Today in class there were a lot of new faces. In my class there is one new student called Jeremy. Jeremy is English and I think 15 years old, and lives in St. Albans. The other 4 students are American and come from New Jersey. They are a family and are staying in a hotel. The mother of the family seems to know a bit of Spanish but I think the others are just starting to learn.

I think I have gone from being the worst at speaking Spanish in the school to the best! It will be interesting to see how this week goes - I'm not going to meet up with any of them today because I want to give them a day to practice speaking Spanish. Hopefully tomorrow Jeremy will have had a little practice speaking with his host family and maybe we can do something after class. I don't want it to end up like with Ahmed where we just spoke in English when we were together.

I'd like to meet with the American family too, but I think it will be hard not to revert into English.

Cristian, Charo's son returned from his holidays yesterday, so there is someone new to talk to in the house. It's different talking to him because he is a bit younger, and speaks a lot faster, but I think it is good practice for me to hear a fast voice and to get used to hearing the different sounds coming from a male mouth.

When I returned from class today I had 'ensalada de verano', which was a salad of potato, egg, tomato, olives and a few other things and was actually very nice. After that I had roasted chicken with bread, and then crema catalana which is another type of custard desert.

Paula (the little girl) had a kinder egg, and it came with a little plastic toy with a little wheel that you can fire off. You have to put this little plastic strip into the base of the toy, and then connect the little wheel to it. When you pull the strip of plastic out (which has a zig zag edge) it makes the wheel rotate and roll across the floor. I tried to explain to her how to do it but it is a bit to complicated for a 3 year old and she couldn't get the plastic strip in properly. It was great fun though because she loved it when the wheel went rolling off.

I find it extremely difficult to understand Paula (and most little children for that matter) but I'd like to spend more time with her. It's always amusing to watch her playing with her parents and she is really funny. She's always stomping around in these tiny little shoes with heels, and pretending to interview people with a microphone.

Sometimes she will come right up close to me and stare at me, and then when I say 'hola' she gives me this shy look and runs away.

On my way back home today it was cloudy for the first time (it has been a little cloudy in the morning before but it normally blows over). Apparently there have been a lot of storms in Spain and we have one coming to Toledo. Charo told me that when the storms come here it really rains, and there is a lot of thunder and lightning. If there is a storm I hope it's over quickly!