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!

Adventure Update

Apparently I have been so busy making plans that I haven't uploaded a photo or even written a post since October. Could have something to do with that little thing called THE HOLIDAYS! I am just coming out of the holiday fog and I have been saying that for 2 weeks. We actually still have a flocked tree standing up in the family room upstairs (only because I need Matt's help to get it down). He believes that once you put a tree up, you don't ever break it down and store it in the box again. This hasn't come up in the past, because we have never had a fake tree (we still do the real one downstairs). It would have been good to know this before I bought a twelve foot tree.... Maybe I could store it in the gym, the ceiling is tall enough.... Anyway, things have changed a lot since I last posted. We are scheduled to leave for Sevilla, Spain in exactly three weeks from yesterday. I did some research and just felt that Spain would be a safer area for me to travel by myself with the kids. We are getting so excited for the trip. People keep asking if we are already for the trip and I guess we are as ready as we are going to be. We have the apartment, we have our passports, and we have our flights. The only thing we need to do is pack our bags. I do still need to meet with some teachers and figure out the school thing. We are going to just go and see what we think about school when we get there. Cassy wants to go, but nobody else does. If we end up home schooling, I think it will still work because then we can hire a tutor to take us around to different venues and help us practice our Spanish. I am just trying to figure out how many books to take and if we can get books while we are there. I am planning on everyone doing some math, science, memorization and lots of reading (as well as some Spanish, of course) everyday. As long as everyone keeps a good attitude, it should work out well. But of course that is a big "if"!

Costa Rica or Spain (or Chile)

Honestly, I keep going back and forth on this adventure of ours. Currently, I am leaning toward Spain....last week it was Costa Rica. Until I found out that a tourist was killed in the little beach town of Samara, where we are looking to stay. I did a little more research. There is a lot of theft there and the crime targets tourists. I have been reading of express kidnappings, murders, burglaries, and petty theft. Not sure that I am up for all of that. I want an adventure, but not danger. So I am back to considering Spain. I think it is doable if we go and simply stay in Spain, rather than trying to fit in a tour of Italy, France and England as well (although it will be hard to miss all of those things when we are SO close!) I guess we will have to go back in a couple of years for the rest of it all! Matt wants us to go live with a member family in Chile, but the airfare is astronomical, so I don't think that is an option...

The Visa Glitch

I ran into a website this week that gave out some more detailed info on getting a visa to live in Spain longer than 90 days. I knew it would be a long and difficult process, but apparently there are some costs that I didn't know about. It cost their family of four almost $6000 to get the visa! Some of the unknowns are international health insurance (about $2,000 for our stay with a deductible of $10,000) and lots of fees for papers and translation services. I am feeling overwhelmed by the cost. Plus you have to have all of your ducks in a row before you go (rental agreement, airline tickets, etc) and you still don't know if they will give you the visa or not. It is making me feel stressed. My gut feeling is telling me to wait until February to go and then stay in Spain for 2 months, then move on to the other Schengen countries I want to visit (Italy, France) and then end in England and come home around mid May. Unfortunately we have already made some pretty solid plans with my mom and Wayne for December in England. My mom is out of town, but hopefully I can speak with her more about it today when she gets back.

Summer Reading

So far, my summer reading has mostly been comprised of reading and studying travel books and blogs and searching for places to stay for our European Adventure. I think half of the fun of going somewhere is the planning. I do hope to leave enough "holes" in the calendar that we have time to just explore and find little treasures on our own, rather than running from place to place. Although, I do like to have an itinerary and some things planned out so that days aren't wasted standing in unnecessary lines and chasing our tails trying to figure things out. It is a lot of work putting a trip of this magnitude together (although it would be much easier if we didn't have a budget:)! So far the best travel guides I have found are the Rick Steve's European Guide Books (one for each country). I feel confident about planning the apartments, hotels, campgrounds, and homes, as well as the airfare and some of the entertainment, but I am feeling uncertain about costs related to getting around. I don't want any expensive unknown costs popping up! Hopefully I can catch up on my book club books while I am lazing about in Spain for three months while my children are in school!

Kids Camp! (Back by popular demand)

We are working on earning money toward our big Spanish excursion so we are doing 5 kids camps this summer! Cassy and I made up the flyer and took them around to the neighbors. We are planning on doing a Survivor Camp, Circus Camp, Art Camp, Harry Potter Camp and a Medieval Camp (for knights and princesses). We have already survived (just barely) our first Survivor Camp. The day before camp there were 21 people registered, the morning of camp we ended up with 35 kids showing up. Needless to say I had to make a last minute popsicle run! I wish we had some pictures, but it is so crazy with that many kids taking photos totally slipped my mind. We had some fun crafts, face painting, flag making, endurance challenges, popsicle clue search, water games, water balloons, and the highlight was the food challenge. We had baby food on spoons for everyone to try. There were peas, green beans and sweet potatoes. Everyone had to take a bite and and then secretly guess what they were eating. We had 9 and 10 year old boys throwing up in the garbage can over this (like 3 of them). They were guessing the craziest things....rotten cucumbers, guacamole, cucumber soup and I can't remember the others. I think everyone had fun and we were happy when it was all over.