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