An award winning flash trip experience to Luxembourg!

Hello friends!
It seems I am unable to blog more frequently with all the things happening around here! But I decided that this virtual life (the blogging) is not more important than real life and its achievements! So I will be blogging only when I can! Or when there is something important to say!
I still read all the friend's blogs although I am not able to leave as many comments as I used to!
Bytheway thank you for all your comments on my blog. All those who are no-reply bloggers are not answered though!
Anyway about the title of this blogpost!
At the end of July hubby got a call from The Smile of the Child, the biggest organization in Greece for the protection of children.
What they wanted was a volunteer shadow puppetry player who was willing to participate in a competition in Luxembourg in September where the Smile of the Child wanted to present the results of the INTERSYC programme, a cross country programme between Greece and Bulgaria. The competition was going to be held  during the INTERREG 25 YEARS convention in Belval, Luxembourg.
To cut a long story short, it was two other puppeteers, friends of ours, who suggested hubby and I would be perfect for this whole thing as hubby is an excellent shadow puppet player with time in his hands and I could do all the interpretation/translation and e-mailing stuff.
And so in between our summer coming and going to the beach house, and my gall bladder surgery, and a kitchen renovation and school starting, hubby had to write a play and I had to answer all kinds of phone calls and e-mails and translate the play and we had to meet people to finalize all the details.
We were not going to be paid for this whole thing but flight tickets, hotel accomodation and all meals would be covered!
So it happened.
We flew out Monday morning,

prepared the shadow puppetry stage,

and did rehearsals.
On Tuesday we attended the convention,

met the European Territorial Policy Comissioner along with many other important people,

had great food,

did our performance

 and through televoting from the attendees we got the first prize,

this amazing heavy sculpture made of solid iron and wood

 that goes to The smile of the Child offices.

We were really very happy!

Sightseeingwise due to the bad weather and the lack of time the only things we managed to see were the train station in Luxembourg,

the airport,

the Convention centre in the very very new University campus of Belval,

and the buildings around it.

We stayed at the Ibis Esch-Belval Hotel.

and visited the nearby supermarket and Belval Plaza Mall but didn't do much shopping.
Weatherwise it was winter in Luxembourg and thank God we had winter jackets with us.
The next day since the weather was terrible we couldn't go sightseeing so we simply made our suitcases and returned to Greece.
I guess you know I am afraid of thunderstorms. So we were to fly out of Luxembourg in this small jet and I was trying to take a pic of its propeller

and look what I got!

Yeap a thunder strike! Amazing! We had an excellent pilot though!We arrived back safe and sound!
I'd like to thank here Anastasia and Maria from the INTERREG cross border programme and Vasso and Dimitris from the Smile of the Child for the chance they gave us and their cooperation. It was great fun!
This blogpost is linked up to Our Beautiful World.

New starts! A new kitchen!

Have a nice month everyone!
I can't believe time flew so fast that I couldn't even find time to blog.
There are so many things happening around here that I seem not to find time for the blog!
Of course schools started.
This year we have an empty classroom and I temporarily got it to have an English classroom. I am really happy about it. I bought cleaning things and went and cleaned it but haven't decorated it yet because I really don't know if it lasts.

At home our flat is a mess.
Long ago we had decided we wanted a new kitchen fitted and at last we found a handyman we could trust to make everything, plumbing, wires, the units.
From this which lasted 22 years....

 we got through this.....

to arrive to this....

and this...

and finally to this....

While the kitchen was covered with the IKEA safety wrap lots of people really liked it and told me I should keep it blue! We decided to paint one wall blue to keep the mood!
I will blog more about the kitchen in future with details.
So far we have been cleaning (and decluttering yeah!) for about 22 days now and we only managed to do the kitchen. The rest of the house is still a mess. Hopefully we will have been finished by....October?Christmas?