This is from the department of unforgettable friends who have dropped into my life and after a time moved away with the changing winds. I've protected their names and privacy from the prying algorithms of the internet.

I first met J, the Spanish live-wire with the apron, in 2008 when he was working as a Plant Breeding scientist in Swift Current and wanting to improve his already quite fluent English. He was young, smart and extroverted, all of which make language-learning easier so he didn't really need my help as a tutor.  

After a few years his lovely girlfriend V arrived from Barcelona. Her English was minimal and she desperately missed her friends, but she was determined to stay in Canada with her man and learn English.

J would sometimes cringe at my Spanish, correcting a word that was "Mexican" and in his mind not proper Spanish. (We argued about that.)

Swift Current was a far cry from the Barcelona social life they were used to, but we tried. Here they are at a house concert in our living room in 2011 and a summer dinner in our backyard.

V worked harder studying English than anyone I've ever known. She had full-time work at a daycare, and then a care home, but mostly she studied English day and night, with the dedicated help of another retired teacher, Wendy S.

J taught me to make tortilla española from his mother's recipe. It's the potato/egg pie in the picture that's not even distantly related to a Mexican tortilla.

They moved to Ithaca, a university city in New York state where he earned his second PhD, and then followed the job market to Ireland. We caught up with them in Dublin in 2017 and had a great visit, also meeting their first child, 4-month-old Julia (that's Hoo-lia). J was teaching at a university in that rainy city of Guinness but they both missed their families and their native sunny Spain.

Happy news from this great couple arrived a few years later from Spain. They had moved back home where J was working as a scientist and V was working as a school nurse. They were overjoyed when a second daughter, Manuela, joined their family.



I smile when I see these pictures and remember the two nomads who ended up in Swift Current for a few years and enriched our lives with their joyful personalities.

I hope to see them again if we ever get back to España, one of my favourite countries in the world.