Sunday, November 04, 2012

An early B-day for Zoe

Tom flew back to the US Thursday morning to deliver Liberator to St. John, so we decided to celebrate Zoe’s birthday a week early.  Our kitchen is a bit spare for preparing anything complex, so we let Zoe choose between a bought or homemade cake. Zoe picked a bought birthday cake, the first one in her short 11 years. She picked a classic European chocolate mousse cake and it tasted scrumptious. Her b-day dinner menu was none other than mac and cheese with hot dogs (they really don’t have sausage per se other than chorizo, which isn’t quite the same).

Since Tom left, the week has been hard on all of us. The kids have thoroughly enjoyed having their dad around all the time, and they really miss him.  To add insult to injury, the rain started the same morning he departed. It continued throughout the day and that night just before I was leaving to collect Zoe from swim practice, a front moved through bringing a deluge of rain. It was so fierce that it reminded me of summer thunder storms in the east. The water ran in rivers down the streets, the gutters spewed torrents across the sidewalks soaking my shoes. By the time arrived at the rec center, I looked like a drowned dog, despite my rain gear.  When I arrived at the rec center, the news was broadcasting stories of flooding across Andalucía. Fortunately, the front passed by the time Zoe and I walked back, so it was just normal rain. 
Thursdays are the most challenging day of the week. It’s the one day both kids have sports at the local rec center: JT plays soccer from 6-7 and Zoe swims at 8 (until 10pm!). It’s a 20 minute walk each way to our apartment, so it makes more sense for us to hang out during the hour-long break than to walk home and back again. It’s the perfect time to feed the kids, but finding something substantial to eat in Spain at 7pm can be a real challenge. Our neighborhood is full of students, so there are several kebab and pizza shops. The rec center is in a newer more “suburban” part of the city and so far we’ve only managed to find a couple of bakeries who sell empanadillas and pizza. So we’ve had to adopt the practice of eating our main meal at 2pm and then the lighter snack after sports.

In that way and many others Spain is slowly seeping into our daily practices. The kids regularly go to sleep quite late.  One of best things about our apartment is it takes 3 minutes for the kids to walk to school. The sun rises quite late even with the time change, so they naturally sleep in. I admit that more than once we have awoken in a panic after 8:15 on a school day. When Zoe swims, she tries to have a siesta the following afternoon. We also eat a ton more “white” foods here. This is partly because the bakery near our house sells baguettes for .70 euro or about a dollar. Fresh baked bread is irresistible, so it’s become part of both our breakfast and lunch menu. Also, pasta and pizza are regularly rotated through the meal list and whole grain options don’t really exist.

Time is a great healer. While some of the days that Tom is gone will feel endlessly long, the weeks will inevitably fly. We have less than 6 weeks left and many other places to visit and things to experience in Andalucía before we leave.

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