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.