Day 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56 & 57 (videos)

Monti's first ride after his restarting. Incredibly lazy, but he's a lot better now!

Emmy letting off some steam in the round pen. Notice her expression change when she chooses to follow me at the end. Her ears flick back, her nostrils soften and she steps around and towards me.

Bundles getting his first workout...

Chuy spinning Holly.

Day 31, 32, 33, 34, 35 & 36 (photos)

Tegan spinning Oscar...

The royalty being crowned on the football pitch. The stands in the background are on the visitors' side - the home ones were 3 times as big and were completely full.

The amazing rainbows at 7am this morning. My phone camera doesn't do them justice!

And a video of me with nunchucks. I'm going really slowly as I'm trying out new moves, but doesn't it look cool!?

Day 21 (photos)

I swear I work on a film set...

Day 6 (photos)

This is Emmy at the end of our session. It was before 8am, so cloudy and cool. She's so tall that she's right at the limit of what I can get on from the ground. Probably about 16.3hh. Such a cute horse though. Despite freaking me out on our first couple of rides she's really growing on me.

Day 47, 48 & 49 (photos)

This is Albert, Warwick and Robyn's horse, playing with a stick he managed to find his turnout. The turnouts are small (about 20x20m) and basically just dirt, so aside from running around to burn off energy, they tend to play with whatever they can find. Still, it's 100 times better than being stuck inside!

These are 3 of our 4 pretty buckskins, in size order! L-R is Oscar, Bullet and Coastal. Just need Gidget in there now...

Day 37 (photos)

Day 37 is my halfway point. It's weird - I simultaneously feel like I've lived here forever and for no time at all.

We had a good day today. We slept in until 8am (what a lie in!) and then lazed around eating breakfast, watching TV and deciding what to do that day. I did laundry and tidied up, as well as making apple and cinnamon muffins, which are amazing if I do say so myself.

We settled on a short roadtrip to San Juan Bautista, to see the Christian Mission. It's one of the few old buildings for miles around (it's true - the Americans' idea of history is very different to ours!) and is one of the only ones left intact. They were chapels and priest residences, built a day's ride apart all over California when conversion to Christianity was the most popular. California feels very Spanish anyway, but here Spanish was spoken as a first language, and the architecture, gardens and olive groves made just like being back in Mallorca or Southern Spain. It was a bit déjà-vu! 

We had a good time wandering around the place. There was a funny moment when we walked into one of the chapels: it was pretty fancy, and Tegan just stood there with hands on hips and said "****, eh!?" I cracked up laughing, saying "could you get any more Australian!?", at which point she started giggling too and we left before anyone noticed...

Anyway, despite our childishness, it's a really pretty place. I'll probably wander back when I have a spare afternoon and take lots of photos. Hopefully the sun will last! It's really pleasant at the moment - high 20s and sunny during the day, cool and misty overnight. Apparently it rains a lot in November, so I'll need to squeeze in some sightseeing early on!