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...