Easter and the next best thing...

Happy Easter, Feliz Pascua,Froehe Ostern or however you say it in your language! This year we spent the Easter hols in Portugal visiting my parents, which was great...for me, for them and for Chloe. It also meant that she was exposed to (almost) total immersion in English apart from her daddy who continued with OPOL,speaking to her in Spanish...although a few English words or sentences did slip out of his mouth too! So, although not England, visiting Portugal is the next best thing!!

As Chloe is a little young we didn´t really do any of the Easter traditions this year so the Easter Bunny will probably be paying a visit next year though! I have been singing a traditional Easter nursery rhyme, Hot Cross Buns, and also Chick-Chick-chick-chicken to her. Hot Cross Buns are a typical Easter cake that British people eat at Easter and Chloe tried some for the first time this year and appeared to like them. I made them last year for the first time(see pic below) so click on the link for the recipe if you want to try them! She also tried her first Easter egg (a mini chocolate one which came in a bag with a doll that one of my mum´s friends kindly gave her!). Oh, and we also read The Odd Egg by Emily Gravett, which we borrowed from the library. Apart from these things, you wouldn´t know that it was Easter.

While we were in Portugal my daughter got to spend some quality time with her grandparents and hear plenty of English. They talked,played,sang and read stories to her. We went to the tennis club to introduce Chloe to my mum´s friends and we went out for dinner with some of my parents´ friends. My parents have English television so she got to watch some British cartoons although she´s a bit too young yet and they didn´t really hold her attention for long!

We went for a couple of walks on different beaches and we took Chloe to Lagos Zoo,which is a great dayout for any family. She loved the zoo and also my parents two dogs....she´d get really excited when she saw them and would babble "a-da" (we said it sounded like "a dog" but really I think it´s just babbling!)

Some great places to buy books, toys,CD´s/DVD's and videos in different languages particularly English, German and Portuguese and even Danish (I didn´t see any Spanish books or toys) are the Algarve Book Cellar, which sells and exchanges secondhand books.I got three books for my daughter and one for me very reasonably and the books themselves are in very good condition. You should also check out the charity shop The Donkey Sanctuary which sells secondhand books, toys,videos and even clothes. I bought a textbook for teaching English to children for 50 cents and I also saw an Early Learning Centre Days Of The Week game in excellent condition which I almost bought for my classes but decided against it.

A trip to the British supermarket,Iceland, was also a must for me to stock up on many of my favourite food and drinks or even ingredients that I cannot buy where I live in Spain, including hot cross buns and Cadbury´s Mini Eggs. I didn´t take Chloe with me this time but it´s also full of English tourists and expats and environmental print so is great for further English exposure!So all in all, a lovely relaxing week and a great time was had by all!