cans of beer, we have been trying to ask then for a few days what they liked, but proved to be quite difficult ad they didn't really know what we were going on about. We also bought the castle a really big chocolate cake :)

We headed back home and started to make our favourite dish, mediterranean vegetables and garlic chicken :) We washed the pots and headed for bed, ready for our last few days in work.

27th August

Today was our start of the weekend. We did nothing in the morning and ate next to nothing because we had nothing in. It was nothing day! A trip to the shops was in order. We went to the shops and had a think about what we could get for our last week. Item number one, beer and malibu. Item 2 presents for the castle. Item 3 food. Santos picked us up again, he was basically like our private chaffuer.
We got home and decided to have the burgers that we had bought fresh with the fresh buns. This should be nice.
After waiting so long and dissecting the burger, it looked cooked so Lee went out side to eat his. It was a totally different colour in the day light, but half of it gone he didn't put it back in the oven unlike Sarah who wasn't chancing it.

Fajitas were on the cards AGAIN, we have ate that many we was more Mexican than Spanish. Lees best efforts paid off again with the much needed help from sarah.

Our thoughts of the day were that we had less than one week to go before we are home! It couldnt come quick enough, but thinking about what our families have said they were right "enjoy your last week and that way you'll have a great time at this amazing opportunity/experience and the time will fly by" Great advice.

<<< The chickens that reminded Lee of home but not the ones going into the Fajitas.

26th August

26th August
Today was a bit of a funny one. We started the day off worrying about what time we were being picked up. So we decided to drop Abilio a text. He didn't reply so we went to the bus stop at 12:15 like we thought originally, turns out we were wrong. We got a phone call saying he was the at 11:15 and we wasn't, oops! No problem tho as it is down for us to work at 4:30 anyway. We arranged good old santos to run us in then.

With our spare time we decided to wash our clothes for the 3rd but couldn't work out how to get the washer going as the previous times we had done the wash we had just fluked it and pressed loads of buttons. Mar, the owner, was in doing some house work so we asked her. She came to help only to see we had one of her blue towels in with our white wash. Oops again. So she sorted that out for us explaining how to do a wash as if we didn't already know (Lee didn't know but then again Sarah put a blue towel in so maybe she didn't know either  ) 

We got into work and had a laugh about the whole confusion thing before we got taken into peñafiel for tea at las claras. We did work in between though. We got to las claras but food wasn't on until 9 so we had a few drinks and some pinchos to put us on. We got our tea and asked if we change the big jug of red wine included for a vodka and coke and a Malibu and lemonade, very Spanish of us. 

We got home and thought we would carry on drinking as we had really got drunk the whole time but then Sarahs tea decided to make a second apperance! She had ate too much, but to be honest at 40€ each we should of had it twice. 

This called for bed time! It was our weekend tomorrow which was greatly anticipated.