I admit I have been remiss in my blogging. Rest assured though that I still have lots to say and lots to share. After Christmas we went on an eight day road trip to the south of Spain (it just sounds cool, doesn’t it?), we visited three different cities and the Mediterranean Sea, we attended the Reyes Mangos festival, and returned home to a freezing cold house and a supersized electric bill. Ironic, huh? I have thoughts on the upcoming year, hundreds of pictures to organize, upload and comment on, thoughts on the ubiquitous Spanish plazas and on everyday life here. I have more Spanish to learn and more trips to plan. I have kids to get caught up on their “American” school. And quite clearly I have to share with you!
We have friends arriving this week! We are SO excited!! The girls have been counting down the days for months now. They are SO excited to have friends that speak English. It’s a little hard to play, especially make-believe play, when the other kids don’t speak the same language. The girls play with their friends is much more physical….tag, piggy-back rides, pushing, wrestling, chase. Activities that connect but don’t require a lot of verbal cues. It was interesting to realize and watch how they found a way to connect. We’ll be out and active and travelling while our friends here as well. And more importantly, we’ll be refreshing our souls with good friends.
We have our Lonely Planet guide, we’ve listened to podcasts and residents of Spain often tell us what we MUST see. It can be pretty overwhelming and daunting to figure out what we want to see and what we’re okay missing. While in total we will be here in Spain for 8 months it’s not a vacation every day or every weekend but we’re trying to see as much as we can before we have to leave Spain and the Schegen area on June 30th when our visa’s expire.
The Alcazar of Segovia is rumored to be the inspiration behind Cinderella’s Castle in Walt’s Disney World. I kept telling the girls that we were going to see Sleeping Beauty’s castle. Which I’ll admit was a little misleading. They probably would have preferred Walt Disney World but the castle was pretty cool none-the-less. We paid an extra 2 euro’s to climb 152 steps up the Tower of Juan II. It was pretty cool; but I had an image of a circular room with a few small windows. Like Rapunzel. Instead it was a rooftop with the circular columns we see from the bottom cut in half.
The interior of the Alcazar was pretty amazing as well!
After touring around we decided to try to find the view from the bottom of the Alcazar. And it was quite a nice little impromptu hike. It was great!
All the last week at school the girls have different activities going on in celebration of Christmas. I received a Circular Navidad outlining the week. Lavender had a Christmas program on Monday. They sang songs to the parents that they had been practicing. It was really cute. It’s interesting in that I thought Lavender would just absorb the Spanish language and come home speaking it effortlessly. I thought she would be the first in the family to learn. Her teacher and nearly all the teachers of the 3,4 & 5 year olds speak Spanish exclusively. It really hasn’t been the case. I think she knows the least amount of Spanish of any of us.
October had her program for the parents on Wednesday and Scarlett on Thursday. Both were very brief but fun to see. I nearly broke out in tears before October’s performance. “I’ll be Home for Christmas” was playing as an interlude between classes.
On Wednesday, there was a storyteller coming to all the lower grades. On Thursday, the kids went to sing Christmas Carols at the nursing home in town. And then on Friday, each grade performed their Christmas song to the rest of the school and they had a visit from…well, I’m not really sure…it’s not Santa…the translator app says it’s a visit from “The Royal Pages”. I think maybe it was the three wise men.
There are more dogs than kids in Seattle and I’m pretty sure there are more kids than dogs here in Buitrago. But there is definitely more shit here in Buitrago than I have ever seen in Seattle…or it’s suburbs for that matter. I have seen exactly one, ONE dog owner here in town that had a little plastic bag of dog dukie tied to it’s dog’s collar. There are no little doggie poop bags provided at parks. I’ve seen but one owner have a bag with them. I can tell you there are party hats EVErYWHeRe. It’s disgusting. It’s gross. It’s on the middle of the sidewalks. It’s in the middle of the playground. It’s on your front steps. It’s really quite outrageous. Here’s our front door yesterday. This isn’t out of the ordinary. It’s…have I mentioned…absolutely disgusting!
Our town of Buitrago hosts a living nativity for four days in December. It’s a big deal and has going on for quite some time. And I’ve been looking forward to it for awhile. I believe around 2,000 – 2,500 people show up for it each night it’s put on. We watched the streets get blocked off and swarms of people head into the city center all day. I followed the directions on when to show up and where we would be going. What I failed to remember is that things happen here…..when they happen. So, nearly two hours after we arrived the program finally began. These two hours mostly consisted of us standing in line, eating loaves of bread hastily purchased, pleading with the kids to not crawl in the street and then waiting some more in a crowded mass until the program began. Jeff, October & Lavender left before it even started. Scarlett and I stuck it out. We had left at 6:15pm and returned home at 9:45pm (it’s a 5 minute walk away). Although at one point, I wondered if I had been standing with my knee’s locked and what exactly would happen should I pass out in a crowd of 2,000. I know what to expect now and we’ll try again tomorrow night but skip the early arrival and the welcoming portion of the program. That part was in Spanish anyways and it was so crowded there was nothing we could actually see. But the living nativity scenes were pretty amazing. There are 39 scenes winding through the castle and castle walls ending with Mary, Joseph, Baby Jesus and the three wise men. I imagined it more of a “working” farm sort of thing where the actors, acted out the scenes they were in. Instead they sat silent and completely still while this crowd of 2,000 walked past and took pictures. The actors are people from our village and surrounding villages. The girls recognized several of their classmates and one of Scarlett’s sat silent and unflinching as Scarlett loudly whispered her name and waved to her. Check out the complete set of pictures here.
Shortly after we arrived and the girls began school, Scarlett was very excited to learn her name in Spanish is Scarletta. And since then she has been signing her name as such and asking her classmates and her family to call her Scarletta. I guess I can be glad it’s not a completely different name. Although it’s pretty much the same I seem to butcher the correct “espanol” pronunciation…every….time. I simply say “Vi-O-let-A” but according to the small people inhabiting my home it should be: “BEE-O-let-AH”. Maybe I’ll get it right for the plane ride home.
We took a day trip to a city north of us, Burgos last weekend. I wanted to go visit the Castle ruins that are there as they have siege tunnels underground you can walk through and large winding stone staircases. It wasn’t a must-see attraction online or even by reviewers. Many reviewers had said it would have been way cooler and the siege tunnels even better had the damn French and Napoleon not blow the place up. Unfortunately, by the time we found our way to castle it was closed. We missed it by a few minutes! Argh! There was a complete lack of signage to the castle. It was clear the the castle ruins was not a major tourist attraction but nonetheless, I was disappointed. We did find a rather impressive playground (at least for those we have seen in Spain – they are all pretty plain and generic with few pieces) that we promised we’d take the kids back to. And after leaving the closed castle, being shuttled into one-way narrow streets and out to the main road we eventually found our way back to the playground. I’m sure this will be the highlight that the kids remember.
We left the house late, we got lost, we had few snacks, we had no extra clothes. It really wasn’t a well planned out trip but it did end up being a great one. At the playground, Lavender had an accident (remember no spare clothes??) but luckily October had pants on under her dress so her pants got sacrificed to Lavender. And while Lavender now had dry pants, she had pee soaked tennis shoes. We leave the playground to go find the cathedral. This is on the must-see lists so we were off to find it. And we could see it. But we just…couldn’t….get….there. The snacks have all been consumed. October’s hungry and letting us know every….three…seconds. I continue driving in hopes of finding the cathedral, taking some pictures, finding some food and heading home. I don’t have lofty goals at this point. I do however find the castle, the closed castle, again in searching for the cathedral. We find a dirt lot by the castle wall, park and head off to find food. I’m really not hopeful. It seems like the place is shutting down for the night. It is a Sunday on a holiday weekend. I see the top of the cathedral poking over some buildings and hastily snap some pictures. I assume this is as close as I’ll get. Lavender is holding up her pants as we hurriedly look for food, to which we stumble into a major plaza of Burgos right off the Cathedral entrance filled with holiday lights, holiday vendors and restaurants. Burgos is known for it’s Morcilla or blood sausage. Unfortunately, we were too hungry to try anything local. Pizza it was! I inadvertently ordered morcilla last time we were in Madrid (I thought it was hamburger) and it was good. It was even October’s favorite tapa that day. Jeff told me what it really was and I just couldn’t order a second after that.
Having our bellies full. We were able to explore and enjoy the plaza. It was cold. October had a dress on and no one had their hats with them but I was the only one who seemed to mind the cold. The girls rode the Carousal, we went for a tourist train ride around the city, the girls had a gigantic doughnut, Jeff had mulled wine, we took pictures and enjoyed seeing all the holiday vendors. I was really glad we didn’t quit and leave after we, also, couldn’t find our way to the cathedral. I was really glad we stuck around for the holiday lights to come on. The town was just coming awake after dinner and we would have missed it. And I’m really glad that October’s internal thermostat is set high! I never could have wandered around for hours with bare legs!
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