Amigos Desperately Needed

Clark and Sam slept in Sam's twin beds.  It's noon and I don't hear a peep.
I enter the room, dark except for the glow of matching laptops on matching beds.
What are you guys doing?
Nervous laughter...we're on facebook.
Who're you talking to -- the girls from camp?
Um, no.  They take at sneaky look at one another.  Sam answers first.
I'm talking to... Clark.
Clark, your brother in the next bed?
Um hmm.  He taps out another message.  Clark chuckles.
Why? I'm baffled.
Because it's fun!  We're talking to Lucia too!
Lucia, in the next bedroom.

School starts in 11 days.

Sammy Clark Madrid 2

Javier Bardem, in Vicky Christina Barcelona, is the real reason the boys wanted to move to Spain. Perhaps, against my best parental judgement, I opt to watch the movie with them one night when Chip and Lu are out of town. They'll be so excited about Spain, I think to myself!

The boys watch without comment, then comes the pivotal scene:Javier propositions two women -- complete strangers -- dining in a restaurant. He suggests a weekend away at a quaint 

Spanish village, together. They chastise him. How can you ask such a thing, they chortle.  

He refuses to be chastened: Life is short. Life is dull. It is full of pain and this is a chance for 

something special. The brunette is aghast, but Javier won't apologize. What offends you, he asks, that I find you both attractive? In the next scene, all three fly to Orvieto.

The boys look at each other as though all the secrets of the universe have been revealed.  

Mom? You can say stuff like that? They smile BIG smiles.

Flash forward to Spanish immersion camp 3 months later. I ask Lucia if the boys like any particular girl at camp. She rolls her eyes. All the girls like both boys, she explains: When the 

boys were asked at camp which girls they like, the responded: todas las chicas (all the girls).

The boys thank you Javier!

The Birthday Boy

Happy Birthday, Gill-man!

The Kids Are a Little Stressed...

Here's the course line up for their new Spanish school:

1. Lengua Castellana y Literatura (Spanish language and literature)

2. Ingles - (English. That's gotta be an "A" right?)

3. Ciencias Sociales, Geografia E Historia (Social Sciences, Geography & History)

4. Fisica y Quimica (Physics AND Chemistry) Hmmm.

5. Biologia y Geologia (Biology and Geology, we think...)

6. Matematicas (Geometry & Algebra, and maybe some other maths...)

7. Educacion Fisica (Gym, another "A", worst case, a "B")

8. Educacion Plastica y Visual (Art? See above)

9. Technologias (Tech)

10. Musica (Flamenco?)

11. Religion/H y Cultura de las Religiones/ Atencion Educativa (all I can say is, they haven't had much of this...)

12. Choice between one of the following: Frances, Aleman or Cultura Clasica (French, German or Classic Cultures)

It was not a good day.

Things I love about Spain...

It's the unofficial miniature Dachshund

capital of the world...

Supreme body confidence! Every woman, no matter how flabby, obese, or elderly, feels perfectly comfortable in a bikini, or just a bikini bottom. And they make no apologies.

Trust! When your new Spanish credit card and debit cards don't work (every day), shop keepers nod understandingly and tell you to take the merchandise home and pay when things get worked out with the bank!

Cheap Wine! You can't buy a bad wine at any price and after a long day of dealing with logistics (every day), that's a nice ending.

Fashion fusion! Seen on the beach in Marbella: a man wearing red espadrilles, a speedo -ish bathing suit, a man purse and a CSI Las Vegas baseball cap.

A new way to manage teens

Occasionally, teenage children will exaggerate.

For instance, they'll call you on their first day of Spanish immersion camp, as Lucia did recently, and they'll say: this place is like a prison. And you'll sooth your teen and say honey, it can't be that bad. You'll even go to sleep with a smile on your face. Then you'll visit your teen at camp, because she's ill. Large cement block walls will lead to 12 foot locked iron gates. A heavily pierced and tattooed 18 year old from the Czech republic will buzz you through. You'll locate your daughter's counselor fiddling with a ring of keys on her belt as she leads you to Lucia's locked dorm room. As the door unlocks you'll see your daughter curled in a sweaty ball in an airless cement room. They won't let us open the windows because of the mosquitos, she'll tell you. Later, she'll feel well enough to give a tour of the "camp". She'll show you the group shower, one white tiled room with multiple shower heads, where she showers in her bathing suit. There's no soap anywhere. You'll suggest brightly that she's probably learned a lot of Spanish though, right? She'll agee nodding. We've learned a ton of swearwords...

You'll leave thinking, occasionally teenage children will tell the truth.

Our nemesis (el ascendor)

When looking for apartments in Spain, no one warns you to check if the elevator (el ascensor) works. Ours, a beautiful baroque wrought iron variety typical in Spanish buildings of a certain era, moves slowly through the center of the building, the marble stairway spiraling around it. The small glass box (holding 4 slender people, tops) allows stair-walkers to amuse themselves on the walk by seeing just who might be caught between floors inside the little glass trap. If it's a slow day, you can just watch the narrow band of rubber that creaks over the pulleys as they move the box up and down. In fact, you can smell the rubber burning just a little. This is not an elevator for the young or impatient. A series of steps, similar to those required to build a nuclear reactor, must be followed in sequence and at properly timed intervals for the box to move. Typically both young and impatient, delivery boys are frequently stuck between the first and second floor of our building tapping on the glass (saying something Spanish that means, help!) Sometimes the elevator repair man rides on the top of the box for a couple hours to figure out the latest glitch. When he gestures that it's ok to get in, we Americans mime a Schwartzenegger muscle pose or do a Chariots of Fire type slo-mo run to show him that we're sure the elevator is fine, but we're in training. We'll take the stairs.

Why we haven't been to the Museum

A partial list of broken items in the apartment we're renting:

• No cold water in the kitchen
• Broken dishwasher (circa 1995)
• Broken washer and dryer (circa 1995)
• Broken oven (circa?) - already fixed twice
• Broken toilet in Sam's room- already fixed twice
• Broken shower in Sam's room
• 2 broken shutters -- the exterior metal kind that block out sunlight
• Electrical circuitry on the 2nd floor
• Alarm system
• Misc: towel bars (2), shelf in the refrigerator, various cabinet doors

Number of times the electricity has gone out - 8; but our landlord is on vacation until September, so he'll call the electrical company in September...

Yup, we moved to Spain!

Kind of. We're here, but it looks like it'll be a while until we're settled. We knew this move would be a cosmic lesson in patience. Patience, to us, is waiting more than four or five minutes for our order to be taken at a restaurant. Here in Madrid, if you don't have 2 hours for a quick lunch, forget it. So we should have known there would be complications: a broken dishwasher, washer, dryer, oven, alarm system, window shutters, and elevator. It's really hard to move to the top floor of a building without an elevator. Movers here have nothing to prove and wouldn't dream of walking a feather duster, let alone a sleeper sofa, up 6 flights of steps. They'd rather smoke a pack and enjoy some wine with their lunch while they wait for the elevator. Three hours later, when swearing in several languages erupts, they smile, as if to say, it wouldn't be a day at the office if someone weren't swearing at me in a foreign language. Luckily the Spanish place no value on an even temper. Pass the Rioja.