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.