Catching up...by Theo

So we haven't blogged for a while as we've been pretty busy...

Buying a house:
We've found a lovely three-bedroom semi in north Bristol, near where I'm going to be working from September. Things are going relatively smoothly - the surveyor's report threw up a few kinks, but nothing major - and we're hoping to complete on August 1st.

Starting a new (old) job:
I'm back at the language school where I taught last summer. Teaching a class of 9, adult, motivated students who are genuinely interested in the topic has been an absolute pleasure. I am wondering why the hell I wanted to switch from TEFL to teaching in secondary schools?

Socialising:
After my PGCE course finished we sped down to Cornwall for the weekend, then back up the M5 to Oxford, before heading to a few kids' parties in Bristol, hit Domstock in Fairford and I managed to catch up with some old friends in London last Saturday.

And being parents of course.

Actually, we're thinking of stopping the blog after August. We seem to have both run out of steam a bit and, as I'm about to take up a teaching role, reducing my web-presence would be no bad thing. The blog which began as a chronicle of our wedding preparations, then our honeymoon, followed by our life in Madrid, seems to have run its course. It may be time to move on...

New house, new name - by Theo

So we've changed the name of the blog (again). Having begun life as a blog about our marriage and honeymoon (back then simply being called kateandtheo.blogspot), it then became a blog about us finding our way in Spain's capital and as thus changed to movingtomadrid.blogspot. However, as we no longer live in Madrid, clearly the blog needed a new name. Kate's original suggestion - sunshineandshowers - was already taken, which was a shame as this is a fairly accurate reflection of both our new home, Bristol, and our darling daughter Rosie. So instead we've settled on www.avonvalleypta.blogspot.com - a reference to both our professional (teaching) and domestic (parenting) life, our new home in the west country and a nod to one of Kate's favourite songs, The Harper Valley PTA.

We're also now in a lovely house in Redfield, Bristol, that we are renting from one of Kate's friends. It's an area neither of us knew that well, despite the fact I used to come here regularly for one thing or another, but one week in and we're charmed by the place. There's a couple of lovely parks nearby, some good shops and the local train line is proving to be very useful and reasonably priced. When we find the camera, we'll put some photos up.

Note: found it - here we are...

Mumsnet - by Theo

I blame Mumsnet entirely for the lack of action on this blog recently.

First it was just a case of Kate checking it for product reviews of things we thought might be useful for Rosie. Then a quick scan of the message boards to see if anyone had any good advice on things like sleeping and nappy rash. Before we knew it Kate was sucked in, joining a group of Mums-to-be also due in Feb and sharing tales of expanded waistlines, potential 'shows' and, eventually, birth stories. Now I've joined and we're booked hooked, posting our sage advice (pmsl!) on a host of topics, from living abroad to text etiquette.

So, if you've been wondering why this blog hasn't been updated recently, check out the Mumsnet forums.

2 years - a blog top ten

It suddenly struck us that it's been more than two years now since we started this blog - the first post was on January 1st 2008 - to document the preparations for our wedding for friends and family. A lot has changed; back then we were living in Bristol, working for the BBC (Kate) and REMIX (Theo). Now, 20 countries and 2 years later here we are, married, living in Madrid, working as English teachers and expecting our first child in a matter of weeks. Wow!

Anyway, we thought we'd be ridiculously self-indulgent and mark our blog's second anniversary with that evergreen journalistic conceit, a list. A top ten of our favourite blog posts, ideal for new and occasional readers, allowing them to skip the filler and get to the standouts. So, in no particular order, here are our top ten blog posts...

1. The Wedding report - pretty self-explanatory. Nothing written could ever really do justice to the emotions we felt and the amount of love our friends and family put in to making our day so special, but Kate's effort comes close.

2. Kate's CELTA blog - summing up our feelings about our CELTA course in Barcelona as we commenced our career as English teachers.

3. Grape-picking - what better way to celebrate your 27th birthday the day after a 12 hour road-trip than to get up at 7 and go grape-picking?

4. Berlin - we had an amazing few days, filled with culture, history, cheap wine, old friends and a DIY near-castration.

5. Arriving in Madrid - 36 hours on the road, tired, cold, grouchy and nervous about having nowhere to stay in a city where we didn't speak the language. Then a guardian angel called Cesar called...

6. Were we romantic or what!? - the first day of our honeymoon. Straight out of a Disney movie. Yeah, maybe one scripted by Judd Apatow...

7. San Isidro celebrations - going native in our new city.

8. The first of many - Kate begins getting to grips with Spanish pre-natal care. Or perhaps it's the other way around...

9. Sunday, Slovakian style - the beautiful villages of rural Slovakia and the... er.... colourful folk who live there...

and finally...

10. The random meetings - any self-respecting end-of-year/best-of list has to have the cop-out entry that includes references to items that didn't quite make it and thus manages to get more than 10 things on the list. This is it. If anything really made out travels special - and this blog worth reading - it was the random people we met. In Seville, Porto, Florence, Rocket, Estepona, Switzerland, Trieste, Nancy and so many other places, often leading us to stumble upon local celebrations and festivities we had no idea were taking place - Bianco Notti, graduation parades, flamenco, free opera and so on. Our trip, and our blog, wouldn't have been half as interesting without them, so this entry is for them.

what's in a name?

We've decided to change the website address (url) of this blog: it is now www.movingtomadrid.blogspot.com (formerly it was www.kateandtheo.blogspot.com).

We've decided to do this for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it's a more accurate reflection of the blog's content. "Kate and Theo" was always a kind of default name - originally the blog was about our wedding preparations and then it became about our travels; we didn't know where we were going to end up or what we were going to do, so we picked the original url name for want of a better alternative. We're aware it was rather sickeningly saccharine; now we've got a reasonable alternative we feel we're doing you all a favour!

Secondly, we've had a few enquiries from friends and friends of friends wanting to move to Spain about job opportunities here, Spanish administration, the rental market and life here in general. It struck us that some of the blog entries we've written might be of interest to total strangers wanting to make the move to Spain, or to Madrid. As prospective Madridlenos are unlikely to google "kate and theo" when searching for information about life here, we thought a more search engine friendly name would be oppropriate.

Obviously we're flattering and deceiving ourselves; chances are that whatever we call this blog, the only people reading it are going to be our mothers!!

all quiet on the Spanish front...

We haven't been writing much recently.

This is a plain lie. Actually Kate and I have been writing a lot recently; it's one of the reasons this blog has been so quiet!

A few months ago we were looking through "In Madrid", a monthly English-language newspaper/what's on magazine, when we both came across little advertisements in the classifieds that interested us. For Kate it was the guitarist looking for fellow musicians and song-writers for musical get-togethers; for me it was the advertisement for a Madrid writers' group.

Both organisations were slow to get off the ground - with both of us working evenings, weekend get-togethers are a necessity - but they seem to have really hit their stride recently. As a result much of our creative energy has been devoted to producing material for or during these sessions; Kate with her bluesy paens to Madrid's unattractive canine community and me a film script for an allegorical coming of age film.

It's been great to be doing something creative again; but it hasn't left much time for blogging!

Is there something wrong with this blog?

Apparently Facebook and Yahoo both think this blog is malicious - we're not that mean are we? What the hell is going on?

the potted version (just for joe)

The Ladybird Abridged Version (just for Joe).

Theo and Kate get married and then leave in their campervan Sheena. They arrive in France but it's too cold to go the beach so go to Kate's mother's instead, where they eat well and have fun.

Next they go to Spain where they drink beer and have fun. They see lots of storks but don't go to the beach. Then they go to Portugal and drink Port, ride trams and hear fado, but it's still too cold to go to the beach.

So they go back to Spain and see some Flamenco and more lovely buildings. Theo breaks Sheena's rear windscreen and then Sheena sulks and wont start; a sulky electrician fixes her. Kate and Theo go to an ace festival, meet some ace people, then an ace campsite and meet some more ace people. They finally go to the beach. They go on a big drive to another festival, which isn't quite as good but they do meet some friends so it's all ok.

They go back to France and meet more friends. They try to get Sheena's rear windscreen fixed but they can't so they go to the beach instead.