Assorted news and pictures

We finally have our internet back, so I can stop shaking and weeping in a corner and make a new blog post. No, it wasn't that bad, just a bit frustrating dealing with a cold massive telecom and it's barely-sentient zombie-minion phone workers.

Before I start my usual ramblings and snide remarks, a couple pictures from one of our last beach days that never made it into a post. Carrie has missed the beach more than I have.
































This is Ana, and this picture represents her pretty well. She's awesome, and is the librarian at the children's library. She's been a huge help and a great friend. Earlier this week she took us on an amazing tour of some of the town's historic spots. I'll post about that later once I get all the pictures sorted.

















Here is downtown Palma at night. What's going on, you may ask? A witch-burning!
















Just kidding. Live flamenco, of course! Carrie and Aryanna are taking flamenco lessons now from the lady in front center and they both love it.















Flamenco is so old that people aren't sure exactly when it started. There are different theories about it's origins, but the generally accepted is that it originated in Andalucia from the gypsy culture and then spread throughout Spain. There are many different branches and styles that have developed over the centuries. Aryanna is starting with bulerias, a more rapid and dramatic form of flamenco that originated in Jerez de la Frontera in the 19th century. Carrie is starting with sevillanas, a more folkloric spanish dance that focuses on the hands and is danced in pairs.

And just proof you can have a 1950s American breakfast anywhere:
















In other news, the kids are in school and doing well. Carrie and I start work this week, and our new American roommate is arriving in a few hours, so I better go clean some more.

I Had Trouble In Getting To Solla-Sollew err.. Palma Del Rio

We’ve finally finished our move to Palma del Rio! Actually we finished a bit ago, but it took us a little while to find a Wi-Fi spot. Thank you to everyone who helped out in so many ways. We couldn’t have done it without you. Not sure why these letters turned gray, but oh well.

Our thrilling moving tale begins with a block of ice in our refrigerator.

Note the orange playing Han-Solo-in-carbonite on the right.

The refrigerator needed defrosted before our move and as usual I tried to solve my problems by stabbing them with a knife. Of course I promptly punctured the freezer wall and vented horrible chemicals into my kitchen. Despite the exciting moment this provided, buying a replacement put a large, unwelcome dent in our moving budget. Eep. My mother informed me that not using sharp objects to defrost freezers is common knowledge. Too common to teach your children, apparently…

That was the first special moment.

The second was renting a car to move with. We had asked a friend if she could drive us, but unfortunately she was swamped with work, so we turned to rental agencies. Of the rental agencies in Cadiz, only two had offices near Palma for us to return the car to. Of the two, Avis had a nice budget station wagon that was perfect for our needs. Unfortunately they were out of car seats, and since we had kids they said they couldn’t rent a car to us. Running low on options, we turned to Europcar, who had only one car available: a hot 2008 Alfa Romeo sedan with only 3,000 kilometers on the clock, a big, powerful turbo diesel, and a big price tag to match. Ouch. But they had car seats, so we sucked it up and took it. Let’s face it, even for destitute hippies like ourselves, moving a family of 4 in a sedan is a squeeze, but at least we got there fast and in style. Oh wait, the car had a 130km/h limiter, so scratch the fast part. 5 days later, Carrie still had trouble walking upright from being packed in the trunk for 3 hours.

I was too stressed and busy to take pictures, but it looked like this:

So Friday morning found us frantically packing the car on the sidewalk, hoping nobody would call a towtruck on us before we finished. We were on a timeline to reach Palma before 2pm to get the keys from the rental agency before they shut down for the afternoon siesta. This way we could drive to Cordoba to return the car and be home in a decent time. Unfortunately we rolled into Palma at 2:45. We called the agent, but she was at her home in another town until 6pm. The temperature was pushing 100F, but we bought some sandwich fixin’s at a supermarket and had a lunch in the shade of a palm tree. This was our nice moment of the day.

At 6pm we met the agent, did our contract, and got our keys. By 7pm the car was unpacked and we were on the road to Cordoba to take the car back (and return by train). We had the option to return it in the morning, but the idea of waking up early and rushing to Cordoba to have the car back by 10am sounded even more stressful since Cordoba is an hour away. We’re about 40 minutes from home when I start worrying that the car rental place might be closed by the time we get there. My worry is compounded by my exhaustion and the idea of having to drive home again without accomplishing anything besides wasting diesel if my fears prove true.

Like most big old cities, Cordoba is a snarled mess, and I spend quite some time driving around in nasty traffic with no idea where I’m going. The worry of having to drive back to Palma is gnawing even more now that I have no idea how to get back out of town. We finally found the train station, circled it three times at 5 minutes a pop figuring out where to park and made it to the Europcar booth. Still open! Booyah! The lady goes to check out the car, and Carrie goes to look for train tickets. Relief floods over us.

Oops, too soon. The online timetables we had consulted had lied. There are no more trains to Palma this evening. We tell the nice Europcar lady we might actually need the car back again, but first we run across the street to the bus terminal to check for a bus. The Information booth tells us to check Lines 1 and 2 to see if there is a bus there. We rush outside, but the slots are empty. He tells us we are out of luck. At this point I taught the kids some new words and we hurry back to the train station to get our car back. Utter exhaustion and stress is almost hallucinogenic and I wasn’t even sure I was fit to drive home at this point.

I hadn’t even considered a taxi due to the distance, but as we ran past one Carrie suggested we check the rates anyway…56 euro. That was far less than I expected, and when I figured out the extra cost of gas, stress, and headache to drive myself home and then back in the morning, the price was downright fantastic. We settled our paperwork with Europcar, and took a taxi home. Leaving Cordoba slumped in the passenger’s seat was the greatest feeling in the world.

Finally at home, amid the moving chaos:

Now that we’re here, Palma del Rio is a breath of fresh air in our lives. We didn’t realize exactly how stressful city living was until we were out of it. Everything that pissed us off in Cadiz seems to be fixed here. People are exceptionally friendly, strangers smile and talk, government workers are helpful and polite, lines are shorter, flour tortillas are cheap, we have a spacious place for the kids to play, our house is QUIET, well lit, well equipped, and clean, with a landlord we don’t want to beat with a stick, our work is close, everything is cheaper, the streets are wide with light traffic and actual sidewalks…I get giddy just thinking about it. The elementary school where Carrie will be working only had space for Aryanna, but once they realized Carrie was going to be working there, they made room for Ash as well. Perks!

We’ve come to recognize the importance of silence, greenery, and light for our personal well-being and happiness. This may come as a surprise to those who associate me with dark, air-conditioned rooms full of blinking lights and strange electronic devices, but everything is a balance, and we just don’t thrive in a loud and busy city environment. We can walk across Palma in 15 minutes, and that suits us just fine.

This park is directly across from the children and Carrie’s school on the edge of town, about a 10 minute walk from our house.

Never take a nice kitchen for granted. We certainly never will again. What’s the first thing a good Mennonite does in a nice new kitchen? Chocolate chip cookies of course!

We found a fantastic and friendly inmobiliaria in Palma who helped us find our townhouse. These companies manage properties for landlords. They also have all the utility bills to our house in their name. We simply pay them the actual cost each month. This saves us both the hefty deposit costs as well as the massive headache of going to each utility office and setting up an account. We went through that process in Cadiz and I hope never to repeat it. My passport threatened to self-destruct if I photocopied it one more time.

By our third day here the neighbor kids realized there were new kids on the block and came ringing our doorbell wanting Ash and Aryanna to come play. They get along very well. One little boy in particular rings our bell to the point of being a minor annoyance. Still, we’re thrilled they can have daily playmates.

The kids’ school starts on the 15^th, and our work on October 1^st. We can’t wait to get into a nice steady, stable routine. The weather is already getting cooler in the nights. Palma had light snow in 2006, so maybe we’ll get lucky and see some winter weather. Til next time!

Mujeres del Mundo (por Cari)

Mujeres del mundo,Women of the world, is one of the current projects I am working with. Other time I will write about Eli’s and I surrealistic film project. It has been a fantastic time of living and studying generation of 27:vanguard, medieval , tea, culture ,and philosophy. I apologize for not writing before. You would understand I rather write in my native language, not because I do not think English is a beautiful language, but because it is like black and white for me. Spanish is colors, adjectives, hyperboles, metaphors, verse, prose, sonnets. It has been a time of returning to me. As a victim of immigration, I suffered what is called as the negotiation of identities.

I was given the opportunity to choose between a three month practice, working in the Institute of Culture, Flamenco, Gastronomy, Wine and Vinegar making in Jerez de la Frontera, teaching Spanish as a second language, or do a research thesis. It was very difficult to decide, until I had a class with a professor, (now my tutor), and film director about the intrahistoria, later she led me to meet with Mujeres Del Mundo. It is a group of immigrant women from Latin America, Italy, and Morocco that get together to share their food, wine, stories and recipes. But there is more than that happening. It is a vehicle where cultures and different visions of the world interact. A collective restaurant was born thanks to this group and gave the Spanish citizenship to four illegal immigrants. Their stories are real.

Intrahistoria refers to the history you will not read in a traditional history book. It is the stories and testimonies of people like you and me. It is also the history of the forgotten. Those people that you see asking to clean your wind shield, working in the agricultural fields, or selling you flowers in the stoplight. The history limits to tell about what was important to a bourgeoisie and elite, what they did, what they ate, what they thought, fought. In fact when everything was ruin by wars, writers were hired to rewrite, reinvent history. They were writers that belonged to an accommodated social class. They were the only ones that could write and read at that time. That is why I say: Thank you romanticism, Grimm, Larra, thank you Federico Garcia Lorca, Romancero Gitano, for bringing costumbrismo , libros de viaje and gave us a break in our manipulated history, preventing a forgotten, unknown culture, lifestyle, to disappear. Even though the recovering of the popular culture by the romantics, folklorists was great, we still see it through the writer’s point of view. I do not think against that, I cataloged myself as a folklorist. I rather describe it as seeing the panorama through a new lens. Intrahistoria searches to recover that history from the source itself from testimonies and stories of real people and it is crude, naked. Some people call it marginal history; I call it the real history. Eduardo Galeano smiled.

La empanada Chilena is a Collective Restaurant in Calle Sacramento, about four blocks from our piso in Cadiz. They make the best empanadas chilenas in Cadiz. The collective is a project that started about a decade go. It took a lot of business research until it finally happened. The empanadas are baked in a thin and soft pastry dough filled with ternera, chicken, or ham , cheese and pineapple, mixed with herbs, spices, egg, and tomate frito.

“ I first lived in Germany but although I found a good paying job without papers, it was prohibited to enroll children that did not have papers, and I had three daughters. It was then when friends from Cadiz told us we did not need to be legal in Spain to attend school and helped us move” -owner

“ This collective came true thanks to our friends here in Spain. It was not thanks to the banks or immigration agencies. It was thanks to friends that love you and want to see you succeed. If we just stay in our house and not think about getting involve in friendships, like Mujeres del Mundo, This was not possible. - Bere (owner)

Portugal!

Roxana and Javier are visiting us, and invited us to accompany them to Portugal. We've had a bit of cabin fever in our cramped city, so we jumped at the opportunity.

We originally planned to go by bus, but realized that we'd actually save money renting a vehicle. The only catch was that there were 6 of us, and every normal car only seats 5.

Enter the minibus.

It's a 9-seat diesel 6-speed, and the picture makes it look smaller than it really is. I had lots of fun in the tiny streets of Cadiz and Faro. I only scraped 1 car and 1 dumpster, and didn't even lose paint!
















A suspension bridge outside Sevilla. The small red box in front of us is a 3-wheel scooter-car. While enclosed like a car, it steers with scooter handlebars and has a buzzy little 125cc engine that is certainly not capable of keeping up with traffic on this road. I actually almost hit this guy because I didn't see him.















Another shot.















Sevilla city. Our destination of Faro, Portugal is actually not far down the coast from Cadiz, but we had to take a very circuitous route that took us inland to Sevilla because of a large nature preserve along the coast. Sevilla is where you will fly to when you come visit us! *ahem*
















We stopped at the Police Station at the border to ask if we needed to register or show our passports. They told us that the guy who does that wasn't there, but that we should stop at another police station at our destination to register. If they couldn't be bothered, we couldn't either!















Outside our hotel in Faro. Check out the bird's nest!




















A pretty smile!
















This lady keeps trying to kidnap our son! Roxy and Javier helped us so much with the kids. We would have gone nuts without them.
















This thing was awesome. It looks like a Jeep, but was branded a 'Moke'. Never heard of it, but I bet it's a blast to drive.















On the beach.
















The water here is much sweeter and less salty than in Cadiz for some reason. The waves are also much stronger, and the beach drops off very sharply in the water. I enjoyed it very much, but we had to be careful with the kids. The surf was strong enough to throw me down a few times, although it's not apparent in the picture.
















This guy was relaxing on the pier where we were dining. He looked so peaceful.
















Eating with your feet on the table is considered good manners in Portugal. Several people complimented us on our boy's foot-table skills.
















Sisters!















Javier!
















Aryanna would smile more, but she's too hungry to exert the effort.
















The view from our hotel room.
















And another.
















An alleyway in Faro. There was an interesting Che Guevara graffiti in the background.















Central Faro along the pier.
















It's genetic.
















All the awesome pictures are Carrie's. She's got the knack!

We also visited Palma Del Rio in the Cordoba province on the way home, which is where we will be probably working this fall. It was a beautiful little agricultural white town, but we neglected to get pictures. It was 41C in town, which is 105.8F, but the humidity was low so it wasn't that bad. We also found good leads to find a flat there from a friendly lady at the police station. The city was much cleaner and more spacious than Cadiz, although we will miss the ocean.

Because of this detour we spent most of today on the road, and I'm totally beat. The sun through the windshield overpowered the A/C and left me travel-sticky and exhausted.

Til next time!

Carrie's graduation party

Well, she hasn't graduated completely, but the class is done with the classroom portion of the course. The students threw a party to celebrate. It was nice for them to take a break from Hispanic studies!



Juana (l) and Felicia (r) dancing flamenco. Felicia is actually an American who came to Spain to learn flamenco and then married a Spanish fellow. She has been living here for 6 years. Danny is playing the guitar for them in the background.
















Driss and Juana looking serious.
















Walter is a lawyer from Cuba, and knows the lyrics to pretty much any rock song ever. Seriously, name a song and the guy will sing it to you. I thought I knew Pink Floyd, but he put me to shame. He and Carrie are performing a Silvio Rodriguez song.
















Carolina, Driss, and Valeria cooking up a storm. Valeria (on the right) made a Russian baked dish of cheese, rice, mushrooms, and chicken. She's also our second roommate now. Javi takes advantage of the distraction to steal more beer from the fridge. He's an fantastic singer and performs in the Carnaval every year.
















Felicia and Brynn, talking about various American military secrets.
















Carolina, Juana, me, Ana, and Danny.
















Hanging out in the kitchen. You can't see it in the picture, but the window behind us is about 50 feet from the beach with a beautiful, beautiful view. The flat was 6 or 7 stories up, providing a fantastic vantage point.















Grownup parties are so boring. Ash was passed out on a bed in the other room. Interestingly, the only sick person the next morning was Aryanna, who ate too many shrimp and spent the morning throwing up. Poor thing :(

Summer laziness

I've been far too busy to update the blog recently, and for that I apologize. By busy of course I mean lazy. And what a lazy summer it is! The heat the past few weeks has been brutal, and any kind of productive activity requires twice the effort. Fortunately this week has been cooler and nicer, and we've also discovered the wonder of the early-morning empty beach to start the day off refreshed and cool.

We also bought a fan. We hoped to buy one used, but the only one at the flea market, a small, old 1'x1' box fan, was price-quoted at.....(try not to laugh)....50 Euros (what's that with the exchange rate? $85?). Maybe I had 'estupido' Sharpied on my forehead that day. Fortunately we found a bigger, floorstanding, NEW fan with a 2-year warranty for 18 euro at a store, and it's been wonderful.

Anyway, due to my laziness I've got lots of pictures. These are 'assorted' but in the next week look for pictures of Carrie's end-of-classes party and a video of Aryanna dancing flamenco!



Some classmates. Our roommate Driss is on the right, his friend Muhammed beside him, and Muhammed's girlfriend Carolina by Carrie. Carolina had to return to Valparaiso, Chile last week because her visa was only for 6 months. They were rather unhappy to be separated.

















I'm so proud I could cry. One of Ash's Lego creations.
















Carrie's been missing her guitar. We found one in this hole-in-the-wall old things shop for 25 Euro. It's much older than it looks in the picture and I'm pretty sure some of the inlays are ivory. Here I am figuring out how to string one of these things.

















Early morning at the beach. On weekends you'll be lucky to have 5 feet between you and your neighbor, but early on it's just us and the old folks.

















Carrie made a delicious bread pudding with German rye bread. One of her friends from university gave her the recipe. The next variation she suggested was to exchange the sugar for seafood and make a main dish.















Til next time!