Week 2 in Spain... Thankfully the weather improved after the first day and has been beautiful since then (although cold in the evenings) - until today, when it started raining again - which is why I'm back in the internet cafe...

I have been surprisingly busy - Spanish classes every morning, then tapas for lunch at one of the many many restaurants Marbella has to offer, then golf until nearly dinner time. I've been out a couple of times but the nightlife here isn't particularly exciting (or maybe I'm just looking in the wrong places!). I haven't made it as far as Puerto Banus yet, the next town over, which is supposed to be the party hotspot.

I've actually been too tired to go out most days - I'm blaming it on the huge meals - they eat so much food here and most of it is very greasy and salty but so tasty! The couple I'm staying with always make me a huge dinner and then eat hardly anything themselves (they say they have their main meal in the afternoon), so I'm sitting there with a bowl of soup/stew full of potatoes, vegetables and chorizo, which at home would be a dinner in itself, followed by not one, not two, not three but FOUR decent-sized fish plus salad all for me, while all they eat is salad - it's great but it feels a bit awkward eating so much more than them.

The Spanish classes are going well though the pace slowed down markedly after the first day. My vocabulary is much better now and conversation skills have improved a little bit but they're still very limited and I can only talk in the present tense because I haven't learned the other tenses yet! So sometimes I have to think of quite roundabout ways of saying things. Another problem is that everyone at the school, be they from Germany, Italy, Sweden, France or wherever, speaks to each other in English most of the time. Clearly this makes things easier for me to understand but it means I'm not getting much practice at my Spanish - I just try to say a few things here and there when I can (and talk to the only girl that doesn't speak English!).

Everyone in my Spanish class is lovely and we have a good laugh, the group will change a bit each week as people come and go from the school. Although people come from lots of different backgrounds, we generally find something in common, there was actually another ex-DB London girl there last week (small world!).

My golf is as inconsistent as ever but at least I have a better idea of what I'm supposed to be doing now - my instructor made me completely change my swing so it will take quite a bit of practice. Lessons are much harder than playing a round of golf because I don't get a break between shots and after a while my hands really start to ache. I can't complain though - it's great to be outside when the weather is so good and the scenery at the club is beautiful - I'm playing at Santa Clara golf club just outside Marbella, it's a relatively new club with great views of the surrounding mountains. I have two different teachers - there are quite a few pros at the club and some of them are very young, it must be a nice life!

At the weekend I strolled around the Casco Antiguo (Old Town) of Marbella - it is stunning, very typically Spanish with narrow streets, white buildings, flowers growing in balcony windows and orange trees. It's such a revelation when all I've seen previously of Marbella are the high-rise apartment blocks that populate the rest of the town! It's very relaxed and a lovely place to go for a walk or sit in a cafe. There are lots of great little restaurants and bars hidden away in the maze of tiny streets.

The Avenida del Mar pedestrian road that runs from the Old Town to the beach has a line of Salvador Dalí sculptures which I love (see my photos). Overall, Marbella is small and easy to find your way around - I don't think you could get lost here if you tried!

On Sunday I went to my first ever bullfight! It was fascinating, a bit gruesome but on the whole I enjoyed it. The day before I went, there was a horrible news report on TV about a matador that had been gored and the bull's horn went 20 centimetres inside his body but he survived - after watching that I was very nervous about going to watch it but actually it wasn't too scary. I have uploaded a LOT of photos from it - sorry there are so many but I've already cut over 200 of the pictures I took and I got tired of going through them! If you are offended by that sort of thing then probably best not to look at them but otherwise please do - it was so colourful and interesting to watch. They weren't famous bullfighters so I don't think it was a particularly amazing example of the sport but to my untrained eye it's all the same.

Other observations:

- there are a huge number of little furball dogs here

- virtually every car is scratched and dented, often with broken lights and wing mirrors - it's amazing to watch some of the parallel parking that goes on, as the car alternates between bumping the one in front and the one behind

- there are a LOT of flies

- all over town there are a surprising number of properties up for sale or rent (residential and commercial)

- the siesta concept is great in theory but I never have a chance to take advantage of it and it is very irritating that all the shops are shut every afternoon, weekend and holiday - basically all the times that I'm not at school or golf!