Deep Freeze

I have been thinking that the weather here has been unusually cold. Today, it was confirmed. Spain is experiencing the coldest late November and early December temperatures since 1987! Yesterday, it was colder in Madrid than Helsinki or Moscow! This wasn´t in the contract! We are hoping that the cold temperatures now will be replaced by record heat in January or February 2009. Only time will tell...

Happy Holidays!

Well, Thanksgiving came and went without much excitement. We actually worked all day! The weather has been terrible for a week. It has been very cold, with nights in the low 20´s and days around 40. There was mixed snow and graupel (round, white frozen ice pellets) an hour ago! When I left STL in 1990, I vouched never to live where it is cold again. Thus, winter will be the primary cause limiting our stay in Madrid. Some classes end this Friday, others next Friday. I have to take 15 days off before Dec 31, so this will be a very short work month for me. Maybe now I can dedicate some time to my dissertation...One of Ingrid's cousins will be visiting us Dec 14-20, then Ingrid & I are going to Lanzarote, Canary Islands for XMAS week. I will be posting some pics of all the decorations around Madrid once it gets warm enough for us to go sightseeing!

Bellydance Superstars!

A few years ago in Paris, I heard this amazing voice coming out of a Middle Eastern shop, so I went in and asked who the singer was. The guy showed me a CD named Bellydance Superstars, and he told me the particular singer was Warda, a French-Algerian & Lebanese (?) singer whose songs are often used in traditional bellydance music. So I was psyched to see that BellyDance Superstars was coming to Madrid. On Monday, we went to the show at Teatro Gran Via, a small, old theatre not far from our home. The show is in the States now, so if you like this kind of music, we highly recommend going. Check it out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCVNp1uEeLQ!

Some photos from Chincon and Segovia

Just Follow the Green Line!

On November 17, we are going to a Middle Eastern show called Bellydance Superstars. I actually have one of their audio cd´s, so I was psyched to have the opportunity to see them in person. Anyway, because the bank denied our credit card application (that´s another story), we cannot buy anything on line. This meant I had to go to El Corte Ingles, Spain´s largest dept store chain, in person to buy the tickets. If you have never been to Spain, imagine a large store like Macy´s in NYC or SFO, and then spread it out over a few city blocks, add a huge supermarket, bookstore, travel agency and hair salon, and you get ECI. All I knew was that I had to go to customer service first. I was 5th in line, except the line went horizontally across the front of the counter. In other words, there weer 4 people ahead of me, but I was the only one in a line. Does that make any sense? So another lady arrived and asked if I was waiting. I said yes, but I jst need to know where to go buy tickets for a show. She told me not here. So I asked out loud to no one in particular where do I go? They all replied in stereo piso bajo (1 floor down). So I walked my way to the nearest stairs and went down. I may have been on the correct floor, but I still didn´t have a clue. So I stopped and asked another employee. No matter how clearly you speak Spanish, the people here always reply with a loud EH? as if you are stupid & incomprehensible. Then you explain the situation in exactly the same words, and they say Vale, Vale (OK,OK) as if your Spanish improved dramatically in the 10 seconds it took to repeat yourself. So the woman tells me to go left and right and left and right again when I see the discos dept (not as in disco dancing, but as in cd's & dvd's), just follow the green line. Well, the only green line I know is the metro line 5 which runs no where near this store. But I had to ask, "Linea verde del metro?" You can imagine how loud the EH? was that time. "No señor, el linea verde en el piso!" (No sir, the green line on the floor!" Oh, ok like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. I said that to myself but she still said EH? Anyway, I made the left, right & left, but couldn´t find the discos dept, so I had to stop AGAIN & ask. I got to the discos section and voila, there was the green tape on the floor! So I started to follow it. Unfortunately, after about 3 minutes, the tape split (a fork in the tape?!), and there wasn´t a scarecrow to help me out. So I turned left (it just felt right). Then the tape split again, but this time, there were words in a green box telling you which way to turn. How cool is that? I kept walking along the green tape til I came to another box with words, except there was a group of people standing on it discussing who-knows-what. I had to wait til they moved to read the floor. They did, and on I went. After another 5 minutes, I came to the final split, took a left, and ended up at the janitor´s closet! Man, was I pissed! So then I had to back track til I found the correct green line. I had taken the wrong turn at the last split, so it only took a minute. Needless to say, I found the ticket booth, and we will be sitting center stage for the show!

Taking a Bite Out of Crime

On Friday, Oct 31, the Chinchon duo (Anna & Donna) invited my parents and us to join them for some Halloween tapas & dinner at the Galician restuarant (anyone who visits will be taken there). Going from the tapas place to the restuarant, the group of 8 somehow got spread out walking down the narrow streets south of Plaza del Sol. I stepped aside to let a woman flanked by 2 men pass me and watched (not surprisingly) as the trio approached my parents from behind in an attempt to pickpocket/purse snatch 1 or both of them. Unfortunately for them, my years of walking alone through the far more dangerous streets of St. Louis & Miami at night, not to mention 9 years teaching in ghetto high schools, suddenly turned the perpetrators into victims themselves...Was the chick ever surprised (along with my parents, Ingrid and the rest of the group) when I ran up to the woman (who had already unzipped my mother´s purse that she was holding between her and my dad), grabbed her by the arm, swung her around (total deer-n-the headlights expression) and starting screaming profanities at her in English, Spanish, & Italian (too bad she spoke a Slavic language!) and threatened to hurt her and her 2 boyfriends, one of whom started yelling "Crazy, you Crazy!" and starting running away. I said, "I´ll show you crazy when I catch you" followed by more expletives. By this point, I was running after them, also looking for a cop, and the other 7 realized that my parents had been very close to being robbed. Fortunately, the woman had only opened the purse, and nothing was missing. They trio took off down an alley, and since nothing had been taken, I quit chasing them. Lesson learned - don´t let people get too close behind you!

More to come...I promise!

HI All! Sorry for the absence of posts. My parents have been here since Tuesday October 14. Aside from working FT, we have been going out at night and taking trips every weekend. They are going to Italy on Saturday, so I´ll be able to add some new pics and stories then. Winter is here now, so if you always imagined sunny, Mediterranean Spain, Madrid is not that place!

An Evening with High Society

I guess it pays to be nice to your students! We got invited to the Saudi Arabian National Day celebration last Tuesday at the Hotel Intercontinental. About two blocks form the hotel, the streets were blocked. A cop told the cab driver to go around. Of course, I complained that now we would have to pay a higher fare. So the cabby stopped and told us to walk the rest of the way. Did I mention it was raining? Anyway, we walked into the hotel and realized the street was closed due to our event! There were secret service and bodyguards everywhere, and they had one of those airport security machines hooked up. Before we even got into the line for the security checkpoint, one of my students runs up to me yelling, "Mr. Robert, Mr. Robert, please come this way to meet the Prince." The hell with the security scanner, Ingrid & I were going to meet a Prince! So off we went, bypassing all the security checkpoints to meet him and shake his hand. Once inside, there were hundreds of people from all over the world, tons of great food and amazing desserts, and of course, us! For a parting gift, we got dates. I was hoping for some oil!

La Maleta! La Maleta!

The last few evenings have been very mild, so last night, we went to the area around Plaza Mayor to buy me a new briefcase at a North African leather store and have some tapas and a drink at an outdoor cafe. We usually take the metro home, but there is a bus that drops us off practically at our door, so we took it. It usually runs every 10 minutes, but for some reason, we waited 40! Not 5 minutes into the ride, and still 15 from home, we hear shouting at the front. The bus driver was arguing with a passenger. The bus didn´t move. The arguing continued. The bus still didn´t move. What followed was a skit good enough for Madd TV. Since we were at the back of the bus, the only word we could hear was la maleta (the suitcase). Apparently, you cannot bring suitcases onto a bus. After another 5 minutes, the passengers started getting really mad. One lady yelled, "Just drive the stupid bus!" while another demanded a refund as it was her last euro, and now she needed to take another bus home. So I chimed in and said to Ingrid,"We can walk from here, but I want our 2 euros back!" So we go to the front of the bus where all the action was. The man with the maleta was yelling at the bus driver to stop being an ass (he used a much stronger word) and just drive. All the other passengers were on the man´s side, yelling things like it´s a small maleta, it´s late, we waited too long for the bus in the first place, the bus is half empty, there´s room for the maleta, etc. Then the bus drivers turns off the bus and says, "I´m calling the police!" He threatened to arrrest the man! Well, the passengers were not having this innocent working guy with his little maleta arrested. Suddenly, someone starts chanting maleta! maleta! maleta! and everyone joined in as if we were at a soccer match. This really pissed off the bus driver. I asked "Where´s the maleta?" picturing some gigantic army style duffel bag. Ingrid taps me on the shoulder and points to my left foot. I kid you not, I was standing next to the maleta that had to be no more than 15" tall and about 8" wide and was so small that it fit under the seats! Then I told the bus driver in Spanglish that I was taking his name and bus number and reporting HIM to the transit authorities as he should be arrested for taking our money, not doing his job, and holding us all hostage on the bus. Meanwhile, everyone is still chanting MALETA! MALETA! Then una abuela (grandma) about 4 feet 10 and 90 pounds all dressed up like the Madrilleños are famous for, walks to the front of the bus and tells the guy SHE can drive the bus because she has an appointment! It´s 10:30 at night! Where was she going, bingo? She went on and on about what a bad man he was and how her night was ruined and he was disrespecting all the passengers. It was mutiny! The bus driver, who was still waiting for the cops, finally threw up his hands and said, "JODER! But if anyone gets hurt, it is not my responsibility!" to which abuela replied, "The only person who´s gonna get hurt is YOU if you don´t start driving this bus." It was hysterical! The driver turned on the engine, all the people clapped, and off we went...Lessons learned - don´t take a maleta on a bus in Madrid AND always carry a video camera to record the unexpected surprises of daily life in Spain!

Madrid Nightlife

Though we have been here nearly 3 months, we had never been out after 10pm until last night. Little did we know that the rest of Madrid doesn't even leave the house until after 10pm! We met Donna, Anna & Angel at the Sol Metro station at around 8pm. I took a photo of the wall of people shopping along Calle Preciados just south of Gran Via. Despite the financial crisis in the rest of the world, Madrid is seemingly unaffected. People shop, restaurants and bars are packed, everyone goes on vacation, etc. Then we went to a hole-in-the-wall restaurant that serves food & wine from Galicia, where they also play bagpipes and sing this sad, eerie music that sounds like Portuguese fado. Anyway, as we ate our calamari, octopus, empanadas, little hot peppers, sausages, bbq potatoes, lotsa bread, 2 bottles of wine and mango juice for Ingrid cuz they don't sell soda, we were entertained by the young couple sitting behind us who entered as lovers, broke up over appetizers, reunited over dessert, then left hand-in-hand after she cried for 10 minutes. I was waiting for the guy to stab her with a fork or something. Oddly enough, the place doesn't use plates, so you all eat off the serving dish, which is why the cost was only 65 euros (100US) which is very reasonable. It was great! Then we stumbled upon a very cool New Orleans style jazz bar where we sat til after Midnite listening to cool American music and drinking more wine. When we finally left, close to 1am, there were traffic jams on every street and so many people, I thought it was early evening! Even the metro was crowded with people who were on their way out for a night on the town. We were told they party til 7 or 8 am and then take the morning trains home. When do they ever sleep?

A Day in Chincon...

including a bus ride from hell and a Tweety Bird sighting. Two weeks ago, we wanted to visit Chinchon, famous for its bullring in the center of town. Unfortunately, we could not figure out how to get there. Luckily, last Sunday, our co-workers (and new partners in crime...details to follow) Anna & Donna invited us to accompany them to Chinchon. So we all met at the busstop in the pouring rain. It was a 50 minute over the hills and through the fields and around the mountains to granmother's house we go ride that made Ingrid quite motion sick on the way back, even though she was the only one who was sober. Cheap red wine served out of plastic bags is better than dramamine. Anyway, we missed both the 9am and 6pm bullfights, but we did get to walk around the bullring. We strolled around town, bought 2 pounds of the best coconut macaroons I have ever eaten, half of which I ate before the ride home, and dined at an 18th Century estate converted into a winery & restaurant that serves entire oven-roasted baby pigs. http://www.cuevasdelvino.com/mesoning/imeson.htm

Snails Snails & More Snails!

We went to the market to buy sardines, but they were out. So then we asked for rainbow trout. Strike #2. Then we saw a little plastic bag with snails! We love snails, but haven't a clue how to cook them. For 4 euros, how bad could they be? So we buy the snails and rush home like 2 kids after they buy a goldfish at the pet store. We weren't sure if they were alive or not, so we carried them very carefully. We got home and looked at each other and I said, "Ingrid, open the bag & I'll get a recipe on the net!" While I searched, she opened the bag & started examing one up close. "It has a face!" she says. I start reading out loud, "Don't leave the snails unattended or they may crawl away." Ingrid says, "Crawl how? Aren't they dead?" and throws the snail back in the sink. "It says to put salt on them to see if they are alive," I continue. So, we toss some salt & nothing. "They're dead," said Ingrid. So, we wash them off and boil them for about 4 minutes. Then we get out the frying pan, pour in some olive oil, crushed garlic, and butter, and simmer the guys for about 15 or 20 minutes. I tasted one at 10 minutes and it was still slimy. Once cooked, we pulled them out of the shell and ate them with a baguete and a bottle of white wine. Yummy! Then as I popped the last one into my mouth, Ingrid counted them...107! Whoever comes to visit will be treated to this very un-American dish. It looked just like this...

El Escorial

Last Saturday, we went to visit Sofia, the person from Saint Louis University who has made our transition so easy! She lives in a stone house built for one of Franco's sidekicks before WW2. We ate a great lunch under the grape vines before taking a stroll around Spain's version of Versailles.

Sad News

After just seeing my grandmother Stella on July 11, I received news today that she passed away. Stella was quite a character up until the end, and here is a pic of our last day together. She was 92 and a half.

Umbrellas, Hailstorms & Phone #

Hola todos! It has been a wild week in the weather department. Last Friday was so cold and raw we had coats on. It rained for the 1st time in 2 months on Saturday. Yesterday, it was warm & humid, so we went for a long walk. As always, we found a new Chinese Euro store, and as we were about to leave empty handed (that would have been a 1st) the owner tells Ingrid there's a basement. So we head down below and voila, there are some things we actually need: a rolling pin and apple pie dish. After looking around for 20 minutes, I heard a strange noise. I go back up the stairs, and there is a tremendous thunderstorm in progress. Now we have to buy an umbrella! So we get a nice one for 8 euro and head out into the tempest to the metro. 3 blocks away, the umbrella breaks, so we turn back and ask for another. We start walking again, and the new one has a hole in the top and leaks. So, we return once again. By now the rain has stopped, but the woman was so helpful (not common here) and since we needed one anyway, we got a 3rd one & left. Around 9pm, I noticed huge cumulonimbus clouds on the horizon. I said to Ingrid, "Wow, some place is going to get nailed tonite." (Once a weatherman, always a weatherman.) Check out the video! http://es.noticias.yahoo.com/vocento/20080910/video/ves-la-tormenta-de-granizo-en-madrid-pro-238f6cf.html
oh, and our home # is 011-91-533-4100; work 91-554-5858 ext 242

A Sunday at Retiro Park

We spent the last weekend of summer at one of Europe's largest urban parks, Retiro. Classes began this week, so we were both very busy. Ingrid is working pt as the financial aid/work study coordinator. The weather has turned sharply colder already, and it is raining today for the 1st time since we arrived in mid-July. After escaping winters for the past 20 years, we are not looking forward to this one!

Perpignan, France

We had a great time visiting Jerome,
Celine & the boys in the Catalan villages of Villelongue-de-la-Salanque and Ste Marie la Mer. As a surprise, Christophe & Geraldine drove down from Normandy! It was 5 amazing days in France eating great food, drinking lotsa wine & going to the beach in a 500-year-old town... We also spent an afternoon in the old part of Perpignan where they were celebrating the 64th Anniversary of the American liberation from the Germans. Apparently, the whole world doesn't hate us after all!

A Day in Avila

My friend Andrew from Boston, whom I met at an RMMLA conference, spent a few days with us after spending his summer in Alicante perfecting his Spanish. Here are some pics from our day in Avila, about an hour northwest of Madrid.

We are leaving this evening to spend a few days in Perpignan, France (Catalunya) to visit my friends Jerome & Celine, so we'll be out of contact until next Thursday. For those of you in the States, keep your eyes on the tropics... http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/

Home Sweet Home

Well, here is our new home! The address is Calle de Aranjuez, 13, Apt 2A, Madrid, 28039, Spain. If you google it, you can see the neighborhood. We have a phone, but haven't yet figured out the number! Today also happens to be Ingrid's birthday!

¡No Soy Aléman! (I´m not German!)

or "The Importance of Good Pronunciation"...
The cost of living here is absolutely ridiculous, and I doubt we can afford to stay here for more than a year. As a result, I have become very thrifty. I only buy Eroski goods at the supermaket (this is not quite no-name, but close enough). Fruit, veggies, fish & pork are reasonable, olive oil and wine are very cheap. Beef and anything American - forget about it. Household goods are reasonable at Ikea, but thank GOD for the Chinese. They run .5o Euro stores all over the place. Though nothing is less than 1€, you can find kitchen & bath stuff, bedding, plants, dried goods, small electrical appliances, etc. The only problem is the store owners speak the absolute worst Spanish I have ever encountered. You know the old Cubanos in Hialeah? Well, they speak academic español compared to these Asian immigrants. And if their children aren´t around to translate, good luck communicating! So here is my story:
The second day we were here, Ingrid decided to blow dry her hair with her American dryer using a converter. BAD IDEA. It sparked, smoked and threw the circuit breaker. God forbid she leaves the house with a wet head, so my task was to go find a hair dryer. Where else, but Chinese Euro Store. You need to visualize these stores. They are usually in the basement, there´s no ac, the Chinese pop music is blaring, the aisles are tiny and PACKED to the ceiling with stuff, and because they are so wary of shoplifters, they follow you all over the store like a shadow. I promise to take a picture of some. Anyway, the lady, who said ¡Hola! when I entered, is following me and smiling and humming along to the Chinese song. I couldn´t find the hair dryers, so I turned to her and asked in my kinda decent Spanish, "Señora, tienes secadora por el pelo?" (Do you have a clothes dryer for the hair?) I mean, dryer for the hair should have clued her in. She shows me a clothes line. Ok, so at least she gets the drying part. I said, "No, no por la ropa, por el pelo" (no, not for the clothes, for the hair). She just stares at me. Now we have an audience (some Spanish lady is watching us and smiling) and it´s 110 degrees, and as any good ESL teacher will tell you, acting it out always works. SO, I grab a glass, hold it my head and say, "Pelo mojado, macchina con aire calor" (wet hair, machine with hot air), and start making electrical noises with my mouth (like ZHEEEEEE) and moving the glass around my head. BINGO! She runs around the corner, beckoning me to follow, and voila, there are 5 different types of hair dryers! The Spanish lady is laughing. So, I chose the cheapest one (15€ or $23US - AND THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE A DOLLAR STORE!) and go to the register. I say Hola, the man says hola, and then he says (or at least I heard) Aléman? (German?) By this point, between the heat and the cost of the stupid hair dryer, I was not in the best of moods. And to be asked if I was a German (no offense to my German friends) was the last straw. I angrily replied, Aléman? Aléman? Do I look German? ¡No Soy Aléman! Soy Americano, Italiano, y Frances! Tengo piel café, pelo negro, por favor, señor! (German? German? Do I look German? I´m not German. I´m American, Italian, and French! I have brown skin, black hair, please, mister!) I took my bag and left. When I got home and told Ingrid how stupid the Chinese man was to assume I was German, she looked at me and said, "Why, what did he say?" I told her he called me Aléman! She burst out laughing, and as I told her the rest of what I said in Spanish, she was actually crying from laughing so hard. I was very serious and did not see the humor in this at all. When she finally caught her breath, she informed me that the Chinese man had actually said, "Algo mas?" (anything else?) But since he didn't pronounce the lg in algo or the s at the end of mas, to me, algo mas sounded like Aléman. I am sure the Chinese man went home and told all his friends what the STUPID American said to him when asked if he wanted something else to buy! I haven´t been back to THAT store since!

It Really IS a Small World After All...

Earlier this week, I was coming up the stairs at SLU, and I came face to face with one of my former students, Adrianna, from the University of Arizona! She plays golf for the Spanish National Team and tansfered back to Spain this past January. We hadn't seen each other since December 2005, and neither one of us knew the other was in Madrid.

On Friday, one of Ingrid's high school friends, Vicky, spent the day with us on her way from Salamanca back to the States. She spent the summer here taking grad classes for her master's in Spanish language and culture. They had not seen each other since 1994!

Today, we spent the afternoon with my friend, Luis, whom I met at Saint Louis University in Missouri in 1987! We had not seen each other since July, 1994. It was a lazy day by the pool with him, his wife Rosana, and their baby boy, Alvaro.

You just never know where & when your paths will cross again!

Also, check out the photos of the lunch, which was delivered. I thought we were getting pizza, but surprise, it was paella in a box!

Some pics around town...

to prove that we really do live in Madrid!

I don't know why I wore a ROMA t-shirt! Next week, pics of our new apt and barrio!

A Fun Weekend in Madrid

The weather cooled off a bit, so we decided to venture out beyond the 2 streets we know. On Saturday, we took the very clean and brand new metro to Plaza Mayor, where we paid almost $40 US for scrambled eggs, bacon, 2 rolls and 2 OJ´s (which cost $7.25 US EACH!) Lesson learned: Eat at home. We also walked through the shopping district between Puerta del Sol and Gran Via, then took a break in Plaza España. We took the bus home, which gave us much better views and a sense of how close our apartment is to everything!
On Saturday, we took another metro to Ikea...WAY the hell outside the city. There are dozens of new apt bldgs in various stages of construction, but no one lives there. Talk about speculation. We bought some pots & pans and plants, then realized there are no cabs BACK to the metro stop, which is 15 minutes up a hill. When we asked a worker about a way to not have to walk, he snottily replied, "Well, all the EMPLOYEES have to walk." Ingrid replied, "Yeah, but you aren´t carrying bags (which, by the way, cost $1.50 EACH), and you're the one who chose to work here." You tell him, Ingrid! So we got annoyed and put down half of our stuff BEFORE we got to the register. I refused to let go of my 6 foot palm tree, so we looked like FOOLS riding the train back, but it was worth it.

On Sunday, we went to the world´s largest open air market, El Rastro.

There are more than 3,000 vendors (no, I didn´t actually count them) block after block in one of Madrid´s oldest neighborhoods. According to all the travel guides, it is supposed to be a dangerous place full of pickpockets, gypsies and thieves. I guess the people who write international travel guides need to re-visit the place. There were lots of families and elderly women and college age kids and not a threatening face in the crowd (which is more than I can say for the neighborhoods 2 or 3 streets north and east of our $1800 a month apt). Ingrid bought some cool Spanish ceramics for the kitchen & bathroom, and I bought more plants! Hey, I gotta have an herb garden on the windowsill!

I hope you are all enjoying reading these as much as I enjoy writing them. Miss you all a lot!

Robert & Ingrid

PS We have photos of us in some of these places, but I haven´t yet figured out how to attach them. Perhaps we are actually hiding in Tucson and made up this whole story of us moving to Spain! HA HA

Finding an Apartment

This is NOT where we live.

Now for the apt hunting saga, or Why it may be faster, easier & cheaper to join a band of accordian playing gypsies from Romania and live in a covered wagon for the next year...

1.If you look like a college student (I swear, we were asked this numerous times) then there are no apts available.
2. If you get pissed and tell them (IN SPANISH, of course) that you are a 40 year old professor from America who has no kids, dogs, cats, birds or invalid elderly parents, then suddenly there is a 2,000 sq foot penthouse available for $3500 US.
3. If you hire an agent, it costs 1 month's rent fee, 1st month's rent PLUS 3-6 month escrow account at the local bank. A reasonable apt is 1000 euros + 1000 + 1000 + 3-6,000...do you see where I am going with this? Make room in the caravan, gitanos!
4. If you meet an old man whose tenant just died, AND he likes you, you can get the rent down to 800 euros, only 1 month up front, and you can move in today. Of course, there's no ac, the fridge is dormitory size, and there are only twin beds, BUT there is a balcony and the view is great.
5. If there are no openings in the gypsy caravan, you go to your job and complain about the situation and hope someone can help!

Time has no meaning...

GUESS WHAT THIS IS?

A. 4th of July in Madrid

B. Bastille Day in Madrid

C. Saint Louis University's Welcome Party for us

D. The totally unannounced local patron saint's celebration at 12:15 am on a Tuesday which scared the hell out of us as we thought we were under attack.

Yup, it's D.

I was well aware of the concept of manyana (I still can't find the damn enya key!), but it's worse than I thought. There is not 1 clock or calendar in our apt, in my office, on the microwave, etc. We never know what day or time it is. We went to the school cafeteria for pancakes on a Friday, when no one seems to be at work period, and ordered fresh squeezed OJ & pancakes from Ruby the server. Now you must understand that there is no such thing as simply placing an order if the person knows and LIKES you. Ruby is the coolest lady from Colombia, so she and I have bonded since day 1. In addition, this particular morning, Ingrid was with me, so those 2 were like long-lost sisters reminiscing about life in the old country. It took 30 minutes to get the pancakes & oj, and we were the only 2 customers there! But we did get the low-down on the cheapest & best supermarkets, farmers markets (don't buy the meat!), flea markets, and low-cost airlines that fly to Colombia WHEN they are not grounded for safety reasons. GOD HELP US...

On a quick note, it took 3.5 hours to open a bank account with 300 euros, and then neither chase in the states or banco santander here could figure out how to transfer 3000us from our checking accnt in tucson to the one here! MY poor uncle-in-law Jack had to drive around Los Angeles for 3 hours to find a way to wire us money. And this is the 21st century?

On a positive note, the Spaniards have been the nicest, friendliest Europeans we've ever met.

bobby & ingrid