Today’s thoughts, from Jon

1. In search of...

We were given a very specific list of school supplies to be bought for each child, and of course the list was in Spanish. Even with Google Translate, it was very difficult to figure out what we were supposed to buy. For example, one item was listed as 2 sobres de plástico tamaño A4 para deberes. According to Google, this translates to 2 plastic bags for homework size A4. Plastic bags?

With the help of a very nice clerk at our favorite grocery store (a la Target), I was able to get just about everything. Even the items that I thought would be very difficult, such as 4 cuadernos franceses milimetrados, marca Claire Fontaine de 96 hojas, tamaño cuartilla (a very specialized notebook) and Flauta dulce Höhner (a musical instrument – a recorder) was right there, in huge bins, waiting to be bought at the store.

But there was one special notebook that Nathan was supposed to get for math that eluded me: 1 cuaderno de cuadrícula grande (8x8 mm), con margen, tamaño cuartilla (matemáticas). Basically this is a small notebook (size cuartilla) of grid paper (cuadricula), but with pretty large (grande) grids, 8 by 8 mm. We tried grocery stores – several large chains – no luck. We  went searching for speciality stores that carry school supplies and paper products (papeleria). ¿Hay papeleria cerca de aqui? We tried to call papelerias that we found on the Internet or in a phone book, but of course this is Spain and no one answers the phone when you call.

So today I set out on an expedition to find this cuaderno. Put on my backpack, provisioned myself with water and food and a sturdy pair of shoes, printed a google map of papelerias, and hit the road. cuaderno de cuadrícula grande (8x8 mm), con margen, tamaño cuartilla or bust. Nathan’s teacher had told me this morning that other parents were having trouble finding this notebook as well, but I was up for the challenge.

To my surprise, I was able to find this notebook at the first store I went to – our local Al Campo grocery store! Somehow they either had resupplied since I was last there two days ago and/or they had heard from parents that this was something that they needed to have. Mission accomplished!

2. ¿Está usted en la línea?

In what I hope (somewhat skeptically) will be my last paperwork/bureaucracy errand for a while, I had to go today to an office to officially sign my children up for school. The way things work here is that all kids have to sign up to attend a school during the official school sign up period (which is usually in January for private schools and March for all other schools). Forms are submitted indicating students’ preferences for schools, and students are placed based on such things as proximity to the school, siblings in a school, where the parent works, etc.

Even though we had already chosen our school by March, we were not allowed to sign up during this enrollment period, since we were not yet legal residents of Madrid. So now that we are legal residents, we had to sign up for schools in what is called the ‘extraofficial’ enrollment period, which is now. Everyone who has moved to Madrid since March or who has had a chance in circumstances had to enroll at this time. So with passports and our empadronamento (residency document) in hand, I went to this office. Note that this office is only open from 12 to 2 pm each day, by the way. I arrived a few minutes after 12 to find a group of people loosely clustered around an unmarked door. Every so often, someone would come out of the office and someone would go in. I stood watching for about 15 minutes, trying to discern what was going on. Was there a line or an order? It did not seem that there was. Some of the people who were close to the door didn’t make a move when there was an opening – yet they seemed to be waiting for go into this office? And others who seemed to be a few feet away from the office made a break for the office when there was an opening, and no one seemed to be upset. I also noticed, in the 15 minutes of observing, that there were now a LOT of people ‘behind’ me in the hallway, seemingly waiting to get into this office.

I just about called Heather’s cousin at this point, seeking an explanation for cultural norms around this type of ill-structured line. For example, was everyone doing as I was, looking around and keeping a mental list of where he/she stood in the line? For example, I knew that I arrived after the guy in the suit and the guy in the izod shirt, but I arrived before the young guy in the t-shirt and the blond woman. Is this what we were all supposed to do – keep track of where we were in the ‘line’ and proceed in the proper order? Or was this just a free for all? I also almost asked someone, Are you in the line? Where is the end of the line? etc. But I didn’t think that revealing my ignorance would work to my advantage in this situation.

My theory after this event is that Spaniards have trouble with unstructured lines and are unwilling or unable to spontaneously impose structure on a line. Whenever you go anyplace that might involve a line, it is highly structured. In the post office, the bank, the deli counter of the supermarket, and all municipal offices, when you walk in, you immediately see a machine that dispenses numbers and a video screen that shows which desk one should go to when a number is called. Everyone congregates around the video screen, waiting for the magic ding dong sound that indicates that a new number is about to be posted.

Back to the school office situation, in the absence of one of these ding dong number machines, it seemed like people just didn’t know what to do. I didn’t see any aggressive jockeying for position, surprisingly – no one was trying to take advantage of this unstructured and rather lax scrum. Except for me, that is. I noticed that a man next to me had taken a position within striking distance of the door, so that when it next opened, he was able to get in first (not by rushing in, but a very casual stroll toward the door). When he did so, no one seemed to be upset or miffed at all, and no one tried to casually stroll a bit faster than he did and beat him to the door. So once he was in, I took up his position in this ‘on deck circle’, waiting for an opening. When the door opened, I casually strolled to the door, noticed that no one was casually racing me there, and went in. Paperwork was completed; all seemed to be in order. And when I left the office, no one seemed miffed at my move, and the ‘line’ seemed to be even longer.

3.  Immigration update

On Monday we went to an Immigration Office and successfully applied for our residence visa. We are not supposed to leave Spain for the next 45 days or so, until our card is ready for us to pick up. If we need to/want to leave, we have to get a special letter that allows us to re-enter the country. I really don’t know how people navigate this immigration bureaucracy on their own. Without our high priced immigration ‘specialist’, I don’t think we would be able to figure any of this out. Even simple things – which office to go for, for what – are completely opaque here. Perhaps this is the rest of the world seeking revenge on the US, for (what I’ve heard are) incredibly tedious and byzantine immigration procedures. Or perhaps this is just very normal Spanish bureaucracy.

4. Other minor successes

a. We are now on the email list for each grade at the school! Everyone seemed to know information that we didn’t, somehow. (For example, there is some sort of barbeque/fundraiser on this Sunday at the school, but we’ve been having a hard time finding out what it is and when it is happening. But I did manage to find a parent in the know today and get the scoop. The event is called a kermes – an interesting word that I couldn’t find in the Spanish dictionaries but Google again came through.) But now we receive the all-important news from the school, such as the lunch menu and an invitation to (what appears to be) a back-to-school night in a couple of weeks.

b. Nathan and Nora had very good days today at school and seem to be adjusting quite well. Seth had another difficult drop-off today and then had a rough afternoon. But based on my drop-offs at the school, Seth is currently one of 3-4 problem children in the class in terms of drop-offs. At least he is not the only one screaming for his Mommie when I leave (although he is the only one who is screaming for his Mommie in English).

c. We had another wonderful, glorious late afternoon/evening at the pool - Seth playing very nicely (even self-sufficiently for about 5 minutes), Nathan swimming and kicking the ball around, and Nora running around with her buddies. I even had time to have some brief grown-up conversations with Heather and with some of the other parents. We will be sad when the pool closes for the season after this weekend.