Some additional notes

Nora did a pretty good job of describing our European vacation, but I thought I’d add a few extra notes as well.

- The best way to travel with children is to travel with other people’s children (and their parents) as well. You not only score some friends for yourself, you also have friends for your kids – who will keep them occupied and happy by playing either competitive or collaborative fantasy games. Or just soccer, if you’re Nathan.

- Hearts is a wonderful game. Especially when played with good friends.

- Venice: better than I expected. I’m not really a city gal, but Venice is beautiful and also interesting. Loved the Grand Canal, in particular the UPS and FedEx boats, and the trash boats. Not as enamored of the endless tchotchke shops.

- We stayed in a lovely old / renovated villa in Stra, a city about an hour by smelly bus outside Venice. The villa was large and recently renovated, with a luxurious foam-mattress bed in the master BR. The downside: its recent renovation was somewhat underpowered/unfinished, shall we say. Ants, blown fuses, a crabby dishwasher. Even the clothes dryer, which made Jon so happy upon first seeing it (a clothes dryer in Europe!) didn’t function. With all the decrepitude, it was like vacationing in our own home.

- As Nora noted, the girls in the party slept together on a four-poster, canopied bed. Nathan made himself a little nest on the floor nearby, and happily passed the week sleeping on a 2-inch foam mattress. Like father like son. Poor Seth was relegated back to a crib (it was the remaining bed in the place) and promptly protested by waking before 7 every day of the trip.

- We traveled up to Asolo, where Jon and I honeymooned a decade ago. Nora made us proud by reading aloud the Hebrew tablets embedded in the exterior of the main square -- a memorial to a small community of Jews that lived there in the sixteenth century.

- After 25 years of searching, I finally found a cathedral to my liking: Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. The exterior is a mish-mash of styles, though to be hideous by many architects but IMHO, brilliantly brings together a thousand years of Cathedral-building culture. The inside is very simple and geometric. Think the palace from the Wizard of Oz. For a shot of its awesome ceiling, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sagrada_Familia_nave_roof_detail.jpg

Finally, a note on lodging for a “familia numerosa” while on European vacations. With three kids, most hotels won’t let you stay in one room; Residence Inn-type facilities, which often have 2-bedroom suites, are also not common and if found, will cost you all your Marriott points and then some. So we’ve taken to going the vacation-rental-by-owner route. Here’s my observation:

-- Best case: a vacation home owned by the almost-wealthy and advertised on VRBO or homeaway.com. Because the owners themselves stay in it, it’ll be renovated nicely, the beds will be comfortable, and the kitchen will be well-equipped.

-- Worst case: Friendly Rentals, which owns apartments all over Europe. Two strikes and they’re out—the first time a moldy apartment in Lisbon, this time a slightly more acceptable but still downtrodden apartment in Barcelona. Think badly installed fake wood floors, gently coated in grime. The entire apartments in both Lisbon and Barcelona were furnished by IKEA, including in both places a bed named “Hanestad” which is Swedish for “even harder than granite.”

Onward to pruning my neglected in-box. Sorry if you’ve got something stuck in there--I'll get back to you soon.

Nora's trip diary

It’s been another perfect (well, almost) week-and-a-half. First we went to Venice where we had lots of fun, including being with friends who came from the US. Also we went to lots of fun places including going in a labyrinth, having lots of pizza and pasta and most yummiest of all GELATO! Let me introduce you to my favorite kind, Straciatela. Straciatela is a flavor of gelato with chunks of Oreo. They didn’t have Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough so I went with Straciatela.

One of the funniest things was when Uncle Kevin didn’t know how to put the car in reverse and Aunt Libby had to push the car. Another fun part was sleeping with Charlotte.

The first pizza restaurant we went to the pizza was watery! Gross rating: 10. The other most grossest thing in the world was we were in a town called Asolo and a few people had to go to the bathroom. So we looked for one and eventually we found one. We looked inside and guess what? There weren’t even toilets, there were foot prints for you to put your feet in and just go to the bathroom. Gross factor:100,000,000!! But of course, we (the girls) didn’t go there. We went in a restaurant. But SOME boys didn’t.

Asolo was cool. It also had a castle where we had to walk up ummmm….I’d say about 2,000 steps!

We also went to Murano, one of Venice’s Outer Islands. Murano is famous for making glass and we watched a demonstration on how to do it. We walked around and bought a little glass to take home. Charlotte got me a little glass candy (so cool, so awesome, and cute!). Earlier in the trip I bought her and me a sparkly hat. We also had a seder with them, which went very well. For Afikomen prized, I got a glass heart necklace and one more class candy.

In our almost perfect weekend we also went to Barcelona for half a week. Mostly we went on the tour bus. One huge sight was the Sagrada Familia, which is a Gaudi-designed modern church that isn’t finished even though they’ve been working on it for over 100 years. We had an awesome weekend. We just went to pick up my grandparents (Bebe and Grandoc) and suddenly ding-a-ling-a-ling, and out came 3 fire trucks emerging from the fire station. So cool! So we walked home and opened presents. Mine was a necklace with a Jewish star. It’s so pretty. I’m really looking forward to going back to school.

Strike!

The Spanish don't exactly have a reputation for hard work, or so we've been told. We've found this to be not so based in fact; see our earlier posts about the looonng Spanish work day--and add that to the fact that most Spaniards we know (especially the bread brothers) work incredibly hard. But in any case, the reputation persists.

Based on this reputation, we'd thought that today's general strike would lead to Spaniards taking the day to kick back and enjoy life, mingle in public space, and protest a little bit. But in fact, today carried on pretty much like any other day, except with fewer buses. Metro? Running. Schools? Open. Businesses? Open. Shops? Most open. City services like pooper scooping? Still scooping. Construction sites? Working, although with tighter security than usual. The biggest effect (at least as of noon today) seems to be lots of police overtime.

The strike is partially over changes in labor laws, but also no doubt reflects frustration over Spain's unemployment rate, which is nearly 23%. Other than an incredible number of vacant office buildings and apartments, we don't really see that where we live -- it feels very safe, peaceable, and you generally don't see folks under the age of 65 walking around during the day. Still, nearly one in four out of work is an incredible number, and it's fairly amazing that Spanish society seems to have adapted with minimal disruption. Not sure we'd be so lucky in the U.S.

Space and toys

Americans, they need a lot of space. For instance, in the US we live in 2400-square-foot house, on the large side for Arlington but not on the large side for other American communities. When we were house-hunting in 2007, it became apparent that most newer houses were of this size or larger. One reason seems to be the American necessity to have specific spaces for specific purposes: a living room for entertaining, a family room for the TV, a romper room for the kids to keep their toys in. Americans are also fans, obviously, of huge kitchens and bathrooms, separate dining spaces (usually 2 per household, for “entertaining” and “where your kids eat their meals and thus the floor is gross”).

So when we moved to Madrid last summer, we were wondering how we’d do as a “familia numerosa” (=three kids) in a standard 1000-square foot apartment. Now that it’s March, I feel like I can pretty much say that the answer is that we’ve barely noticed. The biggest ongoing issue has been the kitchen, which is really a bit too small for two parents to be cleaning up or making a meal at the same time. It’s definitely too small for two parents to be making a meal, one child to be writing a blog post, and drying laundry at the same time:

There's also a slight issue when we arrive home from school and all three children announce that they desperately need to go potty at the same time. 3 > 2(bathrooms), so this presents obvious logistical difficulties (as well as dickering about who spends too much time going pooh).

But other than that, we’ve adapted. For instance, it turns out that the kids don’t need big bedrooms. Either they don’t spend a lot of time there, or they spend their time sitting on their beds reading and playing. And other spaces we have are used for multiple purposes. For instance, the main room is used for entertaining, TV-watching, as a study by Heather during the day. It also holds the dining room table, which is used as a craft table, homework spot, and for all meals (note that in Arlington, we had 3 separate spaces for these tasks: a craft table, breakfast bar, and dining room table). And that was considered “downsizing” from a house in Michigan where we had an eat-in kitchen!

It turns out that the same principle is true for toys. In Arlington (and before that, in Michigan), we had rooms devoted to holding the kids’ toys. And we had a lot of toys. Two closets, three toy baskets, two bookcases, a crawl space stuffed with outdoor toys, and miscellaneous piles heaped about the house. Here we have two bookshelves + two bedside tables full—and yet the kids seem about as likely to report “I’m bored” here as when in Arlington. Part of it is that we’ve spent a lot of time outside. But another part is just that the kids seem quite content to play for long periods of time with the toys we do have – snap cubes, games, money from around the world, playdoh, and drawing have all been big favorites this year.

Other than occasionally longing to not near my kids snoring at night (our bedrooms abut one another), I think we could probably stay like this indefinitely. A smaller house is definitely easier to keep clean, and isn't all that much worse in terms of standard of living.

[Let’s see if Jon adds a comment on this one. Not sure he's as enamored of the situation.]

Nora writes the songs

So Nora has recently taken up songwriting, perhaps spurred on by her newfound love of pop music. Here's some of her recent gems:

I'm an open book
Chorus:
Open me, open me
Find the answer to your question
in me! Look hard, read more and don't give up.

I'm an open book find your answer
in me. Try try your hardest!
When you find the answer you have truth so write it down!

(Chorus)

Math questions, geography questions, and
much more! Find all the answers
in me! It's the truth that you find in me!

(Chorus)

Learn more, get a good score!
I'm an open boooook.
LEARN MORE.

If I could...

If I could I would fly and be a star like you.
If I wanted to I could try.
But I've tried too many times.
Help me, help me I want to become a star like you!
How how how do you do it?
I've tried and tried so many times it never works.

Chorus:
If I could I would be a star like you, but all you say is I'll never be a star.
Oh, please please help me.
I don't know how.
Take me with you!

I don't want to be my plain old self all over again!
You help me because I helped you!
Help me with my dream!
It's like you didn't want me to help you in the first place.
Keep your promise.

(Chorus)

Family

(Chorus)

The family plays with you on rainy
days the family makes you laugh when you're sad
try try try to help them too.

Have fun play games
do crafts with family
read books with family
not alone
learn a new language with family not alone

(chorus)

With your familyyyyy.

Check back later for more original songs!

An interview with Nora

N: It’s been a long week. I’ve been more tired and bored than ever.

M: Why?

N: Because I’ve been doing lots of things at schools, and taking walks forever, and I had the cross (a cross-country race for all kids in the city 3rd grade and up) on Friday. And it just seems like there’s nothing to do around here.

M: I thought we agreed to stop complaining.

N: Yes, but this is a blog post. And, I didn’t hear you saying that.

M: OK, no more complaining. What else are you up to?

N: I have three exams next week. And I’m going to start a unit on Futbol in gym, a new unit in science, and probably start a new unit in math. In math we’re learning now about angles and lines.

M: This is boring.

N: Fine. I’ll change the topic. What should I talk about?

M: I don’t know. Just don’t bore me.

N: (Giggles)

M: What kinds of competitions do you want to be in next year?

N: Art competition. Piano competition. Gymnastics competition. Futbol competition.

M: Can we dress you up in makeup and a big poufy dress and put you in a beauty pageant?

N: NO WAY. First, I don’t like big poufy dresses, and I wouldn’t wear makeup this young. And what’s a beauty pageant?

M: Where girls compete to be named the cutest one.

N: Oh. That’s weird. I’d rather be in a fashion show, not one of those pageants. But what I would like to do is be in a sport competition or an art competition or a competition where you don’t have to dress up all fancy.

M: And what is it you’ve been saying you want to do when you grow up?

N: I want to be a gymnast, an artist, a fashion designer, a soccer player, a pianist.

M: OK, let’s wrap this up. I have to go give your tiny brother a bath. Go get your lyrics.

We're still here...

Sorry for the lack of updates recently. We've been traveling (Jon: Santander, Virginia; all of us: London and Oxford) and that's meant less time for discretionary activities. A new Spain-related post is in the works, but in the meantime, a couple quick milestones:

A) I arrived at the bread store today to find them out of my favorite variety, and almost completely out of bread in general. However, even though the crabby brother was manning the register, he reported something along the lines of "I tried to set aside some gallega for you, but my brother sold it to someone else." So I guess that means I'm a regular.

B) It's spring! Actually, it's been spring for about 3 weeks already--we saw our first flowering trees at the end of February, and the temperature has been in the 60s and 70s for a couple weeks. Given that the last leaves dropped off the trees in December, it seems awfully early--or maybe my New England soul just can't handle less than 5 months of winter.

For the record, winter in Madrid this year was three weeks of heavy wind, gray skies, and relative cold (40s), surrounded by endless weeks of sunny 50s. Our Madrileno friends tell us that this isn't normal ("Only two weeks of ski season!!"), especially the dryness.

More once Jon gets back and life returns to normal!