Sunday, May 20, 2012
Getting wacky
From Nora, Nathan, and Seth: Mommie went on a trip today and so things started to get a bit wacky at home! We documented the craziness using an app on Dad's iPhone. These pictures make us giggle!
Our Roman Holiday
It has been a
very long time since I blogged. While last semester felt like a sabbatical for
me, the past few months have been enjoyable but more ‘normal’ feeling in terms
of work – which means it has felt busy.
A big highlight
of the past few weeks was our trip to Rome. Just as Nora, Nathan, and I went to
Paris to celebrate Nora’s birthday in November, we decided to go to Rome (the
city of 7 hills) to celebrate Nathan’s 7th birthday.
The kids’
primary goal was to eat gelato 7 times and to eat in 7 different restaurants –
both of which were quite challenging since we were only there for 3 full days
(and 4 nights). We only had gelato 6 times – two of which at a place near the
Pantheon called Della Palma Gelateria that was truly amazing. We also had tartufo twice, including once here.
Because we were
in Rome over a holiday (Tues May 1), we weren’t able to see some of the more
famous (adult) sites of the city. We didn’t go to any museums (many were closed
for the holiday). For the days that we were in Rome, the Vatican museum was
only open on Sunday, and it was mobbed. But luckily Rome is so full of outdoor
sites that we had plenty to do.
We had a fun
visit to the Bocca della Verita
as well as the
usual sites of the Colosseum, the Forum (where we pretended to be conquering victorious Romans - see below), Pantheon, the fountains, and the
Spanish Steps. The kids liked a movie that we saw about ancient Rome called the
Time Machine. And there was even a church that they liked, Santa Maria della Concezione, where the crypt rooms are decorated
with the bones of thousands
of monks – kind of macabre but very interesting. Nora and Nathan also went with
me to to visit several other churches, to see Caravaggio works. And we had a
nice visit at the main synagogue of Rome, which is built on the site of the old
Roman Jewish ghetto.
We ate some
amazing pizza. Our favorite was the square thick crust pizza that you can get
just about everywhere.
Overall, it was
a very fun trip and hopefully one that both Nora and Nathan will remember!
Thursday, May 10, 2012
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.
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.
Sunday, May 6, 2012
Running
Our sabbatical is drawing to a close, which means Jon and I
are starting to assess what we’ve accomplished this year, and what we hope to
continue learning and doing when we arrive back in the US. When I started this
year, I had a few goals: improve my Spanish, learn Spanish for elementary
mathematics, relax, not work nights, write a novel, vanquish my to-do list once
and for all.
As you’re probably guessing by now, most of these didn’t
come to pass. I did improve my Spanish, but never got off the couch to find a
school that would help me observe/learn elementary mathematics lingo (though
Nora’s math-related fits of ire have helped a ton). Jon will corroborate that
the relaxing mostly didn’t occur, and given the time differential between the
US, it ended up that we frequently had either meetings or played email catch-up
between 9-11 PM.
However, this year had one unexpected benefit: I became a
runner.
I actually began this year thinking that I already was a
runner. I ran between three and four times a week in Arlington, usually about 3
miles a pop. [As Arlingtonians will attest, too, it was up and down a
loooonnnggg hill]. I didn’t really come
here planning on becoming better at running, but one day, while trying to avoid
work and curious about why my friends all seem to be running marathons, I
visited a runners’ training website.
What I discovered there is that I wasn’t a runner at all.
The site seemed to suggest that unless you’re running 16 miles a week, you’re
“below beginner” – meaning (horrors) a jogger. Being a jogger is so 70s. And
the name is so suggestive of slogging – “a slogger” -- not exactly glamorous. The website suggested
that 16 miles a week was the minimum respectable distance to be called a runner,
and 25 put you at the basic level.
I didn’t read much more, figuring that I was pretty happy
with whatever it was I was doing (slogging) and I’ve never had any sort of
ambition in the area of marathoning or whatnot. But by two months later, I was
running 25 miles a week. And really, really enjoying it.
As a bonus, I also spent most of the year changing from a
heel-strike running style to a ball-of-foot-strike running style. According to
the New York Times, which writes obsessively about running style every 2-3
weeks, the ball strike will protect me from bad knees over the next 20 years or
so.
So the capstone to this story is that the kids came home one
day brimming with news: there’s a 10K in Alcobendas, and they’d decided that I
should enter it. And I did. My time: 54:45.
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Benzi's visit
So in Seth’s classroom, there is a tradition called Kabbalat
Shabbat. On each Kabbalat Shabbat, a parent or pair of parents comes in to help
celebrate Shabbat. The child gets to sit at the Shabbat table, dole out Shabbat
implements, and help light the candles/say the blessing.
One of the bonuses of Kabbalat Shabbat is that the star of
the show also gets to bring home a stuffed animal named Benzi, a giant turtle born
Israel and thus who speaks only Hebrew. The goal (other than speaking Hebrew at
home) is for the child/parent pair to document Benzi doing Jewish things around
the house during the weekend – lighting the candles, for instance, or saying
nightly prayers. Benzi travels with a book in which different families have
documented Benzi’s activities; so far this year, Benzi’s been to the park 21
times, slept with the star of the show 19 times, been strapped into a carseat
for travel twice (very clever!) and visited the zoo once.
This blog post explains what Benzi did on his weekend with
us. I didn’t think other parents would want to really know about these
activities, so I’m posting them here, just so there’s a permanent,
non-sanitized record of Benzi’s activities.
First Benzi comforted Seth while he suffered from a 102
degree fever:
The best part: on our way out the door from Kabbalat Shabbat, Seth’s teacher warned us of something along the lines of “Benzi no se ducha” – or “Benzi can’t take a shower.” So I’m assuming that Benzi’s weekend activities in our house will soon be bringing joy to other children in Seth’s class.
Monday, April 16, 2012
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.
Sunday, April 15, 2012
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.
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.
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