FIFA Update

Seth's now legal to play in the neighborhood soccer league games. Hoping Nathan and Nora's permissions come next week!

General update--December

Long time since I’ve last written. The last month has been challenging, as Jon’s mother passed away suddenly toward the beginning of the month. She was a lovely woman (I always said I got extremely lucky in the mother-in-law department), very gifted in the realm of social relations (which she passed directly to Nora), and also raised three sons who are exceptionally good people.  Jon traveled to Georgia for her funeral, and we’ll get a chance see Jon’s father again in a couple weeks.

I (Heather) also submitted 2.3 NSF grants in the last month. That made November even more fun.   

So somewhere there’s a long draft blog about our city (Alcobendas) and its amusements. But here’s the shorter-term update.

1. We are locked in battle with FIFA (yes, that FIFA) over whether our kids can play soccer matches in the town league (yes, I said town league). Apparently, there’s new regulations this year about foreigners playing in Europe – too many outsiders, apparently, had been moving to Europe to train their kids in high-quality soccer programs (guilty!). So Jon spends a lot of his time shuttling from one city office to another, getting official letters and getting official letters stamped and turning in letters, all with the hope that we can prove that we’re here because we love Spain and not to train our children in European-quality soccer.

One of the more interesting things about this is that Futbol Feminina (Nora) has taken a different approach to said approval process than the boys’ Futbol leagues.  So Jon goes through a completely separate set of steps for Futbol FIFA feminina and masculino (is that a Spanish word?). We kind of think of it as a competition – who’s going to come through with the documentation first?

2.  We are also locked in battle with the Spanish bureaucracy re: our residency cards, which we need to exit and re-enter the country legally. Last time we managed to procure the cards in about three months; this year there’s additional regulations (involving many more trips to the local immigration center, where we routinely see Mormon missionaries…hmmmm) so we’ll be happy to have the cards by spring.

3. Shocking, given the above: the local bus system started, in October, a new program that allows kids to buy a pass for the low price of $21 per month. We applied in mid-October, and received the cards Nov 1. The sprawling (4 companies in our local area!) bus system is generally dysfunctional (see past posts; the randomness of which bus is willing to pick you up when and where has continued….), so why the sudden functionality amid the general chaos?

4. It’s become apparent from the above that it takes a full-time parent to manage the household. One day, for instance, Jon was gone from 4:00 to 10:30 PM, dealing with various soccer practices, school meetings, and so forth.

5. Despite #1-4, we still love our adopted country. Exhibits:

A. Friends and cousins over for Spanish lunches (three times in the last month). Delightful. Amazing. Our kids play with one another, the adults actually have a conversation. Only in Spain can you really invest in time with friends and learn from them. Miraculously, Heather even follows a lot of the conversation. Though she still cannot conjugate a verb.

B. Heather has taken the Starhills to Parque de Atraciones (amusement park) twice (once with the cousins!). The Starhills were remarkably nice to one another during these trips and appreciative generally of a) amusement parks and b) beautiful late-autumn weather to enjoy (a).

C. Bread. From Montes brothers’ bakery/bar. Heather gets the bread most days, and treats herself to a morning there drinking decaf coffee when papers are in late-stage (paper copy) editing. It’s very motivating, actually. The only letdown: Montes has hired a new counterwoman who is totally pleasant and sweet. So despite the senior citizens’/customers’ best attempts to provoke her into an argument about the quality/availability of specific kinds of bread, there are no shouting matches this year. Hot-headed brother has made appearances in the shop, but does not seem allowed to deal with the public.

D. Our kids’ school. Our kids seem again to be having independent thoughts and ideas, which we attribute to good Jewish education (in Spanish). The school has gone out of its way to make our kids feel welcome, and we (well, Jon, whose Spanish is better) are enjoying going to weekly 7-year-old birthday parties.

E. Orthodonture. Cheap and extremely efficient in Spain.  Nora is excited to get her braces off in 6 months.

F. Decathlon. A French sporting-goods store, visited frequently by the Starhills as a weekend activity. They have a skateboard corral, a slack-line, a padel (relative of tennis) court, and other try-it-before-you-buy-it kinds of amusements for the kids. And low, low prices. Like $8 for Heather’s favorite fleeces (I bought two).  And $4 for boys’ track pants, which are essentially a disposable item in our household (holes in the knees from soccer). And $10 for kids’ sleeping bags, which proved helpful upon Nathan’s class trip to Toledo.

G. Churros. With small bowls of molten chocolate. On the way to Decathlon.  Enough said.

H. For two Euros, you get a beer and a tiny dinner (otherwise known as tapas). These tapas are at the bar associated with the kids’ soccer fields. Yes, there are bars associated with all soccer fields in Alcobendas. Enough said.

I. Spanish coffee. Yum. Note to the Starbucks in our neighborhood: stop making Starbucks-Spanish-coffee and just make regular Spanish coffee. As served in the 100+ bars in our area.  It is much better.

Kid update:

Nora had serious, stakes-attached exams last month, her first ever.  Heather’s realizing that middle school is about kids figuring out how to study (Jon, as a former middle school teacher, knew that already). Nora also spontaneously reported that “I’m realizing a lot of stuff lately. It’s like part of my brain suddenly turned on.” Welcome to Piaget’s formal-operational stage, sweetie.

Nathan continues to be a sweetheart. He’s noticeably changed since going to sleep-away camp this year, though: much more social and outgoing, and also more willing to be a joker. He’s got good friends at school and on his soccer team (which he’s allowed to practice with, but not play matches for).

Seth continues to be a force of nature. Around the house, he alternates between reading (occasional), examining and sorting his soccer cards (often), playing a “match” vs. Nathan with those Futbol cards (often) and on-the-move activities like practicing his goalie saves (often). He and Nathan have a particularly funny routine in which Seth says to Nathan only one word: “Cow?” and then next thing you know, both boys are on the rug wrestling. What a cow has to do with it, we don’t know.

Mexican food in the neighborhood

Jon and I went out on our usual Wednesday date walk today. First stop was the flea/fruit market (fleas and fruits in separate sections, thankfully). Heather bought six scarves for nine Euros, and Jon bought an assortment of fruits and veggies from a well-trafficked stand. Lacking Yelp or a similar crowd-rating app, our rule in Spain is "follow the people" -- meaning, always eat in restaurants where there's hoards of folks, buy in shops where we see lots of folks coming in/out, and so forth. At the fruit section of the market, there's two stalls that require a 20-minute wait to get the produce, and lots of stalls that have few customers. We don't know what makes the difference between the former and the latter, but we're not going to risk limp lettuce to find out.

We did, however, break the "follow the people" rule when finding a lunch place. It's hard to describe how many potential places there are to eat in Alcobendas/San Sebastien -- every commercial block has at least a couple bars, bar/restaurants, mesons, restaurantes, cervezerias, etc. We tried to apply the rule, but at only 1:30 in the afternoon, it was too early for restaurants to be full -- and in some cases, to even be open. Then we wandered by the Don Fer's Restaurante/Frida Bar and despite the lack of clientele, Heather was smitten. Especially because the owner/bartender and waitress/cook did their best to dissuade us from actually eating in their establishment, warning us twice that they serve Mexican food and describing it to us as if it were somewhat exotic ("Mexican food is burritos, tacos, enchiladas, other things like that").  The waitress/cook also warned us off the mole, saying that it was made with real Mexican ingredients and would be too spicy for normal people to eat (it was fine, spice-wise, and actually quite delicious). Homemade guacamole (yum), a burrito, two tacos (yum), and three enchiladas (yum) later, both the waitress and the owner both came over to suggest solutions to our pending indigestion.

Which is how Jon ended up with a shot of tequila for lunch:

(sorry for the blurriness -- iPhone 3 camera on short notice).

The waitress suggested a particular antacid; the owner thought the tequila would accomplish the same objective without a trip to the pharmacy. And then got out his bottle of tequila and handed Jon some. Which Jon enjoyed ("smooth.")

We may need more subjects and a double-blind trial to see whether tequila really is the answer. But the food was good, and the canas of beer bought Heather a nice post-lunch siesta (sorry to everyone whose email I didn't answer this afternoon!).

General update 10.23.15

General update 10.23.15

We’re still here, going to school, exercising in the beautiful (if sometimes variable) fall Madrid weather, eating baguettes from Montes like they are going out of style, and consuming large amounts of olive oil. Surprisingly, we're finding that we’re still learning about life in Spain, even after about year in the country. Here’s the latest updates.

* Group texting. Some of you may have teens who engage in group texting– if so, you know that your kids’ phone can go off dozens, if not hundreds, of times an hour. Nora’s JCDS class formed a group chat at the end of the year, and one night she received several hundred texts (thank heavens for all-you-can-eat data plans).

In Spain, adults get in on the fun, too. Jon and/or I are on group chats for each kids’ soccer team, Nathan’s class, and for birthday parties. It’s a little overwhelming, particularly to those of us who a) are using iPhone 3s as their Spanish phone; and b) have barely mastered texting with one person.

Correspondingly, there seem to be very few group email lists for things like soccer or school, as there are in the US. I long for the old-fashioned approach…

* In the “why didn’t we notice this last time?” department, it finally dawned on us that eggs are not refrigerated in Spanish grocery stores. Eggs are also sometimes covered in feather fluff and other chicken byproducts. Coincidentally, a friend posted this on FB:

http://www.davidwolfe.com/refrigerating-eggs-america/

It explains both the feather fluff and non-refrigeration. And why Spain is just more sensible than the US on eggs.

* Also in the “why didn’t we noticed this last time?” department – Jon and I were out for our usual Wednesday date walk, and wandered into a flea / fruit market on the fairgrounds in San Sebastian (next town over). There was some halfway decent-looking lettuce and a lot of other good-looking veggies (including about 15 waiting-for-me-to-eat-them brussel sprouts!), so we’ll shop there next week, when nobody is traveling.

* With cooler weather, we’ve had to become more aggressive in our laundry management. There’s typically no dryers in Madrid apartments (great for the environment!), meaning everyone hangs the laundry on a rack after washing. (Aside: Heather loves the rack and idea of no dryer so much that she tried to get Jon to buy her one in Arlington. Jon does not love the rack, or the cardboard-like towels it produces. So no rack.). When the weather is warm, the clothes can dry in an hour or two. But when the weather is cool, it can take a couple days.  Eventually we’ll have to bring the rack into the kitchen, but in the meantime, Heather’s got a parade route set up for the clothes: they start on the rack to get a little dry overnight, then move to various doors and backs of chairs all over the apartment to get more dry, then, when almost dry, get placed on beds to finish out the process. Other clothes follow along from the spots they vacate.

* The kids continue to rave about the food at school. Here’s Seth comment from yesterday: “Today, lunch was kind of good. We had soup and it was really good and then we had couscous and chicken. You know, I put both in my mouth at the same time and I like mixed them together. And I liked that. Then for dessert we had the BEST peaches I’ve ever had.” This is pretty high praise from the kid who would only eat five or six foods when he came to Spain the first time.

* Soccer. Last time we were here, Nathan was in the first grade, just learning soccer. He was roundly outclassed by every Spanish kid he played against, yet I (Heather) still have happy memories of watching him excitedly wiggle and jump excitedly all over the soccer court (yes, pavement) as he tried to occasionally get his foot on the ball. Then he came back to the US and literally ran circles around the other 7-year-olds.

This time around, Nathan’s in 5^th grade and is (thanks to good US coaching) right about average for his age group. He works hard in practice and comes up with the ball now and then, something he wasn’t doing four years ago.

Seth is another story.  He’s now in Nathan’s old shoes, and it’s going about the same for him as it did for Nathan. Including the jumping and wiggling around. We’ll see if he has the same experience on the US side.  So far he seems most interested in being goalie, which strikes fear in our heart, both because parents of goalies often seem stressed out and because goalies specialize VERY early in Alcobendas clubs, dressing up in goalie costumes and essentially attending their own practice rather than learning general soccer skills. We’re not so into that. 

Nora has joined the girls’ 7-12 town soccer league. That is, ages 7-12. About 15 of them, all together. In one practice. There’s also an age 13-18 practice for girls as well. As far as the eye can see in our part of Madrid, there’s little boys playing soccer. Nathan’s club has five teams at his age, as does Seth.  But only 15 female players at the elementary level.

* My (Heather) struggle to master the Madrid bus system continues. I scored big on Wednesday, while waiting for the bus in the location designated by Google Maps and also marked by this bus-stop-like apparatus and set of bus timetables:

As I stood and waited, a 197 bus (see picture! Timetable displayed! I swear!) drove by, the driver wagging his finger at me. Then a 191 bus driver (also pictured on the stanchion, near the top!) actually stopped his bus, got off and then lectured me about why I could not in fact get on his bus at this location. And then got back on his bus and drove away. I felt very inadequately Spanish at that point -- even someone with as little experience in this country as I should have been able to get in a real shouting match with the driver. But I couldn't manage it.

The bus stop the 191 driver indicated as just up the road…not there. The taxis that drove past as I tried to hail them also gave me the same wagging finger treatment, suggesting that perhaps I’d better just plan to walk everywhere this year.

Life with Seth

Seth is a little bit of a character now -- an interesting combination of the best Hill and Star personality traits*, all expressed in 7-year-old ways. For instance, he gets stressed by new situations (like: new school) and responds by ritualizing features of those situations  (like: walking from the front door of the school back to his classroom, which, until soccer card bribes were applied, involved a carefully choreographed handoff with a teacher or the school's vice-principal). Or, at soccer practice, requiring a translator (Jon) be present on the field with him during practices and games.

Recently, Seth has been locked in battle with Jon over who will cut up his (Seth's) pancakes. Riding the third-child/accommodating-parents party train, Seth has until now been able to avoid the use of a knife -- first because knives were scary, but now, apparently, because he cannot cut his food exactly into squares. For instance, here are this morning's pancakes:

Cut up by Seth, and unacceptably trapezoidal, according to him. This provoked an hour-long tantrum (Seth), the throwing out of the pictured pancakes (Jon), and the grudging consumption of Rice Krispies (Seth) around 11 AM.

It amuses us that our children continue to have some of their biggest tantrums over math-related issues. For instance, here's Nora's tantrum over the number of meatballs on her plate:

And here is Nathan's tantrum about carrots:

One can only hope that this fixation with number and shape results in later-life mathematical success. We'll see.

*I will leave you all to figure out which of these are Star and which are Hill personality traits.

Charmonix

The second of our Jewish Holiday Weekend Tours began in Geneva, which we’d picked because Google advertised it as a cheap fare from Madrid (other candidates: Malaga, Copenhagen, Paris). Our friends the Ansel-Rajagopals had spent over a year in the area, and recommended that we head from Geneva up to Charmonix, France – a valley in the French Alps with elaborate networks of gondolas and lifts up the mountainsides and over glaciers. So off we went.

One way that Jon and I measure the success of our trips is by counting the number of unprovoked kid “wows” elicited by whatever it is we’re seeing. Nora’s actually the easiest Starhill to wow, as she has a highly developed aesthetic and finds basic nature stuff (mountains, the sea) beautiful. Seth is the hardest to wow, because his little mind mostly focuses on soccer, soccer cards, and when he’s getting his next sugar fix. Nathan is somewhere in the middle.

This trip got at least four unprovoked wows from Seth, which is a record. Here’s why:

And this:

And this:

In addition to stunning scenery, Charmonix is also the home of lots of really good fondue restaurants. And French boulangeries. With keish. And treats.

One note about Charmonix, in case you’re inclined to go: nearly the entire network of gondolas and trains shuts down the first two weeks in October. The local tourism officials seemed aghast that we’d show up during this week – several pointed out our folly. In our defense, this shutdown is only noted on the deep, dark (schedule) pages of their website. Waaayy past the purchase-a-multiday-pass page. Way past.

Nevertheless, we found plenty to do – lots of valley hikes with the kids. One day, we passed a whole phalanx of kindergartners climbing a rock wall:

(Small kids + danger = very European – see prior sabbatical year’s post on European playgrounds). We also passed the ruins of a church:

And walked along a pretty glacial river:

We did take a few trips up Mont Blanc on the one open gondola line. I (Heather) was not thrilled with being hauled in a tiny car held by a string straight up an ice-covered rock face. Seth was less than thrilled that it was winter at the top – snow, high wind, freezing temperatures.  So we (and actually, N & N also) sat out the return trip the next day, instead hiking around the mid-point of the mountain, which was quite a bit warmer and also not hard on the eyes:

Mallorca

So we're just out of the Jewish holiday, which conveniently for us a) created a series of four-day weekends and b) fell during the low point of the European travel season. Along with some upcoming Spanish holidays, we used the long weekends and low fares to get around a bit.

Three weekends ago was Mallorca. Why Mallorca? Because three years ago Facebook figured out that I’m the kind of gal who likes Spain and also the kind of gal who likes trains. So FB suggested that I friend a Mallorcan train…and I’ve been watching its adorable exploits (think Thomas) around the island ever since. When it came down to deciding where to go for one of the long weekends, Mallorca made the list.  Score one for the Tren de Soller’s marketing department.

It’s pretty easy to see why Mallorca is known to draw the rich and famous. The entire island either looks like this:

Or like this:

We stayed in Palma, which is a city with its own castle:

Cathedral:

And cool fish market:

As far as we can tell, these are the essential requirements to be a small European city.

The kids’ favorite activity was the Tren de Soller – it goes 7km through the countryside, over a mountain range and into the town of Soller.  Here's Seth playing around outside the train:

We also visited the Cuevas del Drach, which were pretty spectacular:

A quick flight home and back to school. The next day, J & H set to googling "cheap flights from Madrid" to see where the next weekend would take us...

In the in-box

We have made it onto the list of a Madrid synagogue. Every couple days we get an email that looks like this:

Interesting to have to use our barely-serviceable Spanish to help guess the meaning of Hebrew words (and vice versa).  

Starhills navigate buses, part XXXIIV

So you’d think that after living here a year (2011-2012), we’d have mastered the bus systems.  If you search far enough back in the blog, there’s an entry around October 2011 about our travails trying to do simple errands - often just get a mile or two from home.  By the end of that year, we’d figured out how to get to point A to point B – mainly by actually walking from point A to point B first, and then seeing which buses went along the route.

This year, things started off auspiciously – after some searching of the nooks and crannies of one of the bus companies' websites, Jon discovered an app that not only listed the next buses for any given stop but also (shockingly!) overlaid the bus routes onto an actual Google map. Score one for the Starhills. Except the app doesn’t work. As in, it often claims there’s no bus arrival data available for a given stop, even as an actual bus glides silently by (electric hybrid, very quiet).

So Nora and I were thrilled upon setting off on yesterday’s shopping adventure (Nora: new fleece; Mommie: new shoes) to see that the app had bus arrival data, and in fact a bus to the shopping center was to leave soon from near our house. Except when we queried the bus driver, he denied that the bus stopped at the shopping mall. As did the next bus driver. Then the app, right before it crashed the iPhone and locked me out for the remainder of the day, told us that a bus we KNOW stops at the shopping mall was coming in 17 minutes. So Nora and I started meandering up the street, intending to get to the next stop to catch that bus – and within five minutes, the bus passed us right by. We walked to the mall.

Things went downhill on the return trip. After waiting at the mall stop for a few minutes, Cousin of Bus That Passed Us By comes along, and we get on. We’d checked the physical bus schedule on the bus shelter, and confirmed that at least hypothetically, Cousin stops in Alcobendas. Except it didn’t. Apparently, there are three different types of Cousins. Cousin A goes to our apartment, Cousin B goes to our apartment but with a slight detour, and Cousin C goes directly to Madrid. We were on Type C.

The upside is that for four extra Euros, we got to see a spectacular sunset over the sierras. And, unlike my past adventures on the local bus system, it wasn’t impossible to understand the bus drivers – mostly because they were telling me simply “no.”

Our kitchen counter, any given day

That's olive oil (tournament still in progress), Montes' crusty bread, chocolate, and wine. Halfway decent IKEA knife on the right.

Things we didn’t realize we missed about Spain*

1. The smell; sweeter air.

2. The local park sounding like school just got out at 10:30 PM on weekend (and some week) nights. Yes, that means hoards of 2-year-olds, out playing in the dark.

3. Hanging the laundry out on the folding rack (Heather only)

4. Coming back in a couple hours and finding that laundry dry (it’s hot and dry here)

5. Better women’s clothes (Heather and Nora)

6. Managing to have a conversation in a different language (Heather and Jon only)

7. Hearing three languages spoken (yelled) by the kids at the pool

8. Having a pool

9. Getting the chills after taking a dip in 99-degree weather (a function of low humidity)

10. The view from the kids’ school:

(mountains more impressive in person)

11. The wild cats that populate Alcobendas

12. Watching west coast baseball games live at breakfast

13. Having friends RIGHT HERE that you can go out and play with without making a play date (Nathan and Nora)

14. More free time (Nathan)

15. "People always think of you as the American person and are easier on you" (Nathan)

16. An apartment small enough that I can clean it in an hour** (Heather)

 * This list is separate from the things we knew we missed about Spain, like our friends, our Madrid cousins:

the olive oil, rioja, weather, kids' school, time with family, and Montes bread.

** With the help of disgruntled children

This is Heather, horning in on the olive oil fun. Background: for those of you who aren't on facebook and don't see my yearly post, each winter we buy either 8 or 16 unique kinds of dark chocolate (thanks, Whole Foods), Nathan creates brackets, and then we have nightly matches between two different varietals. Taza chocolate (Somerville) almost always wins thanks to a 4-1 majority for Mexican chocolate in the house, but the runner-up is always Whole Foods-brand chocolate, usually from Tanzania or Costa Rica. 

In any case, the giant wall of olive oil at the local grocery store...

...inspired Nathan to come up with the idea of an olive oil tournament. In the US, the olive oil section of the store contains usually two different processing methods (virgin, extra virgen) multiplied by location (Greece, Italy, Spain). Here, it's olive oil as far as the eye can see, with different price points (around 4-6 euro for glass bottles, less for plastic) processing methods (virgin, extra virgin), regions of origin (all Spanish, of course, but many different parts of Spain), and types of olive (at least 3-4).  Which, as you can see, results in a whole lot of olive oil choices.

This complexity suggests a tournament structure more sophisticated than the "a v. b, winner advances" bracket system we've used for chocolate. Stay tuned - Nathan is at work on it.

The Olive Oil Chronicles

Sept 2 edition

In the spirit of our family's dark chocolate tournaments, Nathan and Dad and going to try to keep track of our adventures in olive oil. Photo credits go to Nathan. Welcome to the Olive Oil Chronicles - picture above used without permission. 

There are many (easily 20 or 30) different kinds of inexpensive but excellent Spanish olive oil - about $5 per liter - and we are going to try many of them. Look for a picture of the olive oil wall in a future post. But  today's battle pits Ybarra extra virgin vs. Borges arbequina extra virgin.

The Borges was considered by our tasters to be a pleasant and refreshing olive oil. It is quite mild, with a silky and smooth taste that is very olive-y but without bitterness. Very good for dipping bread into, and also good for cooking. If you note at the bottom of the front of the bottle, you can see that this olive oil rates one drop out of three in terms of "intensidad." It is also "suave y afrutado", which means mild and fruity. So a good choice as a basic mild olive oil. 

The Ybarra was very different, in that it is not suave/mild at all. The initial taste of this olive oil is quite bitter, and then after a few seconds the taste is very peppery and spicy. Jon thought it was really good, although on the edge of being too bitter. Other family members thought it might be too spicy for them. Since this is the beginning of our systematic study of olive oils, we don't have a good sense of whether this Ybarra will be among the spiciest that we taste or somewhere in the middle. But stay tuned to find out.

Cyprus travelblog

We’re just back from Cyprus, where we….

1. Visited with our friend Charalambos Charalambous (hereafter, CC). Not just visited with, were thoroughly hosted by CC –

1. In numerous trips around the island to see Greek and Roman ruins, Aphrodite’s birthplace, the mountains, and the capital, Nicosea.
2. At his parents’ house for a wonderful dinner. Where Seth discovered the Mediterranean grandmother he never had – Charalambos’ mother couldn’t keep her hands off him, and Seth reciprocated by basking in the attention and even giving her a snuggle.
3. At a wonderful tavern in the mountains where we ate, and ate, and ate…. 

2. Managed to get some work in (CC and HCH)

3.  Visited the occupied side (North Cyprus to the Turkish) of Nicosea with Jon’s friend Cigdem, who flew in from Ankara to see us. We had lunch in the Büyük Han, a medieval hotel/dining establishment and then saw the Selimiye Mosque/Saint Sophie Cathedral – spectacular and fascinating (see left).

Incidentally, there was recently an interesting NYT story about a nearby town similarly divided:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/01/world/europe/cyprus-varosha-reunification.html

4. Managed to survive 100-degree days with a lot of time in the pool:

On the left is the toddler daughter of a Russian Oligarch, who had a grand old time pushing Seth (in the red and white shirt) into the pool.

A few things we noticed:

CC’s mother fed us two dishes: a walnut dish, with walnuts similar to what you’d see in the US, and “Cypriot walnuts.” Which we’d call pecans. They’re considered native to the island – of interest to Jon, who’s from Pecan Central (Georgia). On the occupied side of Nicosea, Jon also spotted some peas that he also only sees in the south of the US, suggesting that there may be some Cyprus-Greece-Georgia connection.

Lots and lots and lots of Russians. Everywhere.

We also took our usual tour of the local grocery store. Of interest:

Aisle of Greek cheese.

Prawn cocktail potato chips.

Feta potato chips.

Coke (sigh.....)

Finally, Jon actually was in Cyprus on legitimate business -- a conference for educational psychologists. Here's a picture of Jon and his crew of doc students/former post-docs (and me) having a working meeting:

It took us a few days to recover from the intensity of the meeting, as you can probably tell.

Ultimate (not that I am obsessed or anything)

 

So…it’s our second day in Madrid and we’re walking slowly home from Ikea, on past the municipal sports complex that is a block from our apartment. These sports complexes, called polideportivos, are massive – the one nearest our house has four full-size soccer fields, a track, a large pool, weight room, outdoor squash courts, padel courts, and tennis courts, multiple playgrounds, and several other unidentified buildings (?). The polideportivo that’s a bus ride from our house is even larger and includes a velodrome – I’ll take pictures when we get over there. 

In any case, we’re walking along and hear excited shouting from the soccer fields, as we often do when going by. Jon peers through the fencing/bushes to see what’s going on and announces it’s a game of ultimate. I was struck dumb; as far as I could tell from a web search, ultimate in Spain is mostly played in downtown Madrid at an incredibly bad time (5 PM Saturdays, which to the Spanish is like 2 PM Saturday, or even like noon Saturday, but to Americans living in Madrid is still like 5 PM Saturday). Having thus given up ultimate for the remainder of at least ’15, I was curious whether I was going to be compelled to un-give-it-up because of the presence of a local league.*

A trip to the fields revealed not a city league, but instead the co-ed Southern European regionals  - three teams from Spain (Madrid, Santander, Girona) plus Portugal, France and Switzerland. Some quick observations (skip if you don’t play ultimate):

1. Much bigger teams – one had about 30 players.

 

2. More women, and more excellent women. I never saw fewer than three women on the field at a time, and saw a few points with 4W/3M. There was always at least one woman handler, sometimes two.

 

3. Lots more yelling.

 

4. But also a lot fewer on-field disputes. And no observers.

5. Major delay of game problems – after each point the entire team runs on the field, cheers, and then kneels down and calls a line. CBS Sports would never figure out how to package this for the TV audience. 

6.  The level of play looked comparable to a typical U.S. Midwestern regionals – generally solid though some throw-aways and drops. However, it was very windy both days, which may have caused some issues.

Madrid won the tournament, beating Girona 15-9.

* My feet and lower back had a lot to say on the un-giving-up-ultimate idea.

Visiting Al Campo

One of my (Heather’s) favorite things to do in Madrid (or anywhere, actually) is to grocery shop. Last time we lived in Spain, I became very attached to our local grocery store, Al Campo; Seth and I would go two or three times a week while Jon took the big kids to their after-school swim lessons. So I was particularly excited to go back.

My first stop at Al Campo was the wall of ham:

A leg of ham is a staple in many Spanish kitchens; prices run from about $60 on upwards (just passed a ham in a store window sporting a $500 price tag). 

Next stop was the aisle of Manchego:

The picture doesn’t do this justice – it’s really almost a whole grocery aisle filled with Manchego. Except none of it is labeled as Manchego; in Spain most cheese seems to be Manchego, and thus labeling it Manchego would be like calling cheese cheese in the U.S. Non-Manchego is clearly marked (mostly as goat cheese).  

Next I said hello to real Spanish chorizo:

No more traveling to Las Ventas in South Boston to restock twice a year. 

Next stop, the cereal aisle, where you can buy candy for breakfast:

And Al Campo-brand cereals marketed as a sugar drug:

 

And where the proportion of suitable options for health-conscious American children (well, to their sugar-averse parents) has shrunk owing to what looks like a chocolate cereal craze:

There is no apparent irony in the chocolate-flavored fitness cereal. I should note that this aisle is separate from the “breakfast cookie” aisle, which is elsewhere in the store. 

Next I walked by the table wine:

Note the prices – yes, that’s about $2 for what is a pretty decent bottle of Rioja. We sampled a lot of these last time we were here (though I remember the prices being a bit higher, more like $5 a bottle). 

A short distance away is the eco-wine aisle:

A two to four times the price of chemically-wrought wine, still a bargain.

Last stop was check-out. No picture here, but remarkably, I didn’t get yelled at by the clerk for some grocery-store-etiquette infraction. Progress.