Thanksgiving for 90!

As I said in the last entry, our days have become a bit more routine. the routine, however, never seems to last very long. Shortly after the first week of November we had a special dinner to welcome the director of SYA to Zaragoza, a special dinner for Andee's birthday, and then Andee left us for a week to travel to San Sebastián with another teacher and a group of 20 students. Houseboy Koko was left to clean, supervise, give some help and some tests to a couple of kids who didn't attend the trip, and take mini-day trips out on his bicycle.
San Sebastián is widely considered to be the most beautiful city in Spain, and so of course when Andee went there, it rained sideways for 2 days. In addition to Donostia (the Basque name for the city), Andee and her team of teens went to the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao (for modern art), and to France (for bragging rights, they were only there for about an hour-long enough to have a coffe and a crepe). It was a great trip, and Andee came back with a new food addiction: Croquetas de pistacho (pistachio croquettes). She has been looking more of them ever since. She's probably in the kitchen looking for some now, in fact. There aren't any there.
Well, when Andee got back to ZAZ the house was clean, the laundry done, and the kids were happy to see another parent. Back to our routine.
For 2 weeks.
Then, the BIG day happened. The holiday abroad to top all holidays abroad. On one level its easy to eplain Thanksgiving to Spainards. Its a huge celebration of eating too much. In a way, we celebrate like this every lunch (someday I'll try to describe the very Spanish way of eating lunch). I'm talking about, of course, Thanksgiving. Its the BIG family holiday for most of our students, and the first one they are missing, so we try to do it up big. So SYA connects with a restaurant here in the city to provide a banquet for all of the students, faculty, faculty families, Spanish students that attend my special exchange-conversation class, and invited dignitaries. In all, 90 people.
Are you ready for the punch line?
In either a fit of lunacy, a transient bout of sado-masochism, or in recognition that I do nothing but take saunas all day, Griffin (Resident Top Dog at SYA Zaragoza) put ME on detail duty.
Stop laughing.
Its true. I went to the restaurant to go over the traditional Thanksgiving menu that we developed, deliver the special recipes, and organize the design of the room and explain the order of events. This meeting took place 2 days before Thanksgiving, Plenty of time to get everything together, right?
Right.....
Try to imagine (this is for everyone except Brian Scheidegger) cooking Thanksgiving dinner for 90 people. Take a breath, and wrap your head around that. This was the menu:

10 turkeys, with gravy
Mashed potatos (or potatoes if you're a Senator from Indiana)
Mashed sweet potatos
green beans
peas and onions
Doug's dad's cornbread stuffing
vegetarian stuffing
cranberry sauce
bread
desserts, including pecan pie, apple pie, pumpkin pie, and strawberry bread.
Oooof....
Now the interesting part- The American teachers were responsible for making dessert (I made the apple pies, 8 of them), and the rest was to be made by ONE COOK. No joke, one little Spanish lady was going to try and make dinner for all of us. Also, this was to be her first thanksgiving dinner. she ahd never cooked most of the items.
Also also, she was going to do all of this AFTER cooking lunch for 125 people (remember, lunch here is in the early afternoon, about 2:30).
No way.
When we met on Tuesday, I could see the panic setting in and I volunteered to help her with the meal, which left me only thursday morning to make all 8 apple pies. Oh well. She and I went over the recipes, the order for serving food, everything. And I left with one request: Please find me cornbread. My job on Thanksgiving was to serve as her assistant and prep cook, and to make the two stuffing recipes (I left her with a detailed list of ingredients). Easy enough.

Fast forward to 5:30 pm on Thanksgiving (dinner to be served at 8:45). I arrived with 6 of the 8 pies (Andee had to other two) and my dress clothes in a backpack. And the first thing I was told on arrival was:

"No cornbread."

No cornbread?? I'm supposed to make cornbread stuffing for 90 people without CORNBREAD? Sorry, no cornbread anywhere in the city. And no one knows how to make it either.
Hmmm........... (insert here the tiny "pop" of my brain exploding)

So I explored the kitchen and found some baguettes, celery, onions, sausage, and spices, and I improvised. No cornbread, no recipe, just a kitchen, a harried head chef, and about 2 1/2 hours.
I finished both stuffings AND helped explain why we need both mashed potatos and mashed sweet potatos.
And I got dressed on time.

My final observations around Thanksgiving "Spanish style" is that the Spanish have a very specific way of eating. First there is a drink, then a primer plato or first plate, followed by a segundo plato. The whole idea of being in a restaurant and putting everything on the table at once is foreign to Spain as blood sausage (morcilla) is to the US. I simply could not convince the waiters that we wanted all of the food together. Finally I told them to put out the vegetables and potatos first. It made them very happy.

Next year I'm going out for sushi, or hot wings, or something else for Thanksgiving. Definitely nothing with cornbread.

Sorry, justyne (and everyone else that has chastised me for abandoning the blog)!

My goodness, time does zip on by! In a funny way, both very little and so much has happened since the last blog entry (was it really in OCTOBER?). "Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up." (This last stolen shamelessly from The Princess Bride).
Over the course of the end of October, through...well, today, we have followed a kind-of pattern every day, broken up by major events. First, the pattern:
After the normal morning preparations (see earlier entry), Andee goes to work, and I go to work out. Because that's the kind of guy I am. A workout guy.
OK, stop laughing. I'm serious.
About mid-October I joined a health club around the corner from our piso. Its a small gym, with good exercise equipment, aerobics-etc. studios, jacuzzis, personal trainers (fort extra hire), ultra-modern chic decor, clean changing rooms, and about a zillion aerobic, pilates, yoga, and cross training classes every day.
Oh, and a sauna.
So every day, off I go with my very un-chic LL Bean backpack gym bag and my equally un-chic workout clothes, and head all of 30 seconds down the street to my sauna-with-attached-gym. Because anyone who knows me, knows that THAT is why I joined a health club. Not that I don't take advantage of the other things that they offer. I really am exercising, its just that although the workouts vary day by day, the sauna doesn't. So for 60 Euros a month, I get to have a sauna EVERY WEEKDAY, and its a hot sauna at that. "Siekman-hot" (for those of you that know what that means). And that's not all. Like I said, I really do work out first. On Mondays and Wednesdays I go to pilates class, on Tuesdays and Thursdays I have yoga. On Fridays I go to a high-energy aerobics class called "Body Attack" that basically kills me for the weekend. In addition, I do other weight and stretching workouts, and every hour on the half-hour a ten minute mini-masochistic exercise is offered that the really, really, extremely good looking workout assistants call abdominales. Apparently abdominales is Spanish for "I hate myself and I want to hurt all around my midsection, so please torture me."
Oh, and also, apparently Spanish men do NOT do group workouts. All of the 50 year old women with whom I exercise think that its just "sooo cute" that I do pilates and yoga. My back, however, has not felt this good in years, and I have thus far avoided all of the cold and flu epidemics typical of schools. "So I've got that going for me. Which is nice." (Caddyshack)

ALSO, we now have a weekend activity. Because abdominales isn't enough fun. Now, on Saturdays, we pack up a snack, get up too early, and head off to the traditional initiation event for parents of 10 year old boys: The 5-on-5 short-field soccer game. the parents of Ben's team are really super people, and some of them bring coffee and cake every Saturday for the fans (ourselves). Those of you reading this who don't have children at this age pretty much cannot understand the stress involved in watching your child compete. We all love that our kids are playing soccer on asphalt on a Saturday morning, but rather than experiencing the joy of watching our progeny run, twist, kick, celebrate, and generally frolic with their friends, most of us are focused of on a few, desperate mantra: PLEASE don't let him fall on the asphalt, please don't let him miss the ball when its kicked to him, PLEASE don't let him cry when the other team scores. To his great credit and my pride, Ben is a wonderful person. He is playing on a team with other 10-year olds that began playing soccer in utero, and he keeps trying. And he's still positive. And...he's getting better. He can't kick as hard as them, and he can't pass the ball sideways while running the other way, but he does know how to close passing lanes and to mark up on throw-ins and corner kicks. The rest will come. But in the meantime, PLEEEEASE........

Coming soon: Thanksgiving for 90!

¡Jalouín!

I have just understood in a wholly new way the old saying "absence makes the heart grow fonder." Or maybe "Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got 'til its gone."

I am talking about Halloween.

I am experiencing tonight, along with my family, my first Halloween outside of the US, and the sound emitted by the vast, sucking hole where this greatest of all secular, truly American holidays would normally be, is deafening. If that sounds like overstatement, come to Europe for the month of October someday and see for yourself. Take, for example, my walk home from school yesterday.

For those who don't already know, Andee and I work at School Year Abroad in Zaragoza, a mini American enclave surrounded by a VERY Spanish city of 750,000. All of our 67 students (save one Brazilian) are American, and five of the twelve adults working in the school are also "yanquis." So you can imagine that in "el colegio americano" Halloween is not lightly observed. On Friday, October 30, the school was decorated with pumpkins, bats, and spiderwebs. Most of the students arrived for classes dressed like elementary school kids all over the US on the same day, as did Griffin and I (pirate and vampire, respectively). There was candy and good cheer everywhere, and lots of photos taken (some to be posted on Facebook).

And then came my walk home.

Walking up the Paseo de la Independencia, at the core of the city's shopping district, I have to admit that I looked a little silly. OK, a LOT silly. Not because I was a vampire strolling past ZARA, El Corte Inglés, and countless top end boutiques, but rather because I was a vampire strolling along with a computer bag over his shoulder. But that is not the weird part. The weird part is that absolutely no one reacted to me. People were looking, I could see them stare. But I got not a single smile, not a single giggle, not even a disapproving shake of the head. NOTHING. Also, none of the stores were decorated. Very small pumpkins were available for 3 euros ($4.50) in El Corte Inglés (complete with Jack-O-Lantern faces conveniently pre-attached with black duct tape) but no stores had any displayed. And that is just a beginning. Here are some notable facts about "Jalouín" in Spain:

• There are no candy corns. That alone should have warned me about today.
• There is no trick-or-treating. Chaia is, with good reason, outraged.
• There are no parades. This, in a city that 2 weeks ago had a parade of around 300,000 people. In costumes.
• Chaia was not allowed to wear a full costume to school on Friday, only a hat. Outraged.
• If you look hard, you can find costumes for sale, as well as bags of candy. But again, no one wears costumes and no trick or treating.

I think what I am witnessing is a holiday being born. If you look around, the pieces are there. Its just that no one knows what to do with them. It reminds me a bit of the scene in Apollo 13, when the engineers dump all of the hardware pieces on a table and have to figure out how to make them work together. We are doing our very American best to explain things. Tonight we are having a Haloween party (just the 4 of us) where we will eat candy and play "pin the hat on the witch" (Chaia's invention). On Thursday we carved pumpkins (only 3 this year, they are a bit pricey), including one with Ben and Chaia's name carved into it. If anyone reading this sees Brooke Libby, please let her know that 10 years ago she gave us a pumpkin with Ben's name carved into it. We have done this every year since, adding Chaia's name in 2002.

Maybe what Halloween in Spain needs is a bit of hybridization, something along the lines of what the church did with the combination of the original Pagan holiday with Catholic veneration of saints (Nov 1 is All Saints Day in Spain) that gave rise to Halloween. Andee and I have suggested that we could start a tradition whereby adults dress in costumes, knock on doors throughout the neighborhood, and trick-or-treat for wine and tapas.

I think it could take off.

Las Fiestas del Pilar

October is big-time fiesta in Zaragoza. "Big-time" means no school, no work, and no sleep. If you can imagine the 4th of July, and then imagine that the 4th of July lasts for 10 days, you have a general picture of "Pilar" in this city. The festivities began on October 9, and ended promptly (sort-of) at midnight on October 19th. The center of the party is the 12th of October, a national holiday in Spain for 2 reasons: It is el día de la hispanidad (Hispanic day?), and also the holy day for Our Lady of the Pillar. The pillar is a statue of the Virgin Mary on a small marble pillar, and it commemorates the apparition of Mary in Spain during her life, to speak with the Apostle St. James. "The pillar" stands at the center of the Basilica in Zaragoza, so the big holiday focuses all of it's energy on this city. The population more than doubles for the festival. The religious/traditional/cultural high point of the week is the Ofrenda de Flores, where people dressed in traditional Spanish dress (mostly from Aragón, but other regions are also represented) process from, of course, our street, to the Basilica to offer flowers to a statue of Mary on a huge scaffolding. Andee and Chaia were invited to participate, so they lined up with the other 300,000 people processing (no joke) and made their offering.

But that's only one event out of manymanymanymany events.

So what else happens?

So many things that I can't possibly put them all here. I'll try to sum up, hitting on the major events (I'll forget some, I'm sure).

• First off, there are fireworks every night in different parts of the city, at about 11:00. Also, there are concerts. SOOOOO many concerts in different parts of the city, some free and some not. On the nights of the 16-18th, the concerts were basically right outside our apartment, starting at 10:00.

• Also, there is an artisan's expo for the entire festival. It fills the park near our street with food, toys, and other crafts (ceramics, metalwork, woodwork, you name it). No junk, all pretty nice craftsmanship.

• Next to the artisan's expo is a tent, filling a street for the week. In it, there are free concerts all day and evening, and food and drink (not to mention childrens' activities throughout the day). In the tent you can get Ternasco, grilled lamb, day and night (ternasco is the regional meal of Aragón) along with your beer or wine at snack break (about 10:30 am) and at mealtimes, or with vermouth before mealtimes.

• There are parades sporadically occurring through the week, most of them on the major street adjoining our street. Sometimes they are organized, purposeful processions, and sometimes just 30,000 rowdy, drinking, singing members of various peñas (clubs) showing off their singing skills.

• In the city parks there are nonstop activities for kids and their parents.

• In the larger, divided streets with pedestrian walks in the middle, there are tents and kiosks selling everything imaginable. Prices range from expensive to REALLY expensive.

• There are contests of every kind (running, rowing, speed skating, you name it).
• There are processions of gigantes y cabezudos, big puppet characters of 2 kinds: The gigantes are 15 foot tall statues of famous and not-so-famous characters held on the shoulders of a REALLY srong person, and the cabezudos are regular-sized people with enormous heads, also of famous and not-so-famous characters. The gigantes are fascinating; they are huge, and fun, but also possess a strange nobility. They make you feel like a little kid. The cabezudos, on the other hand, are truly bizarre. They carry whips, which they use on unsuspecting children as they are chased down the street. Then the scary, big-head puppets give the kids candy. No joke, this is the stuff that nightmares are made of.
• There are bullfights, bull expositions, and vaquillas, which are pretty big cows (but not bulls) that are let, one at a time, into the bullring where a gang of hormonally imbalanced teenage boys attempt to got chased by the cows. Occasionally a teenager gets hurt doing this, which really gets the crowd going. The notable thing about the vaquillas is that it takes place at 8:00 in the morning. Silly me, thought:"Wow, I'm impressed that people get up so early to watch and participate!"

Wrong.

These teenagers (and most everyone watching) have been awake all night, and this is just the last stop before a mid-morning nap. After the nap, the whole party starts again.

• There are street vendors, artists, henna tattoo guys, pirated DVD sellers, comedians, acrobats, and of course at least 20 Andean music bands playing the theme from Titanic over and over from noon until 2 AM. All week. Right outside our apartment.

Basically, the city turns into a circus for a week and a half (I forgot to mention the circus- that's here too). Everyone is exhausted all of the time, and everyone is poor and hungover from overeating once the week ends. By the last weekend of Pilar, we had had enough festival to last the rest of the year. We rented a car and went to the Pyrenees for some peace and quiet. That trip gets detailed in my next blog, as soon as I get the theme from Titanic out of my head.

October is here

So the weather has changed, cool mornings and nights are here for the time being, and I can now safely venture outside without protecting my calva infantil (loose translation: my baby-bald head). A number of things have occurred since my last post, including the following highlights:

• I took four students and Ben to Barcelona for Yom Kippur services. Yes, in a city of almost 800,000 people there is not ONE synagogue. We had to take a train 200 miles to go to services. When we got there (surprise, surprise) we discovered that the rabbi was Argentinian and most of the congregants were American. A nice day, a lovely walk down Las Ramblas (a beautiful pedestrian street that cuts through the middle of the oldest parts of Barcelona, filled with cafés and street artists), and great "Dad-Ben time."
  
• My bicycle was stolen. Honestly, how many people get robbed twice in one month? It was locked up to a bike rack in one of the ritziest, busiest areas of Zaragoza in the middle of the day. And every Spaniard that heard about it said exactly the same thing: "Must have been foreigners." Okaaay.....
• Andee's twin sister Maria came for a visit. I picked her up the day after Yom Kippur in Barcelona (yup, another train trip for me) and we traveled together back to "ZAZ". Maria is a terrific guest, and we had a really good time visiting "our fair city" as well as a day trip to a small town about 15 miles away famous for its ceramics.

I thought it would be interesting (for me, at least) to come up with a few things that made it great to be in Zaragoza, and a few things I miss from home. So here they are, starting with the things that make me say "Ahhhh...Bethel..."

1. Hot wings. This may seem trivial, but those of you that REALLY know me know that I have a serious wing addiction. Anyone who knows Spain knows that spicy food is right out here. I mean, seriously, there is pretty much NOTHING picante in the whole country. I'm going to have to start inventing my own hot sauces; wings I can get easily. Now where can I find hot spices to make my sauce? Hmm....
2. Fall foliage. This is my favorite time of year, when the days are warm and breezy, and the nights begin to approach frost. the Mahoosuc mountains are spectacular during October, and I miss it a lot right now. Zaragoza, on the other hand, is in one of the dryest places I've ever lived. In spite of the river valley we live in, there are almost no trees surrounding the city. We happen to live in a part of town where the side streets are lined with trees, but it's not the same.
3. ..and..
   
4. Ben (& Jerry). Ouch. Spain does have Ice Cream, and it's not bad, but it's not Vermont's best. I have found a couple of places that sell Ben & Jerry's ice cream, but it costs about 6 1/2 Euros for a pint. For you Americans, that's 9 DOLLARS a pint!!! And they only seem to have weird flavors (sorry, I'm an ice cream purist- give me vanilla or give me death), and Cherry Garcia is not one of them.
5. Both of our sofas. This is a little thing, but the sofa in our apartment is REEEELY old, and mushy, and puke-green. It is so uncomfortable that for the 1st couple of weeks we just sat on the floor rather than sit on the sofa (or its matching puke-green-and equally-uncomfortable chairs). Our sofas in Bethel are the ultimate nap-spaces, and I miss them, and my naps on them. The only positive thing I can say about the chairs and sofa is that it was really fun to watch them, from six stories up, get stuffed into the back of a compacting garbage truck (our new sofa from IKEA gets delivered today).
6. American football. I knew that I would miss watching the Patriots this year, I just never realized how much. Last weekend Andee and I were so desperate that we hired a babysitter and went out to the one Irish tavern in Zaragoza that shows occasional NFL games. This is how desperate we were:
   

• We watched the 49ers play the Vikings
• We watched the game sitting in upright bar chairs
• We watched the whole game without sound. Anyway, Brett Favre's desperation toss into the endzone for the game-winning touchdown mad it all worth it.

I'll finish this blog entry with some things that are great about living here:

1. Coffee. Apart from the Mouse & Bean, there is no Spanish-quality coffee in Bethel. Here, you can get really fantastic coffee everywhere. Truck stops on the highway have the same gazillion-dollar espresso machines that M&B has. American coffee is....unavailable here.
2. Architecture. Zaragoza proudly displays buildings and partial buildings from Roman, Visigothic, Moorish, Renaissance, Baroque, and Neoclassical periods. The Gothic cathedral and the Neoclassical Basilica are national treasures.
3. Schedule. Now, this is probably unfair, as you can see by looking at my previous blogs, but I love the fact that Ben and Chaia get on the school bus at 9:05. they get to sleep until 8:15, and everyone wakes up much happier and better rested. Also, lunch is at about 2:00 or so, and it's the big meal of the day (leaving good quality losing-weight tie for the rest of the day). Evening meal is at 9:00, and Ben and Chaia are in bed by 9:30.
4. Shopping carts. No joke, the fact that you insert 1 Euro into the cart to unlock it, and when you re-lock it into the other carts you get your Euro back. It really keeps people from leaving carts around the parking lot, or from stealing them outright. I guess if you want a cart badly enough, you'll pay the Euro and run with it.
5. Tapas. This is probably the best part. Almost everywhere, you can get small quantities of really good food cheap. If you're not super-hungry, you get 1 or 2 with a glass of wine or beer (yes, beer and wine with LUNCH!! How civilized!). If you're hungry, you get to try/sample a number of goodies. One of these days, I'll devote a blog completely to tapas.
6. Faculty meetings. I'm treading on dangerous ground here, because I didn't want to compare jobs. Here, I'm a part-time worker. At Gould, I live the life. HOWEVER: Faculty meetings here begin as most faculty meetings do in American boarding schools, with tapas and wine. Wait, what? Yes, Spanish faculty here wouldn't DREAM of a meeting without food and libations first. Oh Dan........... Wine and cheese in Ordway? Who's in?
   

C'mon, the ambulance ride is FREE!

We are now in the third week of school for both the adults and the kids, and all seems to be going pretty well. It's Tuesday, and I'm writing this at 9:45 in the morning. Tuesday is my official errands day, since I have no classes. On Tuesdays I run errands for the family and for SYA (when Anna, la reina de la oficina, needs me. Yesterday, in fact, I picked up SYA's season tickets for the local pro basketball team (in exchange for rights to tickets to the first game of the season). Today is "Andee bicycle day," "classical music tickets day," and of course "shopping for bread, water, and laundry detergent day."

As I have said before, this will be a year of firsts. We have already had a number of them:

• First Tomatina.
• First whole Jamón ibérico.
• First birthday out of the US for Chaia.
• First man-bag for Doug (i know, but I have keys, wallet, other keys, bus card, etc. to carry every day).
• First foods: Snails, morcilla, Doner Kebab, rabbit, etc.
• And now.....

Andee's first-ever trip to the emergency room. As in, "Andee of the Nine Toes, and the Sidewalk of Doom (excuse the weak Lord Of The Rings reference there). On Sunday afternoon, Andee and I left Ben and Chaia with Griffin (who is determined to convince Chaia that she should drop out of school at 7 and start a jewelry design business. More on that later, maybe..) and took a taxi to the Hospital Miguel Servet, the BIIIG central hospital in Zaragoza. Here's what happened, including the back story:

We live near a major boulevard in ZAZ called Paseo de la Independencia. It's wide, busy, and full of stores and people all day. It is also apparently the site for a number of cultural events including (I'm told) the naked cyclists' traffic protests (I'll write about it when I see it). On Sunday the Paseo was completely blocked to traffic, and the street was filled with exhibitions of activities for kids. there were horse rides with mounted police, basketball games, tables for chess (Ben and I played a game to a draw), gymnastics, karate, etc. There was also a rock climbing/catwalk thing for kids to try. So during the afternoon (6:00 or so) Ben decided to try the climb. And got halfway there. And got nervous. So Andee decided to come to the rescue, and in her effort to quickly run to Ben ("run" and "quickly" is a dangerous combination for Andee) she slipped off of the edge ogf the sidewalk, slicing off the tip of her big toe and part of her toenail in the process. Ouch.

Now before I explain the rest, it's important to know a few things about this injury:

1. This is a fairly painful thing to do.
2. There was (according to Andee) a fair amount of blood ("a POOL of blood in my shoe").
3. There is a first aid tent nearby.
4. In spite of the pain and blood (both subjectively significant), this is NOT a typical emergency room-type of injury.

So when Andee hobbled over to the 1st aid tent, she was expertly attended to by no fewer than FIVE EMTs. After cleaning her up and bandaging the mangled digit, all five of them suggested that she head to the emergency room. For an x-ray. On the tip of her toe. Because it's Spain and it's free.

Did I forget to mention they also recommended an ambulance ride? for the TIP OF HER TOE. I don't mean the top 1/3 of her toe, I mean the TIP.

Anyways, after about 90 minutes in a VERY sterile-looking hospital we returned home with Andee's x-rays (negative fracture of the tip of the toe), prescriptions for ibuprofen and Betadine, and an interesting story. The toe is healing now (it's actually pretty gnarly-looking, I cleaned and rebandaged it last night), and now we know Andee's emergency room threshold. She also has a new nickname: nueve (Spanish for "nine").

*Andee would like everyone to know that she's fine, that she never actually fell ALL THE WAY to the ground when she injured herself, and that she refused the ambulance ride. We went by taxi instead.

A Day In The Life...

We have now entered the phase one might call "normal" here in Zaragoza. The temperature has dropped during the day to a comfortable 85 degrees, and nighttime is downright cool. Everyone has begun to develop a daily rhythm, so I thought I'd take an entry to talk about what the day looks like for this family living in "the big city" (if I didn't say it before, Zaragoza is Spain's 5th-largest city with about 750,000 inhabitants).

Ben and Chaia have started school (3 days and counting), so that is their thing, Mon-Fri. The Spanish school day is a little different from the typical American one so I'll describe a regular day for them:
7:50 wake up. Chaia needs to be coaxed out of bed, so we invent a "problem with our dragon."
8:05 get dressed, come out of the bedroom for breakfast.
8:15 eat breakfast (ciabatta toast for ben, fruit or yogurt for Chaia. Water for both because the milk is..well...different. Milk here is sold in a box, and it's unrefrigerated until you open it).
8:30 finish breakfast, brush teeth, find shoes (Ben's are usually in 2 different places) and backpack, put school stuff in.
8:50 leave for the bus stop. Down to the street, and a 3 block walk to where their school bus picks them up.
9:02 on bus, off to school that begins at 9:30.
-->(forward to end of school day)
5:50 Off of school bus, 3 block walk to the apartment.
6:00 rest, snack, homework or reading, decompression time.
8:00 Help dad cook dinner.
9:00 eat dinner
9:45 get ready for bed
10:00 (or so) lights out. Repeat tomorrow.

Andee has begun her full time job. Her routine is pretty simple:
7:45 turn off alarm clock, bribe Doug to get out of bed first.
8:00 get out of bed, look for tea.
8:15 walk around the apartment, trying to wake up.
8:20 eat breakfast (tea, Greek yogurt or something similar).
8:30 watch all of the commotion around her.
8:50 say goodbye to kids while getting dressed, leave for work.
9:00 first class at School Year Abroad.
5:15 last class at SYA ends.
5:30 (or so) go home and either go with House-boy Koko to get kids, or wait for them while napping.
Then the after-school and dinner schedule kicks in.

And then there is me.

I have a little bit of a "different" schedule. I only teach 1 class right now (4 days a week), and the earliest I teach during the day is on Monday (1:10 pm). No class on Tuesday. So here was my day today (Thursday):

7:45 wake up, shut off alarm. Get bribed into getting up first. Wake up Chaia with a story about how our dragon is misbehaving and only she can control him. Tell Ben to put down the book and get dressed.
8:00 put together breakfast for kids, turn on tea water for Andee.
8:10 put together lunch for kids while they eat, try to make coffee.
8:20 get dressed, put snacks together.
8:35 run around looking for backpacks and shoes.
8:50 Walk kids to bus, walk back home, drink slightly cold coffee.
9:15 Go to the coffee shop across the street with Andee, drink a cortado (espresso with a tiny bit of milk) and eat a croissant (cruasán).
9:50 go to SYA for an assembly meeting.
10:25 end of meeting, go out for coffee and a mini-tortilla sandwich.
10:45 walk back home (5 min each way) to get the papers for class that I left there.
11:00 back at SYA to "fiddle around" with some web pages that have Spanish worksheets
11:40 get bored, go on an errand for SYA to copy some keys (a nice 10 minute walk to a hardware store).
12:15 finish the errand, go by the library to return a lousy video the kids got (something about a bored witch, it's REALLY dumb)
12:50 back to SYA, talk with some other teachers, waste more time.
2:00 go to lunch with Andee at the local Montessori school (that's our dining hall here).
3:00 out after lunch for more coffee with the diretor of SYA to talk about some stuff (lunch here is 90 minutes).
3:30 finally teach a class. It went well, considering I had all day to prep for it.
4:20 leave SYA go to grocery store to get things for dinner (we go food shopping every day, our refrigerator here is smaller than the TV set).
5:00 Home, take a short nap.
5:45 go get the kids from the school bus after folding some laundry and hanging more on the line (the washing machine is smaller than the regrigerator).
6:00 back home, play with kids, talk to Andee, make dinner, eat, put kids to bed (with Andee).
10:30 watch an episode (or 2) of the British sitcom "Coupling" streamed from a Chinese website. Our TV doesn't get any channels yet (maybe fixed this week, maybe not).
12:00 Write this blog entry, go to bed.

As you can see, I have a VERY full day. And tomorrow, there's another one. Life is a busy thing for House-boy Koko.

Holding pattern...

Here we are, on the third of September, waiting. Waiting, waiting, waiting... At the moment I feel a little like a plane circling an airport, waiting to land. Granted, Zaragoza is one heck of a plane to be sitting on, but I feel this way nonetheless. What are we waiting for?

School.

Not so much School Year Abroad (which officially kicks off on Friday evening with the arrival of Griffin (director) and the students (our raison d'etre). Andee and I have been writing syllabi, looking through books, and generally getting ready for the school year. That part has been, so far, pretty doable.

No, we are waiting with baited breath for Ben and Chaia to start school.

Confession time: I have never understood, until now, all of those parents that breathe a sigh of relief when their children begin school in the fall. Not until now, when I find myself in the same position. In Bethel, the start of school has always been an exciting touchstone, but never a relief of any kind. Here, thinking back of the past five weeks, I realize that Andee and I have been "man-on" with our kids without a break. (Yeah, I know, "poor Doug and Andee, stuck with their kids travelling around Spain.").

The fact is, since our arrival on the 23rd of July we haven't had access to a babysitter, and so everywhere we go, they go. And it's not like at home, where we can just "send them outside to play." Outside, here, is a pretty busy neighborhood with cars, shops, restaurants, bars, and the like. If we want the kids to go out, we go with them. If we want to go for a walk, they come along. So all of our outings are of "Ben and Chaia-length", and anywhere we go has to be "Ben and chaia-friendly." This leaves out some pretty cool places, and leaves us anxious for a night out to watch a Real Zaragoza game in a pub (Real Zaragoza is the local pro soccer team, FIRST division, if you are a real fan) or the chance to go for an evening walk (it's still in the upper 80's at 10:30 pm). So it's not so much that we are tied to our apartment or anything, it's just that either our outings are of a semi-short duration, or we have to go out one at a time (or one of us with one, or both, children in tow).

So, parents out there reading, please tell me that I'm not a cruel, heartless father. Tell me that we are normal, loving parents, who just want to love their children from a bit of a distance for a few hours each day, so we can take a long walk, or go to a museum together, or sit in a café trying new tapas, and not have to teach, entertain, explain, mediate, or resolve crises involving stuffed animals.

Anyways, school starts on Tuesday morning. Until then, we'll go for shorter walks broken up by stops for helado (ice cream) and granizados (a kind-of lemon flavored slush puppy, heaven on a hot day).Limón granizado

Tomatina!!

Valencia, August 17-26. Many things happened during the 9 days we spent in Spain's third-largest city, including the eating of a tortilla de patatas made by the jedi master of tortillas, Ximo's mother. We also ate paella de pollo y conejo, fideuá, many awesome tapas, and fabulous produce from Valencia's mercat central. We went to Europe's largest aquarium, toured a many-layered cathedral, and chased pigeons in the Plaza de la Virgen.

And we were robbed.

Yup, our backpack was stolen from right under our noses while on the beach with Ximo and María José. We lost MANY keys (leading to a long night of running around to replace said keys so we could get the car back to Valencia), Chaia's new camera, a book I loaned to Ximo 2 years ago and just got back, and some random clothes.

That said, we had a terrific time in Valencia and can't wait to get back again. The city is gorgeous, the food terrific, and the old friends can't be beat (Ximo and I met through an exchange program 27 years ago!). On the last day of our stay on the Mediterranean coast, I was able to realize a lifelong dream; Ximo and I went out to the unremarkable town of Buñol to take part in the world's most famous food fight, La Tomatina.

I have enclosed some stock photos below to illustrate (I didn't DARE bring our camera), but basically La Tomatina is this:

• for 364 days a year, Buñol is an industrial town of about 10,000 people.
• On the last Wednesday of August, the town becomes the focus of all chaos in the universe.

That's it. On said Wednesday, around 30,000 people descend on the narrow, winding streets of Buñol, dressed in bathing suits, goggles, t-shirts, some with watermelon-rind helmets, and throw very ripe tomatoes at each other. For an hour. Gigantic trucks bring in millions of tomatoes from western Spain (these tomatoes, everyone says, are overripe and in any case the wrong kind for human consumption) and, on a signal, begin to dump the tomatoes on the main street of the oldest part of town while driving at 2 mph up the street. Then people from EVERYWHERE (I met Serbians, Americans, Brits, Germans, Portuguese, Italians, Japanese, Chinese, and Spaniards) join in a messy, red, fragrant mosh pit. It instantly brings out the 8 year old in everyone, and people are smiling, laughing, and literally swimming in tomatoes and juice.
And then it ends (sort of). The trucks leave, people are dancing and singing, and from every balcony in the city water from hoses and buckets rains down on the heads of the tomato-warriors. People come out and uncover their housefronts and storefronts, and begin to clean up the streets. The acid from the tomatoes does a pretty amazing job cleaning the street and walls, and to be honest I can't remember when my hair felt softer and cleaner. The rest of the day is a street party filled with food stands, music, beer, and sangría. Then everyone goes home (or somewhere else), and Buñol turns back into a sleepy, industrial town.

For anyone not terrorized by crowds and chaos, I highly recommend the Tomatina. Just make sure you leave a change of clothes somewhere safe (I did).






Photos from google.com.

Toledo, imperial city

After leaving El Bonillo (and it was not easy to leave Llani and Olallo's gorgeous house and fantastic cooking!) we headed out in Llani's car to Toledo, the current capital of Castilla-La Mancha and a city built layer upon layer over the past 2,000 years. When the Romans arrived on the Iberian peninsula (your people, Bill!) there were already people living on the hill that overlooks the Tajo river.

Toledo is a fascinating place, and one of the most visited sites in Spain. Ben noted that he hadn't heard any English speakers yet on our trip, but in Toledo we were pretty well surrounded by other "turistas." In the 5th century after the fall of Rome, this city (Toletum) became the capital of Visigothic Iberia. Under the Moors (a catch-all term for the many Muslim peoples to control the peninsula between 711 and 1492, history lovers) Toledo was a city of unusually peaceful coexistence between Catholics, Jews, and Muslims. When the monarchs Fernando and Isabel arrived here they loved the city so much that they decided to be buried here, and commissioned a church to be built to house their tombs (San Juan de Las Peñas, it's a spectacular Gothic church with a beautiful cloister). Only in Toledo (a common phrase of mine) can you find a "Synogogue of St. Mary." If you only go to Spain once in your life, Toledo is a must.

We found a hotel to stay in (actually, Andee and I stayed here about 14 years ago too) with a view from our balcony that would take your breath away. Then we ate at a nearby restaurant (patatas bravas and bocadillos) and headed for the cathedral. There we spent the next 2 hours, and Ben and Chaia learned more than anyone should have to know about church architecture and symbolism.

Toledo is the seat of the Archbishop of Spain, and as such has a magnificent cathedral, one of the four most beautiful in Spain in my opinion (let's see if we get to the other three this year...). Just a sampling of things to be seen here are eye-poppingly beautiful illuminated bibles, massive stained glass rose windows, the Transparente, Spain's greatest work of Baroque art, and a Sacristy (it's where the priests' robes, and other sacred treasures, are kept) full of paintings by Caravaggio, Van Dyck, Titian, Goya, and at least 15 or 16 by El Greco.

Oh, and did I mention the GIGANTIC painting of St. Christopher on the wall of the cathedral? He's the saint that, in 1969, was dropped from the list of saints because there was very little evidence that he really lived. His mother must have been furious.
Anyway, we spent two days in Toledo, visiting churches and museums (the Museo Sefardi, which houses the history of Jews in Spain, was great). Then, in the heat of the day (the thermometer read 38 degrees celsius- about 100 farenheit) we left Toledo and braved the 3 1/2 hour drive to Valencia, where my great friend Ximo lives. It was an uneventful drive, and should only be noted that there is a REALLY obvious loss of altitude from Toledo to Valencia, at sea level. When you leave the plains of La Mancha, you really do leave the plains. More later...

Back online!!

Well, after about a week and a half, I have managed to land in a city with real internet service. SO much has happened in the last 11 days that I will only be able to cover everything with a list. If there is a real interest in anything listed, let me know and I will elaborate. Here goes:

1. We left Zaragoza by AVE, the 180 mph train to Madrid. It only took 1 hour and 15 minutes.
2. We took another train to Albacete, in La Mancha, and my/our friend Llani picked us up.
3. We spent 10 days in Llani and Olallo's house (actually their vacation house) in the little town of El Bonillo, a town of about 3,000 people on a hill overlooking the plains of La Mancha. (The rest of this list takes place in El Bonillo)
4. I went for several mountain bike rides with Olallo (rhymes with Oh-MY-oh!) in 95 degree heat under the Castillian sun.
   
5. I spent several nights not sleeping, because my body was desperately trying to return some of the heat it had absorbed during the bike rides (it is cool in El Bonillo at night).
6. I learned how to cook Gazpacho Manchego from Olallo's brother Emilio.
7. I watched Chaia try snails and rabbit, and like both.
8. I went rabbit hunting with Olallo, his son Carlos, and his brother Emilio (and yes, I did the Elmer Fudd voice at least a dozen times). I did not shoot at anything. I just took lots of pictures.
9. We went to Villabuena de Los Infantes, a VERY Castillian town with a beautiful plaza, several notable mentions in Don Quijote, and where Francisco de Quevedo spent the final days of his life (there is a Quevedo museum there).
10. We spent a day with Llani's cousin and his wife, who run a summer camp out of a giant manor house built for a survivor of the Titanic (complete with staircase designed to match the grand staircase on the ship).
    
11. We went to a series of small lakes, called lagunas, that form the birthplace of the Guadiana river (one of Spain's major rivers). There, we discovered that both Ben and Chaia love lamb.
12. We ate an absurd quantity of meat, the staple of Manchego food.
13. We, along with Llani's family, ate 15 kilos of tomatos in 10 days.
14. We toured the church of El Bonillo, a neoclassical building with origins in the 14th century, a baroque altar, oh, and tucked up in the 1-room museum, a pair of original paintings by El Greco and Ribera (WOW!!).
15. We went, almost every night, to the street fair of El Bonillo to let the kids jump on trampolines.
16. Because of the Spanish summer schedule and the fair, we had dinner (as did our kids) at 10:00 every night. Ben and Chaia got to sleep around 1AM every night.
17. We cooked, we ate, shared recipes (Andee is now the patron saint of El Bonillo for making scones and chocolate chip cookies for everyone), and met some terrific people.
18. We went to a quesería, where Manchego cheese is made by a family. We took home Manchego cheese infused with and covered in rosemary. Truly delicious.

After a wonderful time, we left El Bonillo (in Llani's borrowed car) to travel to Toledo, one of the most monument-filled and magical cities in Spain. From Toledo, we will go to Valencia, and the town of Cheste, where my love for Spain beganso many years ago. There is a Tortilla de patatas waiting there for us...

Sitting in Limbo

Main altar, Basílica de Nuestra Señora del Pilar

I thought I'd begin this entry with a photo of one of our most visited sites: the Basilica-Cathedral of Our Lady of the Pillar. first of all, it's always cool inside. Second, it's free. Third, it's beautiful (although Ben and I agree that the Gothic Catedral de La Seo is a prettier church. In an interesting resolution to a church dispute over who would get to be the "real" cathedral in Zaragoza, a church court decided that both El Pilar and La Seo would house the exact same number of priests, and that the bishop would reside for 6 months in one, and six in the other. Very King Solomon-like (without cutting the baby in half). The funny thing about it is that Tom Brady could chuck a football from the doorway of one church and land it in the other.

The title of this entry fairly well describes the overall mood this week. We're kind of in a holding pattern, waiting to officially go on vacation to Albacete and Valencia for the next two weeks to visit Ximo and his family. We've spent the last few days just avoiding the heat and going food shopping. We now go every day to Le Petit Croissant, the best bakery in Zaragoza, for our bread. It's fairly cheap , to Americans, an all of their breads are amazing.
On Saturday we will take a train to Madrid, and then another to Albacete where Llani (Ximo's sister) will pick us up. The train to Madrid is an AVE (a play on words, as "ave" is Spanish for "bird", and the AVE stands for "Alta Velocidad de España," meaning "high speed Spanish .") The AVE does the 3 1/2 hour drive in just 1 hour and 20 minutes.

Speaking of Ximo, he just returned for another quick visit on his way to Bilbao to see the Guggenheim museum there. He and his girlfriend stayed over last night and we went out for tapas, where Ben discovered that he likes calamares (squid) and "brave potatos." Also, when Ximo arrived he loaned me his car, and Chaia an d I went to pick up some new chairs for the living room. Some of the furniture is pretty old and tired in the piso, and the chairs are so uncomfortable that Andee and I watched a movie the other night (Blazing Saddles) while sitting on the tile floor. Anyways, Chaia and I drove out to the edge of the city where there is an (say it with me, Denise) i..i..i..iKEA. The new chairs are MUCH better, and hey, we got to go to IKEA (air conditioned, BTW)!

That's all for now. Send me a message if you have any questions about ZAZ, our piso, food, whatever, or if you would like to see me elaborate on a particular topic.

What to do with a family when it's HOT.

Ah yes, the daily question we ask ourselves. Pretty much every day. What can we do, since it's 95 degrees or more outside from 11-4 every day? We have tried the following, in no particular order. You be the judge as to which is the best...

1. Do nothing. Sometimes it's just easier to close all of the windows and keep the heat out. I know that it's a bit counter-intuitive for the Mainers reaing this, but apartment buildings here are really well made for keeping heat out if you like. At about 11:30 we close the persianas (big, horizontally slatted window covers that cover the entire window from the outside, lettling no light/heat in), and keep them down until 8 or 9. It makes the piso dark, but nice and cool. It's a good time to read, blog, and generally go stir crazy after 3 days of this.

2. Go to the local municipal pool. the pool is big, the grass is nice and shady, but the area around the pool is full of cigarette smoke and Andee gets in trouble at the pool. Also, it costs us about $14 U.S. to get into the recreation area. We could spend our entire salary doing this in July and August alone.

3. Go to the Basilica-Cathedral of Nuestra Señora del Pilar (this place will get it's own entry soon). It's cool, it's quiet, it's beautiful, but it's a 15 minute walk on hot streets each way, and by the time we get back home we're hot all over again. Besides, I can look at churches in Spain all day, but it's not an activity for everyone. In my opinion the co-cathedral of La Seo is a far prettier church (gothic arches), but they charge 3 Euros to enter.

4. Go to the supermarket and wander aimlessly, looking at the prices of things (this actually gives me a good idea for a blog entry. You can let me know if you think it's a dumb idea, but I think people would be interested in the differences in products sold and their prices). This can be a good way to beat the heat (all of the big supermarkets are air conditioned) but eventually all of the different olive oil options begin to blend together (blended olive oil?) and so there's only so much time you can waste doing this.

5. Like #4, go to El Corte Inglés and wander. This behemoth of a department store (we have found three in ZAZ) was begun in the 1930's in Madrid as a small men's clothing store, and has grown over the years to swallow every competitor in Spain. There is a Corte Inglés in every major and minor city I have visited in Spain, and even the small ones put Macy's to shame. The one 2 minutes from our apartment has 7 stories, plus 2 stories of supermarket and 2 stories of parting inderground for a total of 11 floors of everything you could buy. And this one is the small one. It houses a travel agency, restaurant, dry cleaners, café, hair salon, and kosher deli. Ok, I made the last one up.

6. All right, everyone who really knows us should sit down for this one. Really, sit. Now. Go to the mall. Ok, I said it. At the end of the bus #23 line is a 3 story mall called "Grán Casa." It is cool, bright, and filled with stores. In short, a mall. There's a McDonalds, Burger King, Subway, H&M, Claire's, Levi's Store, Nike Store, Foot Locker, and other typical mall stores. There's also Zara, the ultra-hip clothing store that began in Spain and can even be found at the Natick Mall these days. There's a bowling alley, 12-screen movie theater, and many food shops. Oh yeah, and a Corte Inglés as well as a HiperCor, the mega-supermarket chain owned by Corte Inglés. We had a good laugh at ourselves for going to the mall on hot day, but decided that "when in ZAZ..."

Of course, we could do what most sane people do in August, which is to go on vacation. Apparently the city basically shuts down for the next month as everyone who can takes their summer vacation together (there are signs on the door of many small shops saying, in many ways, "see you in September." Come to think of it, we ARE heading for Valencia next week to visit Ximo and his extended family. And his sister and her family live one block from the beach...

1st week, part 2

I think that the last post covers the first couple days. From now on I will try to write fewer mundane details, and focus on the interesting things that we see and do, and make some random observations on living here.

Anyway, we spent the first weekend with Ximo visiting monuments and restaurants (Chaia, for the record, LOVES mussels, Ben is a big fan of all bread) and in general walking around a lot. One important discovery on Saturday was that Ben, Chaia, and Andee had their first ever limón granizados, a drink somewhere between a slush puppy and lemonade. I have found them to be the best thing to cut through the heat, and I think that everyone agrees with me. 2 Euros for a granizado seems more than I remember from my youth, but then that was 25 years ago.

Speaking of the heat, Zaragoza is HOT during the summer. Although we are in a river valley (the Ebro river is one of the largest rivers in Spain, although it's not much wider than the Androscoggin is in Bethel), the heat is tremendous here, and I'm told it doesn't rain here. It is really dry (I think we saw a few really high cirrus clouds 2 days ago) and has averaged about 95 degrees every day in the middle of the day. THIS is why the siesta was invented; it's too hot to work, play, walk, shop, be anywhere but in front of a fan. Fortunately there is a nearly constant breeze here (not so nice at 2pm when the temp is at it's highest) so evenings are pretty pleasant. Because of the heat, people go outside much later than at home, and you can expect to see little kids playing in the park at 10:00 at night (2 of them were ours).

Two more things that happened this week were that we had a really nice lunch with Alejandro, and we went for the first time to one of the municipal pools in ZAZ. For those who don't know him, Alejandro is a truly delightful young man who attended Gould Academy 2 years ago through an international study program. He lives in ZAZ and is an engineering student at the university here. He works during the summer at a Vodafone store near our piso (Vodafone is like Verizon, Spanish style). It was great to see him, and he is taking us to a play this Friday to be performed in aragonés, the regional dialect of Aragón (Zaragoza is the capital of Aragón, where Fernando was king during the life of Columbus. His daughter, with Isabel of Castilla, was Catherine of Aragón, first wife of England's Henry VIII. History lesson over.).

Also, we took our first bus ride to one of the local municipal sports complexes to cool off. Much has changed in Spain since we were here in 1998 and everyone had to wear sandals in the pool area ALL THE TIME, and everyone also had to wear elastic bathing caps in the pool. For those of you who can picture us in bathing caps, you know that for me it is unnecessary and for Andee it is impossible. Well, those days are gone, and we didn't have to wear either one. One thing remains: the Spanish tendency to have rules that seem silly to strangers but REALLY IMPORTANT and obvious to Spaniards. Yes, in the pool complex Andee got in trouble. Not once, but twice. I know, Andee's friends and family are laughing now. Andee apparently broke a major pool rule- she wore her sunglasses in the pool. The lifeguard told her off, and then offered to hold the glasses. Then, later, she was sitting on the edge of the kids' pool with Chaia, and AGAIN was approached for wearing her glasses. Just so everyone has it clearly, ANDEE got in trouble, not me.

1st Week

Well, here we are. Let's start with a brief chronology of the trip to our new place:

7/22: We left Boston at about 9:45pm after checking in at about 6:30. We were the only people checking in that early, so dealing with our HUGE bags (plus backpacks, ski bags, guitar, and carry-ons, not to mention 2 kids and THEIR carry-ons) was not really a problem. Every bag weighed in at about 2 pounds under the limit (thank you bathroom scale!) so no extra charge for overweight baggage. While waiting for our flight I read the first chapter of The Fellowship Of The Ring to Ben and Chaia. The flight was nice, movie screen on each seat and ok airline food. I only wish that we all slept more (Ben got the most, at about 4 1/2 hours).
7/23: We arrived in Zurich on time and passed through Passport control quickly ("So how long ARE you staying in Europe?") only to wait for our plane to Madrid (delayed 2 hours, boo..). Finally arrived in Madrid at about 4:00 pm, and Ximo was waiting for us. Ximo is one of my oldest friends, and drove 3 hours from Valencia in a rented vehicle that looks like a laundry truck with ads on the side. We got a snack in the airport (1st café cortado of the year!!) and headed off to Zaragoza.
On the way to ZAZ (that's short for our fair city) we stopped for a walk, and found ourselves in Medinaceli, a little, historical hilltop town with an impressive display of 15th century architecture. Typical of Spain's use of old sites, the palace of the duque de Medinaceli was being used as a museum of modern art (photo above). Very cool contrasts. After our walk we reboarded the S.S. Drycleaner and continued on to ZAZ (Ben and Chaia finally fell asleep at about 8:00).
We arrived in ZAZ at about 10:30 and began asking directions to the part of the city where we will be living until next July. After a couple of people got us to near our street (Ximo is blessed with the ability to ask ANYONE for directions), the next guy simply told us to follow his car, and he drove/directed us for the last several blocks. We even found a place for the laundry truck on our street, about 50 feet from the door!!
OK, up go the bags (it took 2 elevators and most of us walking the stairs), into the apt (which is HUGE, but more on the "piso" in the next post) and quickly down to the street to look for food. We found 2 Turkish restaurants across the street, and feasted on doner kebab. Then the backside of jet lag hit. The kids, excited from the trip and not at all tired (in their "Bethel" world it was only 7pm), stayed up until about 2:30. so did we. Finally some sleep! Until...
7/24: (BTW, my thirty-twelfth birthday)...7:00 I woke up. Really. 7:00 AM. Grrr.... Well, time to begin the unpacking. I unpacked, went for a walk, bought bread, got $$ from an ATM, bought a coffee, and went back to unpack more. At about 10:30 everyone else began to wake up. We unpacked, let the kids play a bit, I went out to get enough food for breakfast, and we ate a bit. Then we took a little walk around, opened a bank account next door, and went to lunch (I swear, all we do here right now is eat, clean up after eating, go shopping so we can eat, and talk about what to eat next).
With a little help, Ben ordered everyone's lunch at a restaurant opposite the Basilica de nuestra señora del Pilar. Good food cheap, and everyone felt pretty good. then back to the piso for a nap (ahh, glorious siesta, how I've missed you...). Later we went shopping for towels, trash bags, and enough groceries to get us started.

OK, that will do for the first entry. More tomorrow (when I will write about the heat, the granizados, aljafería, and more.

July 21, 2009

OK, here we go! Tomorrow we depart for Zaragoza with our 5 HUGE bags, 2 ski bags, and a guitar (not to mention our carry-ons and computer bags). More from Spain (I'll take a picture of our bags tomorrow to scare everyone).