Our Spain Adventure Begins!

We left for Spain on Tuesday at 12:45 in the afternoon. We arrived in Sevilla at 4:30 pm on Wednesday. It was a really long flight, and everyone was really good, I even had people say how well behaved my children were! When we got here to Sevilla, Pepe and his friend Ivan picked us up from the airport and took us to the apartment. Pepe showed us around the apartment and then we went and explored the neighborhood. We found the local bakery, Chinese shop, and grocery store. Then the kids wanted to go and exchange their money so we went to El Corte Ingles, which is a huge department store and exchanged their money. On the main floor there is a bookstore, upscale patisserie shop, and lots of jewelry and makeup counters like Chanel and Clinique. Then downstairs there was a grocery store. It has everything. We stocked up on a few essentials like cereal, milk and yogurt. They have leche fresca which is fresh milk and they also have boxed milk that is kept on the shelf. They both actually taste really good. We also went down to a playground on the river that has a big ship play structure. The kids ran around and played tag and had a good time. We ended the night with some tapas at Bar Rodriguez just down the street. My favorite was a pork loin with a whiskey solamente (?) sauce. It was so good. We also had some pork on some crostini. The pork had lots of fat through it and it wasn't my favorite. Addy ate most of the crostini anyway (and left all the pork). I'm pretty sure she also spit out her chewed up pork on the plate. We also had a mayo salad with some shrimp and lettuce that was OK. When we finally got to bed, we all passed out and slept very well. So well in fact that I was a bit late to my appointment with Ivan to go and look at schools. I managed to blow my hair dryer up, as well as flip the circuit breaker...oops! We went and met with four schools. Only one had any openings and that one only had openings for Cassy and Alex. Cassy is so excited and wants to go to school there, but Alex is so not excited. I think I will just send Cassy, but I don't want to feel like we are tied down to a certain schedule. I am hoping to go and visit some local cities and learn about those places as well. We are hearing lots of Spanish, but we definitely don't speak the language too well. Actually, I think we can get our point across, but when people respond back, it is really hard to understand them.

After meeting with the schools, we met up with Pepe and walked to Alameda, which is a large plaza that has a couple of playgrounds. We all grabbed some gelato and explored the plaza. Afterward, we walked down to the boat park again and the kids had a great time. We met a friend named Marco. After playing at the park for a while we went back to Alameda, which is really close to the house, and had some tapas and hamburguesas. We came home and went to bed. Unfortunately, Alex started throwing up and between him and the cell phone ringing, we were all up most of the night....except Addy she slept most of the night. Our plan was to wake up at a decent time and do some school and go visit the tourist sites. Unfortunately, since we all fell asleep at about 4 am, we couldn't get up til about 11:00. We all got ready, then headed out to have a dessert at the corner bakery. YUM! Then we were off in search of a park with lots of trees and grass. Cassy thought it was 5 minutes away, but it was more like an hour away. It turned out to be a great park, although the whole purpose of finding this park is to find a place to play futbol, and once we got there signs were posted that soccer isn't allowed. We were glad to find a bar (with full alcohol selection) in the park so we could get a drink after our long walk. The park is close to our church, so I think we will try to stop by after church for a picnic. On the way back we crossed a fabulous bridge that was built for the 1992 world expo. Walking along the river we watched the rowers (lots of Germans out training with their coaches in motorboats) and the fisherman fishing from the side of the river. Cassy took lots of pictures of graffiti. There is so much graffiti here it is crazy! We don't know what it says, so we can just enjoy the creative artistry. Cassy wants to do some tagging before we go, but I told her she needed to wait until Matt gets here.

At first Sevilla was not what I expected, just different somehow from what I had expected in my mind, but as we get to know the area better it is even better than expected. I love finding the unexpected moments. Like watching the rowers go by on the Guadlquivir with just the right kind of sunlight in the air it was awesome. Another fun moment was last night when we found a square that we stopped at to play a game of soccer (I just took pictures). It was so fun and the kids had that magic glow about them in the lamplight that it was one of those moments that I won't ever forget. I think we are beginning to relax and enjoy. Sevilla is a beautiful town. Tonight we had pizza/cereal in and we are watching Disney channel (in English no less), so we couldn't be having a less Spanish experience. Oh well!