A few random thoughts

So it's time for a few random thoughts. Forgive me if I've covered any of this territory before -- I'm not good about keeping track of old blog entries.

More on the 10K race this past Sunday:

1. At a certain point while everyone was lining up, I realized I felt terribly, terribly inadequate. Was it the fact that I was surrounded by completely fit, muscular runners, many of whom had just spent the last 15 minutes "warming up" by doing sprints up and down a hill? Or the fact that I had really no idea what to do, this being my first race and also me not understanding so much Spanish? No to both. The inadequacy in fact stemmed from the fact that our bibs listed our names. And I had, on average, two fewer names than most Spaniards in the race. What's a measly "Heather Hill" when you're surrounded by people named "Jose Ignacio Wert Ortega" or "Alfonso Gonzalez Hermoso de Mendoza?"

2. While out and about running during the day, I rarely see women. It's maybe a 10-1 ratio, men to women. But somehow, over 75 women show up for this race. Where are all these women training? And why don't women run for exercise on the streets? Or just run for exercise more generally here? In the US, running seems fairly evenly split by gender.

3. Spanish race spectators are a little more, shall we say, "encouraging" than American race spectator (or at least, Americans as I imagine/remember them). Cheering mainly takes the form of "vamanos!"  or "Anime!" As far as I can tell,  both mean "get moving!"

 Weather-related comments:

1. I finally have figured out the weather in Spain -- and it goes something like this: What you see today, you'll see tomorrow, and all this week, and perhaps all month. Bad weather seems to come in spurts; April was a cold, wet, windy month. All of it. February was horrendously windy and cold. The whole thing. Good weather similarly comes in spurts; late February-March was lovely (not usual to see people sunbathing beside the pool, which was a shock on February 28). And May is shaping up to be hot.

2. This consistent weather probably explains the almost total lack of Spanish weather technology. On some days back in April, you could kind of see on the regional radar that it's raining somewhere in your section of Madrid.  But often, it's raining and the radar claims it isn't, or it isn't raining and the radar claims it is. And the technology is fairly crude -- no street-level radar, or even names of towns on the map.

3. Spring came super-early here; we saw our first blooming trees in late February, and now (early May) we're heavily into wildflowers, honeysuckle, and very very green trees.

4. It's been fun to feel the return of hot weather. The strategizing about how to get from point A to point B while staying in the shade as much as possible; the sweet smell in the air in the mornings; the cool breeze in the afternoon. I've also been very thankful, as I was last summer, that our apartment is somehow designed to stay very cool, even on hot days.

New additions to our household:

1. So one of the French boys calls upstairs during dinner on Sunday. I couldn't really understand what he was saying, and neither could Nora, so she went downstairs to see what was up. And she returned, 10 minutes later, with a shoebox filled with silkworms (gusanos de ceda). I was a little surprised to be in sudden receipt of a box of worms, especially since my guess was that they require care and feeding (and thus violate my edict "no new living things in the Starhill household.") I ran into the French mom the next morning, who gave me the scoop on where to forage for mulberry leaves, and ever since we've been enjoying feeding the little things over breakfast. The mulberry tree, however, has seen better days -- it looks like it's food for several families' worth of silkworms.

2. Barn swallows have taken up residence either in our complex or nearby. They're not technically new additions to the household, but they do make the courtyard look like the fight scenes from Star Wars most mornings.