And so the week continued. It was a very structured week. Early each day the morning schedule was posted in the lobby and so we knew what we were doing for the morning, and the menu for lunch and dinner the next day was posted and we had to order our three courses. And then at lunch time the afternoon schedule was posted.

9am Breakfast - We had to sit with a mixture of Spaniards and Anglos. Breakfast was delicious with a huge range - fruit juice, cereal, fruit (oranges, grapefruit, pineapple, kiwifruit) yogurt. Then a selection of cheeses and cold meats and eggs, breads, croissants and pastries and cakes, and scrambled eggs and bacon, and a traditional dish of tomato.

10am - 2pm One to ones , telephone sessions or conference calls. During the one on ones we were free to talk about whatever we wanted to talk about, and I was surprised at how easy it was to talk and listen for an hour.

I met a young girl who is a mining engineer, another who was a fashion buyer, a lad who is studying renewable energy resources. We talked about cooking, shopping, food, and family. I showed them the pictures in a photo book I had with me of NZ and we shared photos of our kids and grandchildren.

We discussed the education standards of women, we talked about the politics of Spain, the rising unemployment rate, the retirement age and old age pensions. We talked about football, rugby, the All Blacks, Jonah Lomu. We talked about the kiwi and silver fern emblems. We talked about the weather in New Zealand.

One of the chaps was a milk buyer for a large dairy company which makes yogurt, so we talked about the dairy industry in NZ and about cows and milk protein and marketing of dairy products and Fonterra. I talked about the kiwi fruit industry and PSA, the Apple and Pear marketing board, and The Lord of the Rings.

One man has a son who wants to come to NZ to see a volcano so I talked about White Island and Ruapehu.

Over the week I got to have a one-on-one with all of the Spaniards. We talked about the earthquake in Christchurch and about volunteering. I talked about VS and one of our volunteers going to Nepal to build houses, and my job at the surgery. We talked about the political situation in Egypt and I discussed with a couple of the engineers the pyramids and the temples and the moving of Abu Simbel. And we talked about travel and learning languages and the haka, and tattoos.

OMG - I have talked and talked and talked. I have asked questions and listened to the answers. And for each one to one we had a phrasal verb to explain and an idiom - for example - To Look Into; To throw out; To clam up - which are phrasal verbs; and the idioms - To make ends meet; To be at a loose end; and Keep it under your hat. They were fun. Some of them we use alll the time and never think about where they came from or what they actually mean, others were a bit more difficult to explain.

But for the telephone sessions we were given topics. My first one was a conference call - three Spaniards in a room and me in my bedroom. Our topic was: I am Madonna's personal secretary and I am confirming all the arrangements for her visit to Madrid to promote her new CD. It was a great phone call, and the Spaniards had a good programme set for her. My brief was to question everything and make sure it was all as Madonna wanted it. Marissa had sat in on the call and afterwards told me I was a "demanding b****" I wanted flowers (roses and tulips) in her room, a special brand of bottled water and a bowl of fresh fruit available for her. And she needed a make-up artist and a hairdresser before any photo shoot. I didn't think that was too much to ask!!!

And for my one on one telephone call the scenario was: the Spanish girl had lost her luggage at Dallas airport and she was reporting it to me in the Lost Luggage section. My brief was to give her the 'run around' but this lass gave me the run around. She was very assertive and knew exactly what she wanted and when I tried to put her on hold, she told me she needed my name and telephone number and needed to know that I was doing all I could to find her luggage. In the end I had to agree with her, and meekly agree to go and investigate, find the bag and arrange to have it sent to her hotel. We met up after the call, and I learned that she has in the past lost her luggage, and so she knew exactly what to say and how to deal with this. She had been in the USA for an important meeting at which she had to give a presentation and all she had was the jeans she had travelled in and her bag containing her business suit and other clothes had gone to a different airport in a different state.

A couple of days later I had another phone session, this time with one of the guys, and his brief was to ring me (a CEO of a large pharmaceutical company) and extract 2 million euros as a donation for a recreation centre for kids. He was extremely convincing and whatever argument I put forward he had a good answer for and in the end I agreed to donate 1 million euro in this financial year, and 1 million euro in the next financial year in order to get the best tax write off. He agreed and we met in the lobby after the call, and I discovered that he was a banker in real life and was quite used to making deals like this. Phew!

There were two extra Anglos, so some days we were lucky enough to have an hour of Free Time, and at other times selected participants were off to the meeting room for rehearsals for the evening entertainment.

2pm lunch - A three course lunch served by waiters - washed down with bottles of red wine on the tables, but there was also white wine available for those who preferred it. There was also a salad buffet if we preferred something lighter. I soon learned not to always choose three courses as the helpings were very generous.

Lunch was a very noisy but leisurely affair and we had to leave the dining room by 3.30pm in order for the wait staff to clean up and have the room prepared for dinner.

After lunch we had siesta time until 5pm. Some people took the opportunity to go for a run, others to catch up with the internet (wifi was pretty erratic and not always available in our rooms so we often had to sit in the lobby to log on.)

A variety of activities from 5pm to 9pm. More one on ones, or a group activity until 8pm and then the Entertainment Hour in the meeting room. The entertainment was hilarious and even though most of us didn't really want to participate, we all did and it was a lot of fun Some of the skits were scripted, but a lot were improvisation. I got my chance to perform at the final entertainment hour. Four Anglos were chosen, a Brit, a Canadian, an American of Filipino extraction and me. We were given a task by Albo, but none of us felt comfortable with it - especially as we only had one hour to come with an idea and rehearse it - so we made up an item of our own. We had a song for every letter of the alphabet A-Z and we would throw the ball into the audience, they had to call out a letter and we would sing a song starting with that letter. Quite clever, despite the fact that none of us were good singers and we had no musical accompaniment. But it was fun and soon over. Ten minutes isn't a very long time and the following entertainment was really funny so we were soon forgotten.

And then it was time for dinner - another noisy meal, with amazing conversations taking place at every table. We changed tables and combinations, although the only rule was that at the four place tables there were 2 Anglos and 2 Spaniards and at the bigger tables 3 and 3. By the end of the week we had all been seated with everyone, and we had had one on ones with all of the Spaniards and the wine drinkers had worked out which tables drank all the wine and which ones had wine to spare.

The group activities were a lot of fun. I loved the Two Truths/1 Lie. But I failed miserably at a quiz one. We had a wee bag with an assortment of bits of paper containing the names of people or characters or acters from films, sports, books - for example Bill Clinton, Donald Duck, Ghandi, Leonardi da Vinci. We were in groups of four pairs - and each pair was one Anglo one Spaniard, but because there are now two extra Anglos, I got to pair up with another Anglo Lee. Sorry Lee, I really wasn't a good partner. The first round we had to give clues, (words and actions) for our partner to guess who our person was and we had to guess as many as we could in one minute. Next round we had to use mime only and the third round we could use only 3 words. I never have been any good at charades, but it seemed I didn't even know a lot of the characters. But a lot of fun, and Lee and I were good losers but I didn't get to buy him the beer I promised for being such a lousy partner.

And then after dinner finished about 10.30 there was social time. Some nights I just went off to bed, other nights I stayed up. There was a quiz night; a bingo night; and on the night of the full moon we went over to the meeting room for the Queimada ritual, an old celtic tradition.

An alcoholic beverage (Galician augardente which is a spirit distilled from wine - very similar to Italian Grappa) is poured into a fireproof ceramic dish and various ingredients are added - lemon juice (baby tears), lemon peel, beetles (coffee beans) sugar (lots of it) and cinamon, and then this is ignited and burned until the flame is blue. All the while witches are reciting spells, and then finally we got to drink it out of little cups. It was quite delicious - very sweet and syrupy (a little like Drambuie - well sort of- very sweet)