lunes, 31 de octubre de 2011

Knowing Biscay

 I want you to know a little bit about the city of origin of my ancestors. Here there is a map of Biscay.
This province of Spain has many attractions that makes it a beautiful place:




-Sights Biscay

1)Bilbao: Largest city of the Basque Country with the absolute top attraction the Guggenheim Museum. Other attractions include the Bilbao Fine Arts museum and the Palacio Euskalduna.

2)Gernika-Lumo: This place is especially famous for the bombing in the Spanish civil war by the Germans in 1937. This is painted by Picasso in his famous painting Guernica (visible in Madrid).


3)Santimamiñe caves: Five kilometres northeast of Gernika are caves with 13,000 year old drawings of bison and other animals.

The origin of my surname

Surfing the net and looking for information about my ancestors I found this map. It shows the distribution of the surname "Arriola" in the provinces of Spain. Here we can see that more of the 5% of the Spanish with the surname "Arriola" lives in Biscay, the city where my grandparents were born.



domingo, 30 de octubre de 2011

My family today


 
They are my parents, my mother Maria and my father Carlos. My mother is fifty-six and my father is sixty. They have been married for forty years. I'm very proud of my parents because in spite of all the problems they had along their lifes, they are still together. They give me everything, and they are always there when my brothers need them.






This is my brother's family. My brother Gabriel is the middle one. He is thirty and he is married with Natalia. They have three children. On the left of the picture you can see Julian, who is the youngest. He is eleven and he is my godson. Beside Julian is Barbara, she is thirteen. Despite being a spoiled girl, she is the moody one. Her brothers feels jealous of her. At the right of the picture is Iliana. From the three of them, she is the nicest. She is fifteen and she had her big party six month ago. I really love them and I'm very happy to have my nephwes so close.





 In the pictures above you can see my eldest sister named Andrea with her only child, Mauricio. Mi sister is thirty-seven and she is a teacher. I love her because she is like my second mother. When I was born she was nineteen, so she had to look after me while my mother worked. She is the nicest and most cheerful person I know. I admire her a lot. Every time I need some advices, she is there to help me and advising me.
My nephew Mauricio is my second godson. He is six now, but in the pictures he was only a baby. He is beautiful but very capricious. Everybody loves him. Every time he speaks, he makes us laugh, he is so funny.
I started taking care of him this year because my sister works in a school all day.

sábado, 29 de octubre de 2011

Letter


Dear Alice:

I’m writing to tell you the good news. We are safe and sound, thanks God. We arrived at Corrientes two weeks ago. I’m sorry I haven’t written for long time, but it was too difficult for us to find a place to stay. 

By the time we are living in a hotel. I don’t like it very much because my children don’t have much space to play and they get bored easily. As time goes by, I realize that I miss my country very much. The weather here is very hot and I´m not used to high temperatures. Something that makes me feel a little unhappy is that people here isn’t very friendly, they are a little cold, so I couldn’t make friends yet.

My brother-in-law has told us he is working in a factory in a small town near the capital, which is called Bella Vista. He has said that there is much work there, so he thinks that my husband can get a good job in that place. Considering that here we don't know anybody, we have decided to move to Bella Vista and stay in his house until we get enough money to rent a house.
Alice, please write soon and give my regards to my parents, I miss them a lot.

Love, 

Josefina.