A Flamenco Dancer is Born

One of my goals when coming to Spain was to learn to dance flamenco.  Not that I knew anything about it aside from my short stint years ago as a backup singer in my sister’s Gypsy-Kings-Wannabes flamenco group that played in a café every Saturday evening.  My great-great grandmother was a gypsy, albeit from Germany, and I felt it in my blood. When I heard that the mother of Spain’s leading flamenco dancer was offering a flamenco class, I jumped at the chance.

The Captain and the Flamenco Dancers

Concha Baras is a small, slight, graceful, well-preserved owner of a flamenco studio.  Mother of the famous flamenco bailadora Sara Baras, she taught her daughters how to dance at an early age.  With her strong Andalusian accent and the temperament of a ballet maestra, Concha is a little intimidating.  Two other women started with me in October, and we began with a simple buleria, a traditional dance for the holidays.  I saw immediately that she expected a lot and didn’t suffer fools; I kept my mouth shut and my eyes wide, videotaping her in order to practice at home.  By early November, she asked if we’d like to dance in a zambomba.  Not knowing what that was, I said “Sure.”

Concha and me

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ-ie12Eqck      Click link to see Sara Baras dance!

A zambomba originated as a traditional spontaneous fiesta de las calles among the gypsies of Spain.  Dancing and singing around a fire in the street or plaza, the crowd would spontaneously circle, some entering the circle, tapping out intricate moves to the song.  If you know anything about flamenco, you know it involves a lot of fancy footwork.  In its more stylized form, a zambomba now includes a singer and guitarist, as well as percussion from a box-like instrument called the ­­­­­cajón.  Concha’s zambomba was more choreographed: a benefit for a charity group, Las Hermanitas de los Pobres, the 25 Euro ticket required a bit more planning.

A traditional zambomba in the streets

Suddenly I had entered the world of dance, singing, guitar, and a group of women, Concha’s other students, who fascinated me.  All shapes, sizes, and ages, the one thing these women have in common is their incredible grace in movement.  Each has her individual style wrapped around the traditional flamenco steps, and each shows a confidence and panache in dancing that intrigued and delighted me.  Our part of the zambomba consisted of four parts:  a sevillana, the traditional dance of the ferias (in which I did NOT dance--I haven’t learned it yet!); a rumba to a recorded song, Los Buenos Momentos; a medley of songs taken from various villancicos,  traditional Spanish Christmas songs; and finally, as the grand finale, a series of bulerias, each dancer entering the circle to show her stuff. 

Click here to hear Los Buenos Momentos:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6n3z-dJ4Q40

Practice was intense.  I had to learn both words and melody to five villancicos, the steps to my little buleria, the group’s steps to the rumba (no solo for me here, too new), and the compás or rhythmic clapping integral to flamenco music.  Little did I know that clapping was so intricate!  Aside from numerous syncopated rhythms, there are at least two different ways to hold your hands, and there is often a foot tap or stamp integrated into the clapping.  At practice, every time I danced my little 30-second piece, the others nearly fell over laughing.  “Why?”  I asked.  “It’s because even though you don’t have the movements right, you have the spirit, the attitude, the compás, the soul!”  Todd got mad as the practice sessions accelerated from once to twice a week in the evening, then to every night before the big performance on Friday, but even my sister’s arrival in Spain for the holidays didn’t keep me from the practices:  I had found something that I loved, that was beautiful and challenging and graceful and fun, and I wanted IN!

Getting ready

The evening of the performance I arrived on time, only to find the bodega Caballero, the sherry winery down the street from us where the performance was being held, locked up tight. Standing outside in my sheer black skirt, hair long and in heavier-than-usual makeup, I felt conspicuous and a little awkward.  When I was finally let in, I discovered the practice before the performance had been set at 6:30, not 6 pm.  (This has been a problem for me as my Spanish-speaking ability evolves; I often miss key pieces of information!)  But the excitement of the other women, their always-warm welcome into the group, and their last-minute practice as the sherry bottle was passed around in the dressing room kept me focused and included.  My sister came back with her camera to capture some of this excitement and was immediately embraced by these women. 

Performers, pre-performance

It is difficult to put into words what the performance was like.  Up on stage, a part of the group sitting in a circle, I was awed and proud of my fellow dancers.  One of them, Begoña, sang a sevillana for Concha and professional dancer Danny to dance to, a melody so beautiful and haunting that it brought tears to my eyes; I had danced with her for two months, and didn’t know she could sing like this.  During my own tiny part, the bright stage lights and the shouts of the audience were both encouraging and distracting, and I faltered a little at the end, but the shaky flip video of my performance doesn’t show it.  Danny, the professional, danced a 10-minute piece so intricate, so quick and showy, his wet hair spraying a fine mist as he twirled and stamped, that I struggled to understand how he could move so quickly.  Sara Baras, prima flamenco ballerina, and her sister came up in a cameo and danced the sweetest, tenderest moment of the show, ending on one knee looking up at their mother, and then embracing her.  At the end of the show, Concha called up the two old, wizened monjas (nuns) from Hermanitas de los Pobres and presented them with the proceeds of the show, over 3000 Euros.  It brought home the meaning of Christmas in Spain:  a time of celebration, fiestas, and giving back to the community.

A dancer is born...

As we left, the kids exhausted and begging to go home, I stopped to thank Concha:  “I want to say thank you for this experience, an unforgettable experience.  I never expected to get all of this from a flamenco class.  Thank you.  I don’t have words to explain.  Muchissimo gracias.”  She smiled and kissed me, Spanish-style, once on each cheek.  Dance, song, music, compás, gypsy, friendship, flamenco;  I had entered a whole new world. 

In Praise of Walking

One of the things I love most about being in the middle of El Puerto de Santa Maria, or Puerto, as it is known here, is the accessibility of everything here.  My cousin Sophie is not as impressed, having grown up in Germany where she regularly walks through charming pedestrian zones and past 300-year-old churches.  But I just can’t get enough of it.  As we travel out to different towns and cities within a two-hour drive, we continue to walk through some of the most exquisite narrow, winding streets imaginable. 

Walking to school in Puerto

Our first trip, easy to do because the ferry is just two blocks from our house, was to Cádiz.  A lovely twenty-minute boat ride across the Bay lands you in a city founded by the Phoenicians in 1100 B.C. and which is the most ancient city still in existence in Western Europe.  Although little is left of the Romans, who conquered it in 200 B.C., and of the Moors, who occupied it from 700 to 1200 A.D., there IS a lot of beautiful 18^th and 19^th century architecture.  The cathedral has a dramatic view of the Atlantic, and you can leisurely walk around the city on the sea walls in a couple of hours.

Steph atop El Catedrál de Cádiz

Our second trip, after exploring Puerto, was to Sevilla, an easy 90-minute drive or 80 minutes on the train.  Sevilla is one of Spain’s most iconic cities, a province of Andalusia (where we live in Southern Spain), and home to many things considered “Spain:”  bullfighting, flamenco, tiny winding streets, huge iberico bellota jamones hanging from the ceilings of tapas bars.  It was my favorite city when Todd and I traveled through here in 1987; it continues to enchant.  Absolutely gorgeous and not to be missed is the Alcazar, Pedro the Cruel’s palace which has been added onto over the centuries, but which has not lost its Moorish roots.

Patio de las Doncellas, El Alcazar, Sevilla

The Moorish stonework is breathtaking

Out on the coast, we visited Bolonia, a tiny town about an hour south.  There the beach is gorgeous and windswept, with a collection of white sand dunes.  It is near the site of the ancient Roman city of Baelo Claudia, which has been excavated over the years by numerous archaeologists, two of whom are Luis and Conchi, our friends from La Casa Rosa (see post from August!).  They met while working at Baelo Claudia, and the entrance to their house, La Casa Rosa, contains the head of a replica of a Roman statue they uncovered there.  We wandered through the ruins on well-marked paths, Tia and Sasha climbing freely over millennia-old walls, all of us engaged in speculating what went on in that little fishing village. 

View to the Atlantic through Roman ruins

Among the little treasures of this area are the Pueblos blancos, or White Villages, which hang on the cliffs of the mountainous interior of Andalucia.  Arcos de la Frontera is closest to us and was our first visit, although we made the classic tourist mistake of arriving at 2 pm, with everything—everything--  shut down for the siesta.  We wandered the streets and found a lovely Moroccan restaurant, but didn’t see much else except a lonely tourist shop up by the Cathedral.  

A Pueblo Blanco:  Arcos de la Frontera

But our second visit to a pueblo blanco was amazing, this  time to the town of Ronda.  Home to Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls and one of his favorite hangouts, home of the Romero family who founded modern-day bullfighting and home to the oldest bullring in Spain, and home to three bridges spanning the jaw-dropping El Tajo cut by the Guadalevín River, Ronda delights the eye and defies the American propensity to safety-proof everything.  

Ronda, photo courtesy of Sasha!

White houses and buildings line the gorge, balanced precariously on the edge, and a path leads down into the gorge.  Todd didn’t like it; after a sloping stone-lined path, the way down began to traverse old walls no more than two feet wide, with steep drops of 20 feet+ on either side.  You could see there used to be a kind of guardrail, but it had long since rotted away.  Side paths wandered off, slick with mud and weeds, ending abruptly at nothing.  Water poured from an ancient spillway, our path separated from it by a wobbly chain-link fence with a foot-wide gap at the bottom. 

Todd (with Man-purse) keeps the girls safe.

Needless to say, Tia and Sasha were entranced by the fairy-tale view of the small rushing river dwarfed by the immense footings of the Puento Nuevo, which rise to the top of the gorge to form a bridge, built from 1751 to 1793 (when you see it, you realize why it took them so long to complete it!).   We walked down into the gorge twice:  once during the day, right after we arrived, and once more in the evening, when the long shadows made the sloping path through the fruit orchards and long grass magical and the massive lighting illuminated the bridge. 

Ronda's Puento Nuevo at night

Next stop coming shortly:  Granada, home to Moorish culture and ski slopes!

Learning, Spanish-Style

One of our goals in coming to Spain was to have the time to really get to know the area.  We lucked into Southern Spain, which has a reputation for being laid-back and party-central.  It also has exactly the weather I love, at least so far:  warm, at times hot, with these lovely warm evenings and fresh, but not cold, mornings.  El  Levante blows hard at times, a dry desert wind coming off the Sahara and across the narrow mouth of the Mediterranean; it is similar to the Santa Ana winds we are used to, only they blow shorter and more furiously.  Don’t leave your laundry out! 

Another thing I am learning, which for me is one of the top 10 reasons to love Spain, is that we are living in the middle of the best sherry region in the world.  I didn’t much care for sherry back in California; it tasted like a stronger version of a mediocre wine.  However, I also didn’t know much past “cooking sherry,” which Todd would usually drink up before I even got a chance to cook with it.  Here, in Puerto, there are no fewer than SEVEN sherry bodegas.  The pungent smell walking past them is fragrant with the scent of fermenting grapes. Tia and Sasha continually peer into the dark windows to see what it looks like in a bodega.  Within walking distance of our house we have five of the seven bodegas, two within two blocks.  But by far the best for me is the definition of sherry:  from vino fino, the very dry sherry, to cream sherry (standard) all the way to Moscatel and Pedro Ximenez.   You can take your empty bottle down to the bodega, where they will fill it up from the cask with your choice of sherry for 4 Euros.  What a deal!  And delicious, too. 

Wow!  It’s acceptable, even encouraged, to drink sweet wine here!  A top-ten reason for me to live in Spain.  All of a sudden, my interest in wine has re-ignited.  There is even a type too sweet for me, the syrupy sweet (yet still powerful at 14% alcohol) Pedro Ximenez, a dessert wine that is best used over vanilla Haagen Daz ice cream.  Yum!

Then there’s the learning going on at Nuestra Señora de la Merced.  Tia and Sasha first reaction to their new school was, “And they have BLACKBOARDS in all the classrooms!”  (This in comparison to our previous school, Nestor, where each teacher had a Smartboard connected to the computer.)  This low-tech atmosphere, however, is not proving to be an obstacle.  Both girls had to catch up in caligrafía, as Spanish kids are taught cursive from the first grade.  At my first parent-teacher conference, both niñas earned high praise from their profesoras, and are making friends.  It helped that two other American girls from San Diego, Isabella and Daniela, are in the first and second grades at La Merced (see photos!).  

At La Merced, there are NO extracurriculars:  no sports, no clubs, no after-school nothing.  There’s not even a playground; the recess is spent on the rooftop patio, which is a concrete surface with high walls to keep the kids from launching off.  No balls, no jump ropes, nothing.  Leave it to my kids to both teach the Spaniards how to play “horse” using the sleeves of jackets tied around the waist to make the reins, and “Down By the Bank of the Hanky-Pank,” a elimination game involving slapping hands in a circle.  No matter:  the Spanish curriculum also mandates a music class, an art class, and an optional religion class (we chose Catholic, so we can understand all of the religious festivals!).  And there are plenty of extracurricular things to do here:  Tia and Sasha made their theater debut in a performance of “King Arthur’s Quest,” with Tia a Damsel in Distress and Sasha a Camelotian, thanks to the U.S. Navy’s sponsorship of the Missoula Children’s theater. 

Feria Tents

Alongside horseriding and school, we are also learning about how Spaniards enjoy themselves.  Although Feria season is pretty much at an end, there are still a few Ferias to be attended in the smaller outlying towns.   We went to one in Villamartín two weeks ago, arriving at 7 pm.  The scene was part carnival, part Carnivál:  Women were walking around dressed to the nines, high heels and the most outrageous feria dresses you can imagine (see slide show in last post).  The feria grounds were covered in tents with different musics blasting out of each one, next to churrerias (where you can get thick cups of hot chocolate and unsweetened churros), next to carnival rides of all sorts, blaring music that is not allowed in public in the U.S. (this NOT FOR KIDS! song was played throughout our whole ride on the Super Saltamontes  http://www.musicstop.org/sak-noel-loca-people-lyrics-with-video).

A Not-So-Dangerous Feria Ride

The feria rides also included those that will never be seen in the U.S.  Tia and Sasha’s favorite ride, of course, was one with huge transparent plastic balls floating around on the surface of a small pool.  Kids were zipped up inside the plastic balls, trying to walk and  falling smack on their faces.  Tia and Sasha chose that as one of their two ride choices, and decided to go in together.  I laughed myself silly as Tia stumbled forward, with Sasha traveling up the side and tumbling down on top of her.  Todd was not so amused, his eyes getting bigger and bigger as the minutes ticked past…finally he couldn’t take it any more, afraid they would pass out from lack of oxygen, and had the operator pull Tia and Sasha over and out of the big-kid plastic-bag equivalent.  I have to admit, it made me uneasy as well, as funny as it was.  Tia and Sasha, of course, rated that ride one of the #1 things they have done in Spain, and insist that at the next Feria we attend, they will choose that ride even IF they are in feria dresses!  We left at 11 pm; things were just getting started, and the schedule listed performances until 4:30 am. 

So as you can see, there is a lot to learn here.  Stay tuned!

Settling In: Daily Life in Spain

The boxes are gone, the clothes unpacked, the kitchen is organized, beds are put together and made, drawers reorganized, we bought a TV.  The girls are in school, Todd did his first abdominal case, the cats have adjusted well and no longer try to bolt out the front door, and I…well, I am trying to find my routine, my rhythm.

Spain is becoming familiar.  There are so many wonderful day trips to make from Puerto, we look forward to the weekends.  Back in August we traveled about 45 minutes to Caña de Meca, a steep beach with turquoise water and a lighthouse on a point of land that can supposedly rival Santa Barbara’s Rincon Point for perfectly formed waves in the winter.  The beach was busy, and Tia and Sasha were fascinated with the people digging up black clay and smearing it on themselves from head to foot—of course they followed suit!  We went to Arcos de la Frontera the following weekend, a lovely pueblo blanco also about 45 minutes away.  Situated on a hill with the white houses cascading down the side, you can look out across the countryside of dried sunflowers and plowed fields to the next pueblo blanco.  Next we will tackle Sevilla, a short 90-minute drive from Puerto.

But before the girls started school, I just had to get my Germany fix.  Over the past few years, my yearning for Germany, a place I’d lived for a year when I was 16, and again when I was 23, had grown stronger and stronger.  With the girls’ vacations looking a lot more like the US traditional school calendar than the German one with short summers and ample breaks during the school year (rats), I was not willing to wait until next spring to go back to Germany.  So we booked Ryan Air, the European counterpart to Southwest, and flew off to Germany to visit Sophie, my cousin who had lived with us all last year.

Ah, Germany!  Land of Green Forests and Sparkling Meadows!  Land of Good Things to Eat!  Land of Cleanliness and Order, Land of On-Time Trains, Land of Do-Not-Touch-The-Toys-Even-Though-You-Are-In-A-Toy-Store!  We had five wonderful days there, enjoying the bread, cheesecake, wursts, cheese, fruits, pastries, chocolate, and did I mention the bread?  Sophie’s parents, Hans and Paige, took us all around to the Wiesbaden marketplace, to their secret garden house, to castles and churches and steep Rheinland vineyards. With Sophie we went shopping through the pedestrian zone and stopped for snacks in the two cafes she works at.  My cousin Fiona, who took me under her wing when I was 16 and newly arrived in Germany, drove out from Frankfurt to have dinner with us.  It was all so achingly familiar, I wondered how it had only been two years that I had lived there, and 17 years since I had last visited, and yet the German countryside with its leafy forests, street signs, and villages nestled in little valleys every few kilometers were so much a part of me.  How could I feel so at home?  

As a final adventure, we took the train down to Baden-Baden, about 2 hours from Wiesbaden.  Baden-Baden is the ritzy-est of the Roman Bath towns that lie along the border with France.  Hot-water upwellings were first exploited widely by the Romans, and have been a source of kur (healing) since at least that long.  My friend Arzu, a doctor I befriended in Tübingen when we were both students there, lives and works in this old, elegant, picturesque city tucked into a valley and rising up onto the hillsides.  While we waited for Arzu to be done with work for the day, we visited the baths.  And what baths!  Think of the fanciest pool you know, then multiply by at least 9.  That’s how many different pools and swimming areas there were, from the wedding-cake-lookalike of the main pool, which had successively higher smaller pools stacked inside of it, to the hot pool (with waterfall), the cold pool (also with waterfall), the steam room, the brine steam room (cures anything), and that was just inside!  Outside was another series of pools and cascades connected together so you never had to leave the water.  My personal favorite was the bubble blast pool in the center of the largest outdoor pool—each time the bubbles came on, Tia and Sasha were  swept out of this little pool by the ensuing current, and I had to haul them back in, kicking and laughing. 

We left green, wet, cold, rainy, beautiful Germany and flew back to Spain to heat and summer.  We continue to explore our adopted town—the bakery just around the corner with the smell of fresh bread every morning, Pizza Jerry’s with its delightful oven and authentic thin-crust Italian pizzas, the second-hand feria dress shop (Feria Dresses! Album, click on "slideshow"), the pedestrian zone with its shops.  I even went into a bank and two hours later emerged with a Spanish bank account.  I work on balancing my day, from writing this blog to performing my pool-girl duties, to cleaning and shopping and cooking, to exploring and meeting new friends for coffee.  I try not to feel guilty! 

Horse Racing in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Bullfights in Puerto

At Las Marias, on Bienvenida and Romera

Horses have been an ongoing theme here with us.  Sasha, Tia, and I have started riding lessons Inglesa, which is the fancy dressage way of riding.  My many years of riding make me comfortable with the horses, but I have NO idea what I am doing in terms of style!  Tia and Sasha and I love it, though, and the Andalusian horses are just plain gorgeous.

Ready to ride...

Along with the Andalusian caballos, there are some horse things that are truly different in Spain.  You might think that Spain, as part of the EU, would be more tightly regulated, bureaucratic, and strict about everything.  And in some ways that is true:  to get our own horse (the Mercedes) on the road here and out of the storage lot, we had to buy two reflective triangles you could set up around your car if it were to break down on the highway, plus a reflective vest to don in order to leave the car.  These three items MUST be within the driver’s reach from the front seat—no storing them in the trunk!  Plus, you had to have one of each of the lightbulbs that are on the outside of your car:  headlight, brakelight, blinker.  Also in reach of the driver (not that I would know how to install them!). 

However, there seem to be a lot of things that are tolerated here, such as parking in a no-parking zone (well, except in front of the Cruz Roja, as we found out, see blog #1), high school kids openly having rum-and-cokes in the plaza of the castle, and on-track betting on the beach in Sanlúcar.   Sanlúcar de Barrameda is a small town about 20 km from Puerto.  Like Puerto and Rota, it is also on the beach, but at the mouth of the Rio Guadalquivir (the same one that Cristobal Colón, aka Christopher Columbus, sailed from on his way to the New World).  The sand and mud make the beach very flat here, and twice in August at low tide there are horse races on the beach.  Thought to have begun with fishermen racing their horses while waiting for the tide to come in, these horse races have become a local phenomenon.  Just a thin plastic fence of sorts separates the crowds from the “racetrack.”  Bathers stream over this fence and into the water, playing paddleball and walking the beach, until the National Guardsmen stationed every 50 meters or so blow a whistle.  Within 30 seconds, the once-crowded beach clears, with everyone piling back over the floppy fence. 

Waiting for the ponies with Daniela and Isabella

First the horses come cavorting down the beach at a walk or trot on their way to the starting gate, tossing their heads.  This is so you can choose your favorite and place a bet.  Once you decide who you like (one race, I took “Cannibal”  while Todd chose “Vodka Lemon”), you head to the betting stand.  Do not mistake the betting stand for a lemonade stand, although the resemblance is unmistakeable.  Also do not mistake the 8-year-old bookie taking your money for a child—well, although he or she IS a child.  Betting at Sanlúcar works like this:  a kid sets up his betting stand, draws a line across the racetrack even with his stand, and begins to sell caramelos (yes, you actually get a caramelo candy when you place your bet).  Choose your horse, place your bet, and you get a little handwritten slip of paper written in crayon with your bet and your horse, along with your carmelo.  No matter where you are on the beach racetrack, whichever horse first passes the line in the sand is the “winner” for your bet. 

Next, wait for the police car to come racing down the beach, lights flashing and siren on.  The horses are coming!  Both times we scored a spot right on the orange plastic fence, and the horses thundered by only 20 feet away.  Our third race was the most spectacular:  the tide had gone WAY out, leaving large flat areas in front of us.  Three trailing horses, trying to make better time, cut across this mud flat.  Suddenly the horses slipped, sinking nearly knee-deep in mud, with two of them throwing their riders.  Out came the ambulance as the riderless horses slogged their way out of the mud and cantered on down the beach.  We never did find out if anyone was seriously hurt, but both jockeys walked to the ambulance.

Our next horse adventure came in the middle of our first trip to the bullfights.  Todd and I had discussed taking Tia and Sasha with us; while neither of us had actually seen a bullfight, we knew it didn’t end well for the bull.  But it was the last fight of the year, and we simply couldn’t wait until next summer to find out what it was all about.  Plus, the bullring in Puerto is a 10-minute walk from our house.

La Plaza de Toros, El Puerto de Santa Maria

The spectacle was just like the book Ferdinando.  First came the guy with the sign displaying the bull’s name, ranch, and weight.  Then the bull marches in, with the junior toreros teasing him to make him show his stuff.  Next come the picadors with their long lances; they wait for the bull to charge their horse, then stick the lance into the bull.  To further slow down the bull, the banderilleros come out and stab some more muscle-relaxing picos into the bull’s neck (this is quite spectacular, as it consists of the banderillero running directly at the bull, the bull charging him, the banderillero running a half-circle around the charging bull, and stabbing these three-foot-long harpoon-like things into the charging bull’s neck).  Finally the matador takes control with his cape, strutting and getting the bull to charge on his orders. 

During the second fight, we had an intense shock:  out came the huge, beautiful, armored horses with the picadors astride.  The bull, a 450-kg feisty thing, charged one of the horses and lifted him off the ground.  Then, to our horror, the bull swung his horns and knocked the horse completely over.  I gasped in panic, looking at Tia and Sasha, while the bull proceeded to gore the soft underside of the horse, swinging his vicious horns and repeatedly smashing into the horse’s abdomen.  The horse was apparently dead, lying on its side and showing no signs of life.  The junior toreros closed in, distracting the bull and drawing him away from the poor horse.  By this time Tia and Sasha were bawling their eyes out, and all I could say was, “I’m so sorry.  I’m so sorry.”  We watched, unable to draw our eyes from the downed horse, as the picador (who had jumped off and run away when his horse went down) stooped down to caress the dying horse’s head.  We then watched in disbelief as the horse raised its head, then got up, gave a little shake, let the picador mount up, and walked out of the ring as though nothing had happened.   We realized that the horse’s body armor extended all the way around the horse, and that these horses must undergo some outrageously against-their-nature training that has them play possum when downed and repeatedly charged by a bull. 

Like I said, there are some things—like underage betting and bullfights—that you just won’t get to experience in the U.S.!

Finding a House in Spain

Last week and into this week has been consumed by finding a place to live, as well as sleeping in until 10 am, eating dinner at 11 pm, a little sightseeing, and generally becoming quickly accustomed to Spain’s tempo of life.

Tia and Sasha in front of a replica of Colombus' La Niña

Spain is amazingly beautiful in more than one way. There are the castles, churches, and palaces (Puerto boasts a 13th-century castillo, as well as numerous churches from the 17th century and streets lined with 19th-century palaces), and a sense of going back 30 or 40 years lingers with us as we walk to the ferry to Cadiz, or stroll through the Mercado (both Tia and Sasha conspicuously holding their noses at the smell of fresh cuttlefish and giant prawns).  Everyone is out on the street: old grandmothers, young kids, babies in strollers, and all ages in between.

La Iglesia de El Puerto de Santa Maria

Spain is about connection. People hang out in the tapas bars that are on every corner, meet in the numerous parks and squares that continue to surprise me as I walk down a bustling street. There are few homeless people; the parks belong to the populace, and the benches are full of ordinary people resting on their way home from the supermarket, or feeding the pigeons, or chatting with their neighbors. I haven’t been here long enough to know first-hand about any corruption, but it’s pretty obvious that things happen because you talk to your friends, neighbors, and anyone willing to chat for a moment. 

Plaza del Polvorista, next to our new house

That’s how we found a possible house: Our landlady, Conchi, was on the phone to her friend Sharon when we arrived home one day. “This is the person I was telling you about!” she mouthed over her cellphone. Then she handed the phone to me. Sharon is a British ex-pat who came to Spain looking for a place to live much as we are: she and her husband rented Conchi and Luis’s house as a base to look from, and have been friends with them ever since.

La Casa Rosa: Home Base

Sharon and I chatted for a few moments, and she agreed to come by the next morning. She had gone to every real estate agent in town, apparently, looking for “the perfect place.” With only ten days to look, they were quite motivated, and by pounding the streets, talking to whoever would listen, whether at tapas, in a bar, or a casual meeting on the street, they found what they were looking for much more quickly than they expected. Sigh…if only that could happen for me. 

Next thing I knew, there was a call from Nicolas, who had a side business as a property manager in addition to running the new language school he had just started. Sharon works at that school, and mentioned our conversation to one of her students, who told Nicolas, who called me. So, from Conchi to Sharon to student to Nicolas and back to me, there I was, looking at an amazingly beautiful renovated 18th-century house with blue Portuguese tiles, a stunning courtyard with a tiny swimming pool, and the gorgeous clean interior design proclaiming the architect-owner’s touch. 

Our new house!

We signed the contract today, and are ecstatic. The house is central, in walking distance of everything: schools, supermercado, pedestrian shopping zone, catamaran ferry to Cadiz, train station, the carnival rides on the Rio, yet it is on a quiet street with ample parking. The 12th-century castle is visible from the balcony and is at our street corner. The pool is saltwater and clear, the courtyard sunny and protected from the wind, and the house is both old and new, with a strange sense of familiarity. We got the house because we talked to someone who talked to someone who kept us in mind and talked to someone else. 

Tia and Sasha climbing the stairs in the entry hall

And we continue to connect. We had dinner the other night up on Conchi and Luis’s rooftop terrace (“Is 10 pm okay for you?” she asked) overlooking the medley of houses, apartments, hidden gardens, empty lots, and rambling palaces. Monserrat, the wife of Matthew, the naval periodontist, had heard about what I was looking for and invited us to see her neighborhood, Las Redes, which turned into an evening beach outing and tapas on their lovely patio until midnight. The Navy Exchange is a hub for the tiny American ex-pat community: We ran into Wayne and Madeleine, our sponsors and hosts there, as well as Samantha, the other orthopaedic surgeon. Sam saw we were looking for houseplants and immediately steered us—literally! We followed her in our car—to El Lago Viveros, an incredible nursery with everything you need to fill an empty courtyard. Tia and Sasha each bought a hibiscus which they are diligently watering and caring for every day.

Laughing next to the hibiscus

Given my interest in connection, maybe this is where I am meant to be!

The arrival: Getting to Spain

We are living in the middle of Puerto, in a tiny flat surrounded by crumbling palaces, streetside cafes, and noisy vespas. It’s beautiful and dirty and loud and lively and crowded and startling and very much Not-California. They aren’t kidding when they talk about siesta in Spain: everything slows way down between 2:30 and 7 pm, then wakes back up around 8:30 pm. It’s 9:30 pm right now, and the sun is just starting to set. It won’t get dark until 10:30 and the nightlife outside our window will continue until three in the morning. Last night our host family, Conchi and Luis, met us at the door of our flat. At 10:30 pm, we were just getting home, while they were dressed up and ready to go, little Guillermo (5) and infant Jaime in tow. Off to walk along the Rio, they said, and to ride the carousel, the air is so fresh at this time after a hot day.

Tia and Sasha meander down Puerto's streets

Our traveling here was clockwork-precise: GRK for two weeks, followed by three days at Nana’s, five days on the East Coast in Norfolk, including a long weekend at an absolutely gorgeous old peanut plantation with our friends Jamie and Dave and families. The only hitch was at the Norfolk Naval terminal: “Your reservations were cancelled back on June 6th.” After a lot of back-and-forth, including a mad dash to the Navy Exchange to buy soft-sided carriers for the cats so that they could go in the cabin with us, our reservations turned up—under Sasha’s name as group leader! It was a adrenaline-inducing 45 minutes, but we got on the plane no problem and arrived in Rota 7 hours later (no new cat carriers needed).

Tia and Sasha flee from a bear in the Great Dismal Swamp, Virginia

The U.S. Navy Base in Rota is a bit disconcerting. Here we are, a seven-hour flight from the states, and walking around in the very same commissary (almost) as we have in Imperial Beach. There’s the Best Foods mayo, the croutons, the ice cream selection, the fruits and veggies (including baby carrots from CA). They DO have delicious Danish butter, Bretzeln, and a few other things we don’t get back home, but otherwise it is like we never left. Everything is dollars, and there is even a Navy Federal Credit Union right next to the Naval Hospital.

Todd's new workplace:  US Naval Hospital Rota

Our first day off base ended with a trip to the Spanish police station to avoid an even more-expensive tow to some distant impound lot. We returned to our car after a nice walk through the pedestrian zone of Puerto to the sight of our car halfway up La Grua’s ramp. Realizing that this was not a jetlag-induced hallucination, Todd ran off waving his arms, then turned to me and yelled, “Talk to them!!!” I explained that this was our first day in Spain, and please don’t take our only car, to which I got a barrage of rapid Andalucian Spanish, most of which I didn’t get, except for “pay now or your car gets towed.” Too bad we didn’t have a single Euro to our name. There was a lot of discussion involving several more police, and La Grua finally put our car down and drove off. We followed the police to the station, paid our 140 Euro fine, and—lesson learned—decided never to park in the red-X-in-a-blue-circle-zone again.

This is NOT where you want to find your car...

...so pay attention to this sign!

We’re now looking for a place to live. It’s bewildering. Puerto is loud and dirty and charming and very Spanish and furthest from the naval base, as well as furthest from being in the U.S.. Rota is quaint and charming and full of tourists and Americans, right outside the base gates. The urbanizaciones of Puerto are lovely suburb vacation areas, bustling now, but will we be the only family left there come September? I’ve taken to running the neighborhoods to help me get oriented. We don’t have to decide yet, but I hope we will have things settled when the summer tourist season ends right around September 1st.