Imbolc, snow, fencing and Tenerife

It's been a snowy Imbolc here in Madrid, with two dumpings of snow during school (as if the kids need any further distractions from class.) At the moment it's sleet, sleet and more sleet and it feels like it's getting colder and colder by the week. Brrrr, roll on Spring.
Imbolc was a good deal better than last year (which hardly bears thinking about) and I went to Gredos for Imbolc for the first time in 2 and a half years. It's nicer in the summer but it was still beautiful this time of year, and we had a great ritual with faces old and new. See the Grandchildren of Gaia blog for pictures and the full post.
Jess and I have taken up fencing lessons with a Groupon voucher so we get them ridiculously cheap, and the guy talks slowly enough for us to follow it. It turns out I'm doing well, but then I've always been good at these ye olde type sports - I was good at archery as a kid and great at javelin in school so clearly I was born in the wrong century lol. With this, Zumba and all the walking we're doing at weekends on our trips we seem to be sticking to our New Year's resolution of more exercise.
Tenerife was as brilliant as expected but it feels like such a shame to fork out so much money for such a a brief trip (and a two and a half hour flight to get there.) The plan was to sit on the beach for 2 days but the weather wasn't really good enough for that (though we weren't complaining at 22/23). Instead we spent Friday afternoon wandering around the beaches on the north side of the island and went to a nice Italian for dinner. On Saturday we went up the volcano which made for breathtaking views high above the clouds for miles around. It took 2 hours to get up there on the bus and the cable car wasn't cheap but it was well worth it. Unfortunately there was only one bus a day and we were stranded there for about 3 hours afterwards, so we hit the gift shop (twice) and I bought a load of new Spanish books to amuse myself with. The place was a lot more international than I thought it would be (it didn't really feel like Spain at all, as of-course it isn't at all geographically), and it felt like there was a bit of every European country on the island. There were more Germans than you could shake a stick at (some of the signs were in just German, not Spanish or English), and for that I'd like to visit one of the smaller, less developed islands like El Hierro in future. Of-course though we had a good time and enjoyed the weather (I've even got a cooked nose to show for it), however painfully short our visit.
This week I've got a school trip to the archaeological museum in Madrid and Venice with my sweetheart for commercialised love day to look forward to!