T-minus 7 days and counting....

Don't blame me, it was the Celtics.

I spent the better part of the month of June in a green haze, watching my beloved C's rise to the highest heights, only to get smacked down in the end...by Ron Artest of all people. Not just the hated Easter-egg-purple-and-yellow-colored, look-at-me-I-paid 3 million for courtside seats-fans, boil-on-my-butt-Lakers, but one of my least favorite players of all time, Ron Artest.

Watching the NBA finals while in Spain is an experience I never want to repeat. First of all, the games are all broadcast live. That means I had to stay up (or wake up) to see the games between 2 and 6 AM. Not ideal for a guy whose kids (by this I mean Ben) begin to wake up at 7:45. Also, people in Spain claim to like hoops, but when I managed to mumble something semi-coherent about watching the finals every other night, all I ever heard as a response was "Yeah, how about that Pau Gasol?"

OK, I get home town pride, but that's it? I think I was the only person on the whole Iberian penninsula to stay up all night without the aid of a discoteca.

I'm done hating the Lakers for now. OK, I'm not done. I'm just done talking about hating the Lakers. Here. On this blog.

We spent the past 2 weeks with Andee's sister Trina and family, in Barcelona, then Zaragoza, then Madrid. It was a great time, and we spent many hours eating and visiting art museums. In fact, the act of doing cool things with Dan and Trina led me to the focus of this posting (beyond hating the Lak...oops); I submit here a list of some really cool things that we got to do as a family (and individually) this year in Spain:

(in no partcular order)-

1. We visited some of the great art museums of Spain (Prado, Reina Sofía, Thyssen...)
2. We visited some very cool single-artist museums (Miró, Picasso, Sorolla, Gargallo)
3. We saw El Greco's Entierro del Conde de Orgaz- twice.
4. We saw manymanymany cathedrals and churches, some really breathtaking.
5. We visited Gaudí's masterpiece Sagrada Familia- THREE times!
6. We went skiing above tree line in the Pyrenees.
7. We visited the tombs of the monarchs of Spain, Francisco Franco, and Columbus.
8. We visited the Alhambra in Granada.
9. We ate doner kebab with the kids at 2:00 in the morning.
10. We visited 10 of the 17 regions of Spain.
11. Andee and Chaia participated in a traditional Zaragoza procession (with 300,000 other people).
12. I went to the Tomatina (Google-it).
13. We drove to France to have a croissant and coffee.
14. We visited Spain's biggest plaza (Madrid) and its most beautiful (Salamanca).
15. We had 14 people visit us here!
16. Chaia ate snails, and liked them.
17. Ben and Chaia ate blood sausage, and both liked it.
18. Andee ate pistachio croquettes, and hasn't stopped talking about it.
19. We ate ternasco (traditional Aragonese lamb chops) cooked in the fireplace of two houses.
20. I went rabbit hunting (only shot with my camera) in La Mancha.
21. We got "trapped" in Brussels-by a volcano.
22. We visited both Jewish museums in Spain, in Toledo and Gerona.
    
23. Ben and Chaia swam in a city fountain.
24. Ben spent his first week away from family- skiing in the Pyrenees with school.
25. Chaia spent her first week away from family- at a "farm school" with her class.
26. I got my first Spanish speeding ticket-6 months after the "camera" photographed me speeding.
27. We (Andee and I) watched every episode of NCIS, Glee, Modern Family, and Big Bang, on Megavideo.com.
28. I learned just how fabulous a sauna can be.
29. I went food shopping every other day for a year, at three different places.
    
30. We ate 12 grapes at the strike of midnight on New Year's Eve.
31. I learned my first words in Aragonés.
32. We watched Ben perform in a play- in Spanish and German.
33. We watched Chaia dance with her rhythmic gymnastics team.
34. We watched Ben get the honor of carrying home his soccer team's tournament trophy.
35. We ate all kinds of food, including some "unusual" parts of animals.
    
36. We saw the Roman aqueduct in Segovia.
37. We made some terrific friends.
38. I read the entire Lord Of The Rings trilogy to Ben and Chaia.
39. We listened to Ben and Chaia argue- in Spanish.
40. Ben and Chaia read the library's entire collection of Asterix & Obelix.
41. I took about 9,000 pictures.
42. Ben and Chaia swam in the Mediterranean- in March (they were the only swimmers).
43. Andee went rafting in the Pyrenees.
44. Andee also drank wine from a glass porrón.
    
45. Chaia danced in a school play. A "sexy dance" (her line said so).
46. Ben and Chaia learned to roll their "r's" Spanish-style.
47. We took a horse-and-carriage ride around Sevilla.
48. We walked through a life-size nativity scene that would fill the Bethel common-twice over.
49. I helped cook Thanksgiving dinner for 90 people.
50. Andee found out that having a house-boy can be a pretty good thing.

Obviously there were more things, but I am getting a headache right now and should stop. This has been an amazing experience and the next week looks to be a great finish to a great year. Ben and Chaia are going to birthday parties this weekend, we are going swimming, more tapas, saying goodbye to friends, and so on.

Oh yeah, and I hate Ron Artest. Just saying.

Anarchy in the S-P-A (in)

So we are headed into the final "push over the cliff" as Nigel Tufnel of Spinal Tap fame might say. In the past week we have hosted friends from Maine (it was really super-great to see them here), finished School Year Abroad (final meeting is tomorrow, students left last Wednesday), and met my dad in Barcelona (and brought him back to Zaragoza with us). Indeed this has been a week of "finishing up" things. Here are a few:

• SYA ended officially last Wednesday with a nice, long, faculty dinner followed by a 2 a.m. send-off of the bus filled with happy/sad students headed towards Madrid and their flight home. Then we had a VERY civilized 4 days to recover from the end of the year before faculty meetings.
• My yoga/pilates teacher (don't laugh, I really DID exercise all year) left the gym I attend, leaving me with one month of either starting with a new teacher, trying to work out with no one telling me what to do (harder than it sounds), or losing all the ground I gained in strength and flexibility this year. Maybe I'll just spend all day in the sauna.
• Sunday was the official end of Chaia's team season. (Oct-May). On Sunday morning we attended Chaia's final exhibition of Rhythmic Gymnastics. If you've never seen "Rítmica" before, it's kinda-sorta dance, kinda-sorta gymnastics, and loud music. And bright red plastic balls. Or hula-hoops. Anyone want to buy a slightly-used black leotard and dance shoes?
• Sunday was also the end of Ben's Soccer team season (every Saturday for EVER). The team, along with their parents, met at a tennis/swim/soccer/eating club for a day of fun, eating, swimming, soccer, and chaos. First, the kids played soccer together. Then the parents played against the kids. It was an interesting game, as the parents who felt like running around in the 90-degree sun were outnumbered by their kids, 15-5. Also, these kids are good, and I don't mean "kid-good." These 10-year olds might beat an average prep school thirds team. They certainly whipped us real good. then, we ate lunch. This is where the "chaos" comes in, and it deserves its own paragraph.

The Paragraph(s).

We sat down to lunch inside the club, in a big banquet room with a number of other groups celebrating birthdays and the coming of the HOT wind to Zaragoza (it has now officially replaced the COLD wind). One big table full of adults, and one big table full of ten-year old boys and their "lucky" sisters. So if you can imagine it, half of the parents had NO EYES on the kids.

Can you visualize where I'm going with this?

All year, we have been told that our children are models of good manners, and that people have never seen children so well behaved. On Sunday we discovered just how true this can be. Have you ever read Lord Of The Flies? The kids in the book were a Model-U.N. compared to the table directly behind us. First of all, you will have to imagine the noise inside the restaurant. For most Americans, the roar of a Spanish restaurant is unimaginable, but I'll do my best. Imagine for a moment that you are in a sports arena. Now make it the Boston Garden. You are on your feet, and the Celtics have just won the NBA championship for the 18th time (my prediction). Now imagine the cheering. Now imagine that there is a Who concert going on in the room at the same time. Now imagine that your waitress is reading you your choices for lunch from 20 feet away.

It's a little like that.

So on top of the inability to see or hear our kids, every once in a while our peripheral vision would catch a piece of bread flying across the table or a glass shattering all over Ben ("I am not making this part up", as Dave Barry would say). This lunch was what gave me the title for this entry, as I have never seen a more chaotic, messier meal in my life, and that includes the now-famous Loker School 6th-grade food fight of 1977 (I will neither confirm or deny my presence that day). Seriously, the table looked like a Jackson Pollock painting with bread crumbs on it. Our kids gave up early, ate quickly, and went outside do do something safer, like play in traffic. And in spite of my very best "teacher glare" (and I DO have one), I could do nothing to slow down the carnage at the kids' table. Seriously, I spent the last 20 minutes of the meal waiting for the boys to start throwing bread at ME. the best I was able to do was to grab one kid's hand as he was about to lob an empty mussel shell across the table. We finally sent them out to play more soccer (a tired puppy is a good puppy) before they started to light each other on fire.

By the way, the girls were picture-perfect. How is it, now, that every president of the US has been a man?

T-minus 6 weeks and counting...

It's unavoidable. It's coming on like a lumbering freight train, or like Austin Powers on a steamroller. I can see it in the distance, getting gradually closer, creeping on so that when you look at it, it doesn't seem to move, but if you take your eyes away for a few days and then look again it seems bigger, closer.

We are inching towards our return to the United States.

This week begins our "visit" period, that will take us from this Friday until a week before we fly out of Barcelona (volcano willing) for Boston. On Friday the Websters arrive from Bethel to spend a few days with us. It'll be exciting to have other Mainers see our city, and through their eyes we'll be able to see things for the first time again. Pilar, La Seo, the historical core of Zaragoza, the 9th century Aljafería (if you don't know what these things are, you have either to go back and read 9 months of blog or to google them), we will visit them all again in the next week. Then, we go to Barcelona to pick up my dad as he arrives by ship (did you know that people still take transatlantic cruises?). Two weeks later Andee's sister Trina and her family arrive from Houston, and will be with us until the 24th of June. Eight days later AerLingus carries us home.

So with that in mind, on some days more than others, I am starting to look at some little things more carefully, more slowly. Yesterday I saw, for the first time, a beautiful statue along the side of the street that goes past the "big" Corte Inglés (I say "big" that way because, to THIS small-town boy, BOTH of them are big). Honestly, I have crossed that street maybe 100 times in the past year, but I just saw the statue yesterday. Yesterday Andee and I bought bocadillos (sandwiches) for lunch and ate them sitting in the little park down the street from our apartment. And we noticed, again for the first time, that a street sweeping truck washes and sweeps the entire park.

It's amazing, the little details that you pick up, and equally amazing what you miss on a daily basis. Example: I know that most of the traffic lights on Paseo de la Independencia go from green to red, one after another, almost exactly 6 seconds apart (except for the one in front of Santa Engracia, which changes 4 seconds after the previous light). what I don't know is if our trash gets picked up on Saturday night, Sunday night, or neither one. I have tried to get as much as I can into this blog, and in photos, so that later I can look back and remember the details. The big stuff stays with you, but it's all of the little things that make an experience what it is (just ask anyone who has ever been on a Junior Point trip). So I think that in these, our final days in Spain, my focus will be to try and look at, write down, and photograph the little things. Things that, without warning, tend to slip out of your memory and are gone.

OK, this entry is a little too nostalgic for 10:15 in the morning. I'm going to work out, sauna, and teach class. In that order.

And I'm bringing my camera with me.

Oh, and I forgot....

A couple more things that might cost you an arm and a leg, and maybe a couple of fingers too. I forgot to mention:

• Toys. Toys are outrageously expensive in Spain. I mean real toys, board games, things like that. There are super-cheapo stores all over the place here, called (this is for real, and I have a hard time even typing it) Chinos. The "Chinese stores" are in every neighborhood, sell all kinds of "all-for-a-Euro" stuff, and as far as I can tell, all seem to be owned by Asians. the toys at these stores are inexpensive, and last about as long as it takes to get them to the park.
• Books. When I was a student I was amazed at how inexpensive books were in Spain. My, how times have changed. Childrens books seem to go for about 18-20 Euros (20-24 bucks). Guess we won't be collecting many of those this year.
• Sunscreen. This seems strange, but only because we take sunscreen for granted. I mean, you HAVE to buy it. When we went out to buy some, we nearly passed out from the sticker shock. A small container of sunscreen costs more here than a typical used car in the US. OK, maybe i exaggerate. It costs more than a CHEAP used car in the US. We bought the very least expensive tube for about 9 Euros (11 dollars). Friends, the price only goes up from there.

That's it for today. Tomorrow (or the next day) I will recount my adventures of today on a bicycle, that left me with sunburned arms and the knowledge of a secret garden paradise in the semi-desert of Zaragoza. Gee, could have used that sunscreen today, come to think of it...

Is a photo blog a "phlog?"

I thought that it might be fun to do a mostly-photo blog of some emblematic sights in Zaragoza. Maybe next I will do a "phlog" (don't know if this is a real word, but I like to say it-it makes me think of pirates) of places special to us (the kids' school, the local bakery, the amazing tapas places we go, etc).

So here goes:

This is the Paseo de la Independencia, one of the major streets of Zaragoza (and the one just outside of our apartment). If you can see the sidewalk, you can see that if you put the two sidewalks together they would be almost as wide as the street.

This is my lovely wife on Calle Alfonso, the main pedestrian avenue in the historical district. The building in the distance is the Basilica del Pilar. Immediately to our left is the best ice cream place in the city. And we should know...


The Plaza del Pilar is the big plaza of the city (the basilica is on the left here), and is often filled with people and pigeons. The tower in the distance is the other big church in Zaragoza, La catedral de La Seo.


Nuestra Señora del Pilar as seen from the Puente de Piedra (the Stone Bridge), the site of the original bridge across the Ebro river (by the way, the largest river in Spain).


This is a beautiful mudéjar (islamic-inspired Christian architecture) wall on the outside of the Cathedral. This pic was taken as far from the wall as one can get, as some "brilliant" city planner put a building up right in front of this treasure.

Another mudéjar tower. This one belongs to la iglesia de la Magdalena.


The cute little building (stuck in here between two tall, ugly buildings) houses School Year Abroad, our employer for the year. The school occupies only the "first" floor.



This is a typical street in El tubo, the old part of the city now full of tapas bars and little cafes. If you happen to find this street, from this exact view, walk ahead about 75 feet and turn right. you are at the best tapas place in the city, maybe in the universe.


A statue of Caesar Augustus, founder of our city. He also got the naming rights, and named it after...himself (Caesar Augusta-->Zaragoza).


The ever-present Corte Inglés department store. Most cities have at least one. We have two within a 5-minute walk of each other.


A couple of wicked good-looking (Bostonian for "very attractive") American quasi-tourists enjoying a coffee (and tea) at a little outdoor cafe on the Paseo de la Constitución. Note the bicycle wheels in the background...

Things to buy (and not)

So almost a year into this adventure known as Spanish living, I thought I would use an entry to talk about shopping and what it is like here. In some ways Zaragoza looks like a typical city, but in some ways it is VERY Spain. Here are some thoughts on spending money in our fair city:

Like any population center Zaragoza is full of stores of all kinds. the only type of store that is truly American and therefore challenging if not impossible to find is that magestic über-store of EVERYTHING that we like to call a pharmacy. Not that there aren't pharmacies in Spain; on the contrary, I've never SEEN a place with so many pharmacies. But pharmacies in Spain (always marked with a green cross) only sell pharmaceuticals. No candy, no toothbrushes, no greeting cards, and no aisles full of things like sewing kits, glue, and holiday tchochkes. Pharmacies sell cough drops, pills, and creams for your health. That's it.

What Zaragoza DOES have is an absurd number of shoe stores, banks, and laser hair-removal centers. If aliens landed on Earth and came to Zaragoza first, they would assume that they had just made contact with a planet full of rich, hairless natives with dozens of pairs of feet.

Shoes are a pretty good buy here, at least good shoes. Beautiful leather boots for 60 Euros, sk8r sneakers for 29 Euros, and if you go shopping in "Boutiqueland" (my name for our neighborhood) you can even find house slippers for 150 Euros. What a bargain! Between the four of us we have bought 9 pairs of shoes this year (including Chaia's very-specific rhythmic gymnastics shoes).

Museums are pretty inexpensive, and because this is

• a: A big city, and
  
• 2: a city that has been here since before the Romans,

there are many different museums worth visiting. I'm going to try and visit several more before the year is up. Evey one seems to have a special gem worth the admission.

Other things that are inexpensive here are things that you eat. Right now artichokes are going for 99 cents per kilo. In US measures and prices, that would be about 60 cents a pound. Fresh vegetables are all pretty cheap, as are fruits. We can't figure out how US customers continue to spend what we spend on spices, as a big container of garlic powder here costs about 85 cents. In Spain salt is pretty much given away, and not the ordinary salt. I'm talking about coarse sea-salt (that I have learned to love to use for cooking). An average cup of coffee (meaning incredibly good espresso) sells in every bar and café for about 1.20 Euros. You can eat a huge meal at an average restaurant (there are zillions of these too) for about 12 Euros (15 bucks). Olive oil is 2 Euros a liter, and bottled water (the water in Zaragoza tastes pretty bad) costs us a whopping 60 cents for 5 liters. Oh yeah, and pretty darn good bottles of wine cost between 4 and 6 Euros. The 10-Euro bottles would cost 25 bucks at home.

So what costs a lot? Anything that plugs in. Technology costs a fortune to buy (computers, tvs, digital anything). Cleaning supplies are pretty pricey too. Fresh milk (meaning milk that you have to drink within, say, six months of buying it; milk that has to be refrigerated) costs about the same as in the US, but it's hard to find. Gasoline costs about 6 dollars a gallon. In most cases clothes are outrageously priced, and you can't buy a CD for less than $20.

I'll stick with coffee, wine, and fresh artichokes steamed and dipped in sauce.

Want to know the price of something specific? Ask me! In fact, I would love to hear some of you questions about the year, or about Spain, or just about us. You can either post a question to the blog, or send me an email (alfordd@gouldacademy.org). I'll answer you as soon as I get back from shopping. I hear the mercado central has fresh shrimp tails for 4 Euros a KILO!

Yet another long weekend?

Some things are hard to get used to here, no matter how many times they happen. In the end, we are Americans. not Spaniards, and it doesn't matter how many jamones we buy or how much olive oil we consume (it would be embarrasing and shocking to write here just how many 1-liter bottles of olive oil we have used this year).

Here are a few:

Spain is a Catholic nation. I don't care WHAT the constitution says about separation of church and state; when St. George's Day is an official holiday in Aragón (as is St. Valero in Zaragoza), and weeks are spent off from school during the festival of Our Lady of the Pillar and Holy Week (leading up to Easter), the country is Catholic. Culturally Catholic for sure, as most people don't EVER go to church, but Catholic nonetheless. I thought WE had a lot of school vacations in the US. Here, on top of the saints' days and religious holidays, there are secular holidays as well. Cincomarzada, or March 5th, is a day commemorating a failed attempt ro conquer Zaragoza. therefore, no school. Constitution Day (Dec 6th), no school. May 1st (Labor Day)...you get the idea.

People bump into you on the street. A Lot. This probably comes from everyone studiously trying to avoid eye contact, and the concept that "personal space" ends 5 microns beyond the skin. This is OK, but as Americans we are used to apologizing for every little thing (Sorry I blocked you on the bus, sorry I stepped on your toe, sorry I ran over your pet hamster, etc). We're not as apologetic as Canadians, perhaps, but who is? In Spain it's another story. To get an apology you have to be either knocked to the ground or to bleed profusely. Otherwise people just keep moving. On one level I get it, but on a more visceral level, I just want to hear a perdón on occasion.

There is a different social contract in Spain when it comes to public cleanliness and littering. In the US, littering ranks just slightly below infanticide and cutting in line on the "bad behavior scale." Here, littering is what you do with your little pieces of trash when you are done with them (this includes cigarette butts, which outnumber people in Spain by 10-to-1). On the street, in cafes (seriously, people just throw their napkins on the floor rather than leave them on the counter), and especially on the beach, people leave their paper bits to be cleaned up be someone else. The reason thsi system works is because every night (and sometimes several times a day) street sweepers and washers come along and give a mega-cleaning to the city. By morning it is immaculate. This is true in restaurants and on beaches too. Spanish tax dollars pay for a lot of services (they should, as people here are taxed well above 50% of their income) and expect a lot too. As an American, however, I find it physically painful to throw stuff on the ground, and as a result I walk around with a lot of paper scraps in my pocket. Also, there is no recycling of aluminum here, and I can't make myself throw out the cans we have. I keep hoping that while we're here an entire system of recycling will develop and I won't have to commit the cardinal sin of throwing away a can.

Of course when I get home, I'll miss the coffee. And the bread. And the jamón. And the 9:30 am start time for school. And the cheap, delicious fruits and vegetables. And the......

Spring in Europe, the time when Brussels sprouts!

The Grand Place, Brussels.

I couldn't help it.

Apart from the "interesting" experience with Ryanair (in a mid-western way, as in "Hmm, your new jell-o casserole is very interesting), our time in brussels was terrific. Truly terrific. It was green. It was cool. There are parts of Brussels that really remind me of Boston, and that gave me a warm fuzzy feeling inside as we took the metro around the city. The Belgian version of the "T" even goes both above and below ground, just like the beloved green line of my youth.

Where was I?

Oh yeah, Brussels. While thousands and thousands of people were stranded in lovely locales, like the Frankfurt airport departure lounge, we spent our volcano-imposed vacation in the lovely home of our friends Carmen and Gilbert, and their daughter Elisa. We spent our days exploring different parts of the historical district of Brussels, and our evenings relaxing with friends. We were thankful for our particular plight every single day.

For people who have never been to Brussels, there are a few really important talking points:

• It is the capital of Belgium, and has about 1 million inhabitants.
• It has two official languages: French, and Flemish (the Belgian version of Dutch).
• It is the capital of the European Union and so is filled with gov't functionaries.
• Brussels is famous for three products: Chocolate, lace, and beer.
• We tested notable varieties of two of the above (guess which ones?).

Ben and Chaia discovered very quickly that if you wander into a chocolate store (these are countless in Brussels), sooner or later someone that works there will offer you some of their products. We followed our kids into dozens of chocolate shops.

There is a big difference between drinking beer, and "drinkin' beer" (as my Kansas City family would say). In Brussels I did some of the former. This is not your sit-on-the-couch, drink-beer because-it's-there kind of experience. This is true high quality beer tasting, and Belgium produces some world-class beers. I tried a beer called "Tripel Karmeleit" (Ben called it "Chicken Caramelized") that was truly exceptional. I also tried a beer called (for real) "Delirium Tremens."

It's amazing. Someone, somewhere, called it "the best beer in the world." That, of course, is silly, as beer tastes are broad. It is, though, one of the best I have ever tasted.

Unfortunately the beer stores do not give out free samples. I tried wandering around for a while, just to make sure though.

TAKE IT BACK!!

Has anyone out there flown with Ryanair before?

You know the old adage, "if it seems to good to be true, it probably is?"

Yeah, that's Ryanair.

The four of us flew from Zaragoza (a teeny-weeny airport) direct to Brussels, capital of Belgium and of the European Union, for peanuts. Really, it only cost us 200 Euros round-trip! Think about it: That's 50 Euros per person (about $70) to fly two hours. that includes taxes and landing fees. CHEAP!

Of course, they allow no free checked bags, allow one, strictly-defined carry on per person (if you have a camera, purse, book, whatever beyond your one bag, you can't CARRY it on the plane), and sell all consumables aboard including water. The seats also don't tilt back AT ALL, and there are no seat back pockets (nothing to put in them anyways). There are also no assigned seats. For an extra 10 Euros you can get "priority boarding" which allows you to get on the plane with the other "priority boarders" before the regular schmoes. They don't pre-board kids and babies either.
And if you don't print your own ticket, they charge you 30 Euros to print yours for you.

But hey, $70 round trip to Belgium!!!

Until there is a problem....

Like a volcano.

Who knew?

The day after we arrived in Brussels for a 4-day visit with Ximo's sister Carmen (who I realized I hadn't seen since I was in high school...as a student), the Brynjolfsson volcano sneezed ash all over northern Europe. I know it isn't really called that, but it's the only Icelandic word I know and, as an aside, was the longest word I could spell in first grade. Just ask my best friend at the time, Alan Brynjolfsson.

So our return flight was cancelled. No problem, right? Hundreds of thousands of people stranded, flights cancelled, all one has to do is to re-book the flight.

Hello, Ryanair.
Hello, Ryanair?
Hmm.........

Ryanair has a special customer service number to call if you need to talk to a person (call me crazy, but...). Oh yeah, to call costs 1 Euro PER MINUTE. Not that it matters, because for four days they didn't answer the phone.

I thought about going to the airport, but it was closed. So no one from Ryanair was there to see me either.

Which leaves the web site. www.ryanair.com is so complicated that I swear I once got to a page with nothing but a picture of the Minotaur, and to get back to the homepage I had to rip the battery out of my computer. The website told me, in very clear terms, that I had to change my flight because it had been "volcanoed." no problem.

Except that on Ryanair, once you print your tickets you can no longer change your flight. The page I ended up on told me to click on the "change flights" button on the left side of the page.

There were no buttons of any kind on the left side of the page.

Eventually I gave up, figured that "some day I'll find someone that actually works for Ryanair and get this part fixed" (even thinking this now makes me giggle a little), and I booked a brand new flight.

Which also got "volcanoed."

Unfortunately the "other flight," in addition to being cancelled, cost 240 Euros one-way. Funny how that works. In the end we found, at the last minute, a flight to a different city in Spain (Girona), and after 4 extra days in Brussels (which, by the way, were wonderful and I'll write about them TOMORROW) we flew out of northern Europe and back to Spain. Then allwe had was a 7-hour train ride home.

RENFE, the Spanish train company, lets you take as many bags as you want.

And their offices are staffed with real, smiling people.

Who will talk to you for free.

One-a-day, plus photo.

Here goes:

After Semana Santa (which is really "10-days Santa") life got more or less back to normal. that is to say, we didn't have school Monday (still Semana Santa), I don't teach on tuesday, and on Wednesday I went to Madrid with Pat to get her (and our suitcase full of ski boots, helmets, pants, etc.) on the flight back to the US. I also spent the rest of the day engaged in a couple of my favorite pursuits this year: Museum visiting and eating. I engaged in the former at the Joaquín Sorolla museum/house, and the latter at an Indian restaurant (FINALLY, some spicy food!). Sorolla was Spain's best known impressionist painter, and since he hailed from Valencia, most of his best work deals with the Mediterranean sun on the beach. His home in Madrid was converted into a museum displaying his best works along with some original furniture and Sorolla's ceramic collection. At 3 Euros, well worth the trip.

Image courtesy of: http://www.canvaz.com/sorolla/joaquin-sorolla-bastida-023.jpg

After returning to Zaragoza, I had 2 days of classes, a weekend (Ben's soccer game, of course), and 2 more days of classes, then we departed for Belgium. That goes in tomorrow's blog, Justyne.

April showers bring visitors and "Semana Santa"

A number of things have kept me from posting recently, including visitors and volcanos (or is it "volcanoes?"). I'll try and remember the past month, giving some special attention to Holy Week here in Zaragoza.

After Pat's sister Paula departed for the US we entered our week of "descanso" or "vacaciones," SYA's spring break. Pat did a time-share exchange for a week in an apartment on the Mediterranean coast, between Barcelona and Valencia, in a town called Alcocéber (or Alcossebre, if you are speaking Catalán, the language spoken commonly along the northern Mediterranean coast of Spain). We were in a cute, little apartment in a HUUUUUGE apartment complex (well, huge by my Bethel, Maine standards). The apartment had a giant balcony (sweet) and a couple of swimming pools, and was a 5-minute walk from a really nice beach.

Now the Twilight Zone-like part: The beach was empty. As in, there were usually enywhere from 10-20 people at any time on the whole beach. The water? Clean, nice little waves, not super-cold.
There were only two swimmers in the sea all week: Ben, and Chaia.

Apparently "beach weather" in Spain only means "super-hot, too-crowded-to-see-the-water, between-June 15-and-September 15 weather." At least that's what it said on the sign next to the giant, empty swimming pool: Open June 15-Sept. 15, 10AM-8PM. Now, I'm no cold weather swmmer. I don't even like to go in the ocean off of Maine in the heat of summer. but C'MON!! It was in the mid-sixties while we were in Alcossebre, and sunny. The swimming pool was as empty as the beach, which was as empty as the condo complex.

We were early. So we enjoyed something rare and special: An empty, sunny, kinda-sorta-warm beach.

We also took a couple of day trips to Peñíscola and Valencia. Peñíscola is a beach town that also has a waterfront mini-mountain, crowned with a castle built by the Knights Templar. It was also the temporary home of one of the Popes, at a time when there were actually two Popes at the same time (it's true, look it up- "Antipope Benedict XIII").

Castle, Peñíscola.

We also went to Valencia, about an hour south of us, to visit Ximo (our friend who picked us up in the laundry truck last July). We had a terrific day visiting the historic center of Valencia as well as the VERY modern Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències (City of Arts and Sciences, in Catalán). A truly terrific day and evening spent in Ximo's company. Here are a couple of shots from that day:

After a few days on the beach, as headed back to Zaragoza for one of Spain's really special events: Semana Santa, or Holy Week. During this time between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday, in a number of cities in Spain (although I'm told that Sevilla and Zaragoza are notable places), statues of Jesus are carried through the city by organizations called cofradías, in reenactments of the stations of the cross. Each day various cofradías (origially "brotherhoods," but many members are now women and children) follow different routes through the city, accompanied by drummers, incense-carriers, and women in black. It's very cool pageantry, and tends to shake Americans to their politically-correct cores. It seems that the KKK co-opted the costumes of the cofradías, which pre-date the Klan by several hundred years. It takes a bit of getting used to:

The processions, very LOUD here, I might add, go on throughout the city day and night, as there are probably 25 cofradías in Zaragoza. the other thing I forgot to mention is that they also carry/push large floats of very realistic-looking scenes of the Passion of Christ along with them. the biggest procession of them all happens on viernes Santo (Good Friday), and it's more than 2 hours long as it passes any given point, with all of the brotherhoods (their outfits Do give a whole new spin on the word "brotherHOOD") participating. And, of course, the BIIIG procession came right down our street, right under our window.


It was a loud evening.

Next up: "I don't know where I'm-a gonna go, when the volcano blows."

Time for visitors

Spring is sprung, part 2.

We have “made it” past the winter season. Now, those of you who really know me are scratching their heads, trying to figure out the last sentence. I am a winter-lover, the kind of person who greets winter storm warnings with a warm, fuzzy feeling. I love winter. Winter to me is fireplaces, snowshoeing, lots and lots and lots of skiing, darts, apres-ski gigs, and a world full of white , with more white falling as I watch mesmerized through my living room or classroom windows.

We had none of that here.


Zaragoza is, as I’ve said repeatedly, a very dry place. It gets somewhat cold, and is consistently windy, but that’s about it for winter. It snowed in Zaragoza twice this winter, and the longest that the snow lasted was a few hours. No one has a fireplace. I haven’t played a gig since last June. All of the dart boards that I have found this year (even in the “Irish” pubs) are the hideous electronic kind that I liken to a mirage of an oasis in the desert; the kind that that turns to sand just as you reach down to drink. I have been skiing here this winter, and the skiing has been really great. Ben and I skied at three outstanding Pyrenees ski areas this winter, for a total of 12 days for Ben and 6 for me (Andee and Chaia skied one day too). But six days of skiing for me usually means a week in which I skied both Saturday and Sunday. It was great, but it was a bit of a tease as well.

So winter is over. Hurray! On with spring, and spring brought us a visitor. Frances Soctomah came all the way from Bethel to photograph some of the shmoogly-googly-gillions of churches and castles to be found in and around Zaragoza, for her Senior Point project. I spent a couple of days with her, showing her around to some of my favorite places, visiting some local sights, and going to Jaca and Huesca to see the cathedrals there. While here, and staying with Alejandro’s family, Frances also got to sit in on my classes (I’m sorry she missed the one on abortion, she would have been fascinated).

After Frances left, we got to spent time with some other visitors (we are now entering the final phase of our year in Spain, the part of the year when lots of people come to see us): My mother-in-law and her sister. We couldn’t have asked for more gracious guests, and we took them to all of our favorite tapas haunts, historical sights, and Barcelona. Pat (my mother-in-law) and Paula (her sister) traveled, while here, to Jaca and to Madrid while we finished up our week leading into spring break, otherwise known as Semana Santa (holy week).

THAT week will have to wait for my next entry, but suffice to say for now that it will include a trip to Valencia, and several days on the beach.

Here, to end, is a photo of one of the manymanymanyMANY Holy Thursday processions in Zaragoza:

Hmmmmm........

Spring has sprung!

Before I get to the recap of the past few weeks, I have to tell everyone what I'm doing right now. As in, right RIGHT now. I'm in a classroom at School Year Abroad, "teaching" a class. Let me explain, lest you think I'm either giving a test or simply ignoring my students: The class is a once-a-week, two-hour, international conversation class that we call Joven Erasmus (Young Erasmus), after the European international student exchange program. Every Thursday, from 6-8pm, I gather with eight SYA students (chosen through an application process) and eight students that come, in pairs, from four local private schools. The class has a simple construct: Students must sit with someone from "the other country" on their left and right, Americans must speak Spanish and Spaniards must speak English, and each class meeting will be led/moderated by one American and one Spaniard. That's it for the rules. Oh, one more thing: The topics for each class are chosen during the first meeting, and students sign up to be teachers for each meeting. The topics range from differences in school systems, to youth culture, to poverty, to movies and cultural statements, etc. Today's topic is abortion.

And its awesome.

For an hour now I have listened to 16 young people respectfully, powerfully, emotionally, tackle one of the hot button topics of our time. Seriously, when was the last time you heard people, especially high school students, struggle to define for themselves and others how to define "human being", "human rights", "life", and "responsibility." No slogans, no name-calling, no disrespect, just good honest debate. Seriously, this is the best class I teach all year, and I don't have to do anything. I'm the guy with the keys; I turn off the lights at the end of the day, and that's about it. I only posed one question, and let them run with it for a while: "How do we determine what the rights and responsibilities of the father are in questions of abortion? For example, what if a woman wants to terminate and the "other chromosomal half" (sometimes called "father") doesn't? Or vice versa?"

And then I shut up.

Honestly, the hardest part of this class for me is to STAY shut-up, but I think I do a pretty good job of it.

OK, the descanso (break) is over, so i have to go back to not talking. I'll post the rest later tonight. Suffice to say, it is in the upper sixties right now, and sunny almost every day. I could get used to this...

El tiempo vuela...

Wow, so much for a post a week. And now a month has gone by...

Lets see. When I last wrote we were in Andalucía.
That was a great trip, enjoyed by all. In total, we visited Sevilla, Granada, Córdoba, and a couple of little towns in the olive producing region of Jaén (I thought that I had seen olives before, but oh man, Jaén is unbeLIEVABLE. Everywhere is covered with olive treees). In Jaén we visited an olive oil factory (vinyard? oliveyard?) and saw the process necessary to convert olives into Euros. We also saw two towns with medieval centers that were interesting, and cold.

Very cold.

Well, okay, very cold for Spain, when you're improperly dressed.

Spain experienced a very rare cold snap during our trip to Andalucía in which cold winds descended on Granada, Córdoba, and us. It actually snowed north of Córdoba (we saw that from the warm safety of our train). We, of course, went to southern Spain fully prepared...for spring. I can hear the echoes of my family's voices now..."Thanks a lot Dad, for telling us not to bring winter clothes." Poor Ben suffered through a week of short hair and cold wind. Poor Ben, but poorer Dad.

After the Andalucía trip we returned to Zaragoza and to a more school-like schedule. There's not much to say about this period, except to say that Ben and I got to take a couple of terrific ski trips to the Pyrenees (to Formigal and Cerler), and we continued our weekly ration of "futbol-sala" games (Ben's 5-on-5 soccer league that has come to own our Saturdays).

Oh, and we had a leak in our apartment.

A big leak.

A leak that has probably destroyed one of the rooms in our downstairs neighbor's apartment. Apparently it has been going on for some time (read: years) without being addressed. Ah, the joy of landlords. After spending a full day vleaning out the "junk room" in our apartment in order to turn it into a cute little bedroom, perfect for a 10-year old who has been displaced so we can accomodate guests, we have now lost the cute little bedroom to water damage. The wall has been ripped open, the wallpaper torn down... and now we wait until the owners decide to fix it.

I'm not holding my breath.

One other thing of note to report is that Andee and I went out for Valentine's dinner (about a week after Valenltine's day, but what the heck) we arrived at a very nice restaurant at 8:45. We were tuned away. We were too early, they didn't start serving dinner until 9pm at the earliest. The earliest. Mind you, this was a SUNDAY night, not really a big, late night out in Spain. And it was a week after Valentine's, so no big reason to go out late. We were just (once again) the early Americans.

The dinner, for those of you who are still reading, was terrific. We ate at an Argentinian grill (well known in Spain for good food). We plan on going back sometime.

When its not so cold, and when we can stay up and eat until after 9pm.

An Andalusian Doug

I almost kept my promise to write once a week.

In the past week (or so) we have visited Pamplona (no one was there, and no one will be there until july, when Pamplona hosts not the only but the most famous "Running of the Bulls"), we visited a cool area of Aragón known as the Cinco Villas (Fernando II was born here; he's the Catholic king ,and other half of the tag team along with Isabel, that conquered the Iberian peninsula and chucked out and forced the conversion of all the Jews and Muslims- so much for diversity).

We also returned the car that our friend Ximo loaned us while he was in Senegal for three weeks. It was really liberating to have a vehicle for a while. Shopping trips could be spontaneous, and we could buy more than 2 bottles of water at a time. Weekends got us out of the city. Ben's soccer games became soccer games, rather than soccer games surrounded by a half-day adventure on Zaragoza's buses. And I got to drive an Alfa Romeo for three weeks.

Now we are in Sevilla, Spain's third largest chttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edhLosefD0Qity and the capital of Andalucia. Andalucia is known for many things Spanish: Olive oil, Gypsies, Flamenco music, guitars, bulls, the Costa del Sol, white buildings, and 115 degree summer afternoons.

It is not summer now, thankfully.

Chances are if you have any stereotypical notions about Spain, they revolve around Andalusian culture. the city is big, baroque, labyrinthine, and has great food. it also has the Plaza de España, one of the prettiest, most impressively beautiful outdoor spaces in Spain and maybe anywhere. If you watched Star Wars: Episode II (I know, it was TERRIBLE, but it was Star Wars, so I watched it), then you have seen this plaza. check out the YouTube clip listed here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edhLosefD0Q

George Lucas, king of computer generated scenery, found a real place that was as out-of-this-world-looking as any set he could bild/digitize, and so filmed here. Queen Amidala flew here, but we got to the plaza by horse-drawn carriage.



We have visited the cathedral (one of Columbus' tombs is here, the other in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic), the barrio Santa Cruz (the old Jewish quarter, until aforementioned Fernando came along), and a number of notably narrow streets graces with sidewalks exactly one sneaker wide. And unlike in Zaragoza, we hear English spoken everywhere. This is a VERY touristy city, even now, out of tourist season. Ben and Chaia stop and stare/comment every time an English speaker walks past us, as if they were little dogs and another dog walked by on the street. By the way, Chaia is now officially a "señorita", complete with a polka-dotted Flamenco dress, a red flower for her hair, and black velvet shoes. Her fan is back in ZAZ.

Tomorrow we will visit the Alcázar of the Spanish kings in Sevilla and then head to our next stop on this 6-day tour. Maybe our hotel there will have wi-fi too.


Photo courtesy of http://www.trekexchange.com/images/Plaza_de_Espana.jpg

Good skiing, better food!

First of all I'M SORRY JUSTYNE!

There, that should just about cover it.

January in Zaragoza is winter, no doubt. Everyone here talks all the time about how COLD it is. I suppose that "cold" is a fairly relative term, since it rarely drops below zero degrees Celsius (32 Fahrenheit) in the city. Before coming here everyone talked about the cold. yeah, yeah. Excuse me, but we're from Maine. Gouldies wear T-shirts on days when the temps get up to 32!

They never told me about the wind.

El Cierzo is the wind that comes down into the Ebro river valley and knocks down trees and American teachers on bicycles. And anytime the sky is clear and the temps drop below about 4 degrees, the wind picks up. And picks up papers, dust, and small children. And THEN it feels cold. I don't usually complain about temperatures, but man, even I wear a bufanda out in the winter in Zaragoza. A bufanda is a scarf, usually worn as an identifying badge by Europeans and language teachers. Go ahead, look at your language teacher (or someone you know that does teach language, at least a European one). She's wearing a scarf, isn't she? if not, she wore one yesterday.
(By the way, I say "she" because 95% of all language teachers are women. Male French teachers also wear scarves).

Well, anyone that knows us knows that winter means skiing. Fortunately we are only about 2 short hours from some really great skiing, in the Pyrenees mountains separating Spain and France. Ben and I have been a few times, to a couple of different mountains (Andee and Chaia also came once). The biggest ski area in Aragón
is Formigal
Formigal base lodge

(an Aragonese word meaning "anthill." I don't know if anyone in Spain sees how amusing it is to call a popular ski area "The Anthill." On a typical Saturday it looks just like one. Also, Ben and I spent a rainy day skiing Candanchú, a ski area right on the French border (you look across the valley into France as you ski). Finally, Ben has spent this week skiing at Cerler, the highest ski area in the Pyrenees, with his school. Many schools in our area take a week during the winter called Semana Blanca (White Week) and go to a mountain to ski and play. Ben experienced his first week ever away from family skiing the tippy-top of the Pyrenees. Did I mention how jealous I am?

In addition to skiing this month we have eaten some really great food, and I wanted to share some of it with you. Here are some really good things to eat in Zaragoza:

1. In my last blog I wrote about New Years Eve. I'm not going to repeat about that feast here, except to say that Spaniards love to eat, and love to talk about eating while they eat. My kind of people.
2. Huevos Rotos. Imagine a meal that includes scrambled eggs, ham, potatos, and a beer. Or a glass of wine. That's right, American breakfast meets Spanish beverage. At night. This is a typical late evening meal/snack and its delicious. Don't try to order this in the morning, it isn't available. Except for the beer and wine.
   
3. Champiñones. The New York Times published an article last year about the Expo that took place in Zaragoza in the summer of 2008. In that article the author (can't remember the name) raved about a tapas bar called La Cueva en Aragón in which there was only one type of tapas served: A tower of grilled mushrooms drenched in garlic butter served on a round of baguette, crowned by a mini shrimp. Yes, it is THAT good!
4. Patatas Bravas. Anne Osborn (I hope she sees this!) fell in love with what she called "brave potatos" when she was in Spain last March. this simple plate of cooked potato chunks slathered in aioli sauce and mildly hot red sauce, is everywhere, and really good. We found the BEST by far, at a tapas bar called Erzo. If you are in ZAZ, find it.
5. Los Victorinos. This isn't a food, but rather a very special tapas place run by a true artist. You won't find the types of snacks available here anwhere else, and if you do, you might find a place with one or two tapas as magnificent as the sixteen or so available in this tiny laboratory of gastronomy. Just a couple of possibilities: "Symphony of mushrooms in port wine sauce over toasted baguette", and "sliced pork tenderloin and goat cheese." Oops, forgot the "roasted red pepper stuffed with braised oxtail." Everything here is incredible, and a ten minute conversation with the owner-chef-artist si worth the trip.
   

I am going to try and break my "once every three weeks" mold, and will try and write once a week for the next three weeks. Lets see how it goes. If it doesn't work, don't worry. Justyne will be on my case.

Images: Google Earth, and Griffin Mose's cellphone camera.

Navidad, Navidad, pronto llegará...

Much has happened since my last posting! Christmas has come and gone, as has my mother and many parents of SYA students, who went on break from the 22nd until...well, tomorrow, the day after Spain's big present-giving day, Día de Los Reyes (3 kings day, the celebration of the adoration of the baby Jesus by the three kings). Let me back up a bit...

Christmas in Spain is an interesting thing. As the world has gotten to be a smaller place, Spain has begun to adopt the traditions of others as their own. The combination of modern American Christmas traditions and older Spanish practices gives the holiday season a bit of a schizophrenic air. First of all, when does the holiday season begin? For us its an easy answer: The day after Thanksgiving. But what to do when there IS no Thanksgiving? I discovered this year that holidays need boundaries, something to tell them when to begin and end. Here in ZAZ, Christmas sort-of dribbled in bit by bit, starting sometime in mid November and clearly arriving some time in mid December. The streets in our neighborhood were lit by holiday lights (they don't look specifically Christmas-y, as they are white, blue and yellow..kind of a Chanukah-meets-tanning booth festivity if you like) and the big department stores were decked out in giant snowflake lights. The snowflakes make me giggle a bit, as Zaragoza almost never receives snow of any amount. There were a few flakes around the 17th of December, but the snow was gone by the afternoon. You can also see signs of Santa Claus here and there. And scenes of Bethlehem. The Belén scenes are the big deal in Zaragoza, and don't just have a manger with Mary, Joseph, and Jesus. they include hills, buildings, water mills, flocks of sheep, and Roman fortresses with roman guards high over the town. And in the distance, the three kings make their way to the manger. Some stores have little scenes, some have big ones, some, like the banks, have HUGE ones. In the plaza in front of the Basilica there is a Belén scene so big that it takes 1o minutes to walk through it, looking at life-sized statues of people, donkeys, Roman forts, and an angel up in a tree next to a working water wheel powered by a real moving stream (see below).

What is missing from all of this are Christmas trees in lit windows. From our street the only tree that can be seen is our little, artificial tree. There are no other trees in any windows on our block, nor on any block around us. People tell us that other families have them, but that mostly the trees are inside the house and can't be seen. I had never thought of this before, but we display our trees as much for the neighbors as for ourselves in the U.S. In fact, here in Zaragoza there aren't really any lights up in ANY windows (at least facing the street). I have been searching on Youtube for images of lit neighborhoods to get my fix of the lights this year.

And, of course, everywhere are references to the kings. Epiphany, or Kings' day, is January 6th (today). Spanish kids put their shoes on the windowsill (or under the window if you happen to be on the 6th floor) along with some food for the kings and their camels on the night of the 5th. On the evening of the 5th there was a giant parade on our main street to welcome the kings to Zaragoza that included fairies, wizards, warriors, jugglers, flame throwers, accompanying Melchor, Gaspar, and Baltasar, the three kings, on their giant floats. At the end of this blog you can see a short video of the parade, set to music by the Alford trio (recorded as a present to Andee).

On the 17th my mother arrived from Bethel, experiencing the coldest few days we are likely to have this year (about 29 degrees and REALLY WINDY). We had a wonderful visit, taking her to all of the cool places we have discovered and cooking all of the yummy things we regularly eat here. On Christmas Eve we had the traditional meal of soft-shell tacos. Yes, tacos. This is not a Spanish tradition, as tacos are really not eaten here. This is a family tradition going way back. We eat special, secret-recipe tacos (our advisees know exactly what I mean here). After Christmas we took a three day trip to Madrid and Toledo to visit museums and monuments. and it rained. A lot. Every day. Just ask Ben about this picture.Okay, maybe I exaggerate. Ben was standing next to the cathedral in Toledo here, discovering what the functional purpose of a gargoyle is (Renaissance drainpipe).

After a really nice visit my mom left on the 30th, to rest from her vacation. We returned to Zaragoza for New Year's Eve (Nochevieja) with Alejandro and his parents. We had a fantastic meal of (traditional) seafoods, followed by grilled lamb and steak. Both Ben and Chaia ate like champions (steamed mussels+ meat on the bone=happy kids). Watching the ball drop in Spain is a bit more of a personal thing, as at precisely midnight, on each stroke of the count of twelve, Spaniards eat twelve grapes. If the clock you are using happens to have a fast chime, then you wind up with a mouth stuffed with grapes. Needless to say, the traditional New Year's kiss does not combine well with the Spanish tradition, and laughing about the awkwardness of trying to combine the two just makes the whole thing worse. Ben and Chaia saw 2AM for the second time this year, and we all slept until 10:30 on the 1st.

Happy new year all, may your 2010 be happier in all ways than your 2009!!