Boarding School Conference Call

SON 1: Why do we have to have another conference call when they've already interviewed us once?

DELORA:  They want to see how you're handling your experience in Spain.  They might want to know if you've matured at all since they've seen you, or why you think you'd be a good fit at their school...

SON 2: Can I tell them they have the hottest girls in their catalogue?

Delora is not amused.

DELORA: Did you all get your SKYPE numbers? I need to email them to the school right now.

DAUGHTER:  Mine is: Dudeit'sLu.

DELORA:  Seriously? Seriously. (To Son 1) And yours?

SON 1: It's MotherRucker.

Three teenagers crack themselves up.

Exploring My Inner Heroes

[Spoiler alert:  If you have not watched HEROES Season 1 yet (fool), you may want to wait to read this riveting post...]

When you live in Spain and can't turn on the TV because it's way, way too time consuming to figure out how to use anything from Telfonica, the most poorly run company on the planet (the same company that Thunder Perkins ... moment of silence ... could have run better than the current CEO),  you compensate by spending vast sums of money downloading Heroes -- Seasons 1 through 4 -- for about 60 dollars per season, even though you know that it sells at BJs for 39 cents.  Thanks itunes.

And when you have the flu and Dr. Juan (or Jose) McDreamy, your Spanish house-call Doctor, has almost cured you, but you're still bedridden, you can watch 500 hours of Heroes in a row.  If you're not familiar with the show, here's the premise: sometimes ordinary people have a gene mutation (Darwin, blah, blah) and they develop super powers.  One person can fly; one can zap people with electricity from her hands.  You get the idea.  Some powers are sort of useless. No thank you to the ability to breathe under water, for example. Yet some powers are pretty fantastic. Beware, I've "heard" that when you watch many episodes in a row, this starts to happen:

1. You start to believe that you just might have a super power developing yourself.  After all, sometimes they develop in adults, and they're not always obvious -- such as the ability to control people like a puppeteer, for example.

2. If your power hasn't fully developed YET, you spend an inordinate amount of time wondering which power you would use if you were indeed developing powers, as you think you secretly might be.

Here's an example of a little game I play with myself.  Let's just say, my chica loses my dog. I ask myself: which superpower would I use to fix this problem?  Flying doesn't really help, although it might be useful after the fact. But the answer is obvious, right? It would be Hiro's abilty to time travel.  Why? Because then I could travel back to the moment when that sneaky Chica was about to tie Thunder to the post and grab him.

Another example.  Kids won't fill out essays the way you think they should be filled out for boarding schools.  Which power? YES: Matt Parkman's ability to perform mind control!  You wouldn't even have to say out loud that writing an essay about wanting to be in the Peace Corps would be better than an essay about wanting to be a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader, for example.  You could just think it.  Better yet, you could forget about all those time consuming applications and mind control the admissions committee into admitting your kids (for free!) because they're so smart and creative and hold the secrets to the future in their hands (I'm trying out my mind control powers right now, Admissions people).


Here's my final example for today, but don't blame me if you want to try this game yourself.  Ok, let's say you're in a foreign country and you need to learn a language, um, say Spanish.  Remember that cute little red-headed waitress with the ability to learn everything she's read, including languages?  Bingo!  Yes, yes, I know she ends up with a brain tumor from the extra workload, but I'll limit my learning to Spanish. And just to be safe, I'm carrying a pack of tissues in case my power turns out to be mind control.  Poor Matt Parkman gets a nose bleed every time he has to control someone who is really stubborn. With these kids, I'm gonna need a bunch of tissues.

Note to Admissions...

Besides having a lost dog and rotten karma, we are living through one of the worst trials ever to test our resilience on the face of this planet: we have 3 children applying to boarding schools. THREE! 

It's not like the kids haven't been preparing their essays for some time now (admissions officers).  So why does it feel like we've spent days cramming for a test, unshowered, in our pajamas at 5 pm, surrounded by dirty dishes, take-out food, crumpled papers (and a wine glass)?  Why have we exhausted the entire supply of Wite Out -- tape, liquid and pen -- on the Iberian Peninsula?  Why didn't I pay that consultant in Connecticut the exorbitant amount of money he required to manage this process?  And why am I screaming alot?  I'll tell you why... because everything has to be hand-written!  In case you don't have one of your own, a 14 year-old's handwriting is not a pretty sight.  Sometimes the words start out large, then they get very, very small.  Sometimes there are large mounds of congealed liquid and tape white-out re-written in another color pen. Some applications look like they've been written while riding in a motor boat or on the back of a scooter.

One application will require a microscope to read.  But hey, admissions, you asked for it.

Other notes to admissions:

If you ask a 14 year-old athletic boy what he wants to do when he grows up, he probably won't say that he really wants to figure out how to split the atom (like I told him to).  Instead, he'll say that he wants to play Centerfielder for the Red Sox.  And his back-up plan won't be to work as an apprentice for Mother Theresa (as I suggested).  He'll want to be a Rock Star.  If you ask a 14 year-old girl what she likes to read, she's not gonna say, Little Women (like I told her to).  If she's halfway honest, she's gonna say Twilight, or some other piece of romantic vampire chick-lit.

Sure, I probably could have persuaded my offspring to follow my suggestions (with threats, itunes gift certificates and cash), but late one night after I had failed to persuade a single teen; after a certain petulant child explained to me that she or he had answered an essay question with one sentence because one sentence was enough;  I threw my hands in the air and realized that our applications (did I say "our"?) were not going to turn out as I planned.

And maybe a certain child was right:  maybe one sentence was enough...

An Incredible Soccer Night...Turned Nightmare

Last night we attended our first futbol game in our adopted city of Madrid. New Yorkers, you got nothin' on the rivalry between Real Madrid and Atletico fans.  Jets vs. Giants, Mets vs. Yankees: add vast amounts of alcohol, latin tempers, cigarette smoking in the stadium seats, celebratory red and white smoke bombs to start the game (red and white for the Atletico stadium) and world class group swearing (in song) and you have just a taste of what we experienced.  Here's a recap of the game:


The sound track in this video is so very misleading.  Instead, imagine inserting the song the mob crowd sang when Real Madrid's number 4, got a red card and was tossed out of the game: Adios hijo de Puta, Adios, hijo de Puta, Adios  ... well you get the idea.  Translation?  Goodbye, son of bitch!  That's the only one I can actually print on a family blog...


So how did this festive night turn nightmare?  Leaving the stadium, the five of us had to grab 2 cabs.  The crowd surged (did I just say, "the crowd surged"?) and there were distractions: One fan, so drunk he literally couldn't walk, fell off a motorcycle and was crawling around the street.  There was a mad dash for cabs, so we hopped into our two, drove the 15 minutes home and arrived realizing that neither Chip, nor I, had Clark. Clark was still in the mob somewhere on the other side of town with no phone, no money and no keys. Frantic, Chip and Lucia grabbed another cab back to the stadium. Sam stationed himself at the door to our building with 20 euros in case Clark had taken a cab and couldn't pay and I waited upstairs by the phone.  No words can describe the amount of despair we felt when 2 hours later, neither we, nor the police, could find Clark.  During that time, Chip, Lucia and some riot police (who spoke no English) had been driving around the stadium.  An hour later, when there was still no sign of him, the police took a description of Clark, dropped Chip and Lucia back where they'd last seen him, and drove off, wishing them buen suerte (good luck)!  We've never been more terrified.

Just as I was getting through to the emergency person at the US Embassy in the wee hours of the morning, I heard the elevator ascending.  There was Clark with two police officers, looking pale, but no worse for wear.  He'd had a crazy adventure involving being pushed over a barrier, waiting for us on a pole in the middle of the mob, panicking after time went by, trying to run home and realizing he didn't know where he was, and finally finding two policemen in the streets who put him in the back of the heavily plasticized police car.  What took so long to get home?  Twice, the police stopped the car, turned to Clark and said, "Lo siento, un momento, por favor." Then they took out their guns and proceeded to break up big street brawls. They were "bros" as Clark calls them, great guys who cracked jokes all night and entertained him by driving on the center medians with their sirens on and cracking themselves up.  Twice they went down one way streets the wrong way. "Wow, just like in the police car scene in Superbad!" Sam said with admiration.


The fallout: Sam and Lucia have vowed to tatoo "Clark" onto their forearms.  I suggest that, instead, we tattoo Clark with: "Reward offered for safe return", along with his address and phone number.

Urban Cowboy

We've been city dwellers for 6 weeks now, so I don't expect to hear cows mooing in my apartment.  Yet, there it is again, coming from Sam's room.  I crack the door and see my boy's face lit by his computer screen.  He sees me eyeing the mess in his room.

I'm trying to keep the crows from ruining my crops, he explains.

The crows? We live at the top of a six story building, yet I haven't seen crows.  Could you please clean up your room, I ask? And hang up the towels.

I have to harvest my peppers now or they'll rot and I'll lose the $25,000 I've invested in seed.  With fervor, he completes a series of repetitive mouse movements to "harvest" his crops and gain points to buy other farm items.  He's saving for a farmhouse.

Welcome to Farmville, the computer program that lets anyone, urban or suburban, run a farm into the ground or be the creator of a beautifully planned plantation complete with livestock, plants, decorative farm elements (lakes, hedges, horse jumps, etc.)  and animals you can gift to friends.  Sam shows me his friends' farms -- Regan's, Madeline's and Tim's -- all grander scale operations that require a lot of tendin'. Woah, Sam chuckles, Tim really needs to harvest his wheat!  Sam's farm is modest in comparison.  Surrounding the 8 or 9 tillable acres are some trees and a dozen or so farm animals.  Some were gifts from friends.  He's splurged on a small pond with a bench nearby. Fruit trees shade the area.  It's a peaceful place to sit, he says wistfully.

Now he's deciding which crops to plant next.  Crops yield different quantities of food and different profits at market.  Sam calculates the possibilities.  He likes the returns on squash and raspberries, but different crops demand different harvesting times requiring the farmer to plan his schedule accordingly.  Sam doesn't want to wake up in the middle of the night for raspberries, so he chooses squash.   That'll allow him a full night's sleep.

Genius, I'm thinking.  It won't be long before you get that farmhouse, I tell him proudly.  I pick up the towel and hang it myself.

Actually, if you let me use your credit card, he says hopefully, I can buy the $50,000 farmhouse for $20 dollars.  Then I won't have to live in the $1,000 farmhouse.  He sees my face and turns back to the screen.  Okay, okay.  I'll get the little farmhouse.  And maybe Madeline will send me another sheep.

First Day of School!

School started today.  You can see for yourself the kind of excitement we all felt.  We received several different answers about when and where to catch the bus.  Surprisingly, the kids didn't want us to accompany them to the bus stop, so we were very inconspicuous...

(hint: to see full screen, click on the youtube image.  Otherwise you lose the right part of the screen)

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.

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.

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.