ARRIVED

Flight - great.  Flat - wonderful. View - amaa- zing. Weather - perfect.  Familiar family faces, sounds, smells, colours, flavours and accents all greeted me on arrival making me feel so at home.  We are blessed and grateful.  Arrangements are made for pickup each Sunday so we can attend Bible Baptist Church each week, in fact, they also offered to pick us up on Thursday evenings as well for study, fellowship and pizza.  We'll take them up on that as well.  The sun feels wonderful but my calves ache having overdone it with walking these last 3 days (no, not in my usual style of shoe) in very practical flats.  Walking here is up steep streets then of course down, then up many stairs, then down and your legs get a real workout.  It's just the hot flaky   cheesecakes you feel entitled to eat after the strenuous walking  called pastizzis (paw-stits-eeze) that will kill ya, not the walking. They are so good.

Our eating pattern has already changed from the usual Canadian schedule to eating the bigger meal earlier in the day, much less meat and far more soups and veggies or fruit and cheeses (I know) and then having tea and a much lighter supper.  Our sleep patterns are off a bit still, but it's amazing how quickly you adapt. 

Art materials purchased on Thursday are being delivered to our flat on Wednesday.  What  a wonderful customer service and most stores will do likewise, particularly the grocers.  I've already done one sketch of Maltese garlic which is very, very fragrant and even though they are out on the balcony you can still smell them.  But boy, on the 17th, our first night in for dinner, I made an awesome homemade tomato sauce for our spaghetti dinner (what? you thought I wouldn't) with lots of them in the sauce, (some of them are quite small, about the size of a peanut) topped with  a great parmigiana we grated over the top.  You just have to experience it.  Mmmmmgood!  We've purchased most of our groceries for the most part now, having gone out each day this week getting only what can be carried in our bags. 

On each outing this week we've visited some of our favourite places in our village of Marsaskala (mar sas call ah) and the capital of Valletta, met with some family members and will meet with more on Sunday for a birthday party.  An uncle's brother, Pep, short for Joseph,  will be turning 89.  Our group will be upwards of 40 and that is just immediate family, gathering to celebrate over a meal.  

Typical street in the Capital City of Valletta. 
 

Must run, our T.V is only in Maltese and Mike is very bored, so I will log on to CNN (so glad we were able to get portable wifi)  to hear more of the Boston Marathon explosion and maybe catch another episode of Call the Midwife, an enjoyable t.v. series from the BBC. 

Keep well, keep happy, and know you are loved...
local time is 20:24