I'm not a doctor, but I play one in Madrid...

Back in August we noticed a lot of signs for flu vaccines in the pharmacy windows. Flu vaccines? In August? Too early! thought we. One doesn't get a flu vaccine until flu season, November, December, sometime around then. So we waited.

Pharmacies in Spain are not like those in the US. First off, all pharmacists act as gatekeepers. You want to buy tums? No they tell you, you don't. You want pepcid. It's better. But, you explain, I have heartburn right now. I want tums (rennie is what it is here). Pepcid works fine for that. No, you say, it doesn't. It will take an hour or more for the pill to work. Fine, she says rolling her eyes, have some omeprasole. No, you say, that's prilosec. It's a 24 hour acid suppressant. You take it in the mornings before you eat anything. It's not for once you have heartburn. You want something to make the pain stop now. Ok then, take the rennie she says, thrusting it at you with disgust (the Spanish have disgust down to an art, but really that's a different post). So you do.

And that's a typical stop at the farmacia.

What with being busy, heading back to get visas, having things closed every day from 2-5pm for lunch etc, we've been slow to get our vaccines, so yesterday I finally said to Ricardo it was time. We stopped at the 24 hour pharmacy to get one for him and I would take The Kid and get ours later in the day.

It went like this:

Do you have flu vaccines?

Yes. How many do you want?

One.

Sure. €7.95

A bargain! we thought as he went into the back and came out with a small box which he handed to us.

Which he handed to us.

Um, what do we do with this? Is it the nasal spray?

No, it's the shot.

OK.

You give it to yourself. In a muscle. Arm, leg, whatever.

OK.

Look, he said. A health clinic can do it if you want. You'll probably wait a long time. (can you pick up on the classic levels of disgust? because they were wreathing us like a curtain).

OK. €7.95?

€7.95.

We took it and left. I put it in the fridge. Ricardo went to the library. I went about my errands and tried to find a pharmacy where they'd give me the shot. No dice. This one didn't have it. That one didn't have it and didn't I know how late it was? No one would have them any more. I should have gotten it ages ago! (disgust, disgust, disgust!)

Back to the 24 hour pharmacy. I'll take 2 more. And a bottle of rubbing alcohol please.

So now I had 3 flu shots, a bottle of rubbing alcohol and sheer will. I knew it couldn't be that hard. I'd had dozens of flu shots and hundreds of allergy shots in my life. How hard could it be to give myself a flu shot in my leg? If I couldn't give myself a flu shot how could I give them to the rest of the family? Because no way in hell was I going to let Mr. Genetic Hand Shakes Ricardo give me one and the Kid is terrified of needles. So it was down to me. And I was first up.

I went in the bathroom and washed my hands. Then I alcoholed the crap out of my leg, took out the shot and sat there.

I could do it.

Just do it.

OK. Now!

Now!

Just do it Now!

Ok really do it now!

OK this time for real. Now!

Now!

OK. Now!

I partly stuck the needle in and realized that was not going to work and jabbed it in. Then I tried to slowly shoot it in, realized that wasn't the way and plunged. It was done. Whew!

And then I was left with a biohazard, which apparently in Spain, no one seems to care about since there are no directions at all for disposing of it. Creepy!

The Kid came home from Taekwondo, took his shower and I announced it was time for his flu shot. He got all pissy with me.

Do I have to get dressed? Why did you make me shower? Why didn't we just go after Taekwondo?

Go get your rabbit and come in my bathroom I told him. (the bathroom of doom!!)

He did and I started telling him the saga of my rosetta stone debacle (long story short, time machine does not remember your activation codes for rosetta stone, but apryl in harrisonburg is a doll and was a huge help for 2 hours!) while I did this, I cannily washed my hands, alcoholed his arm and jabbed the shot in! boom! done, baby!

By the time it was time to do Ricardo's (it burns us precious!) I was a fucking pro!

And so we've all had our flu shots. And the only one with ill effects is me. Can I recommend, not getting one in your thigh muscle since it hurts like fuck and now my leg is killing me today?

Oh, and it's really late in the season to get a flu shot. Why didn't you just get them when the signs were up? Not that we'd have given them to you when you'd asked...

Would you touch a lugie covered cash machine for 3.5€?

This morning I was faced with just such a dilemma.

You might wonder why I would stoop to such a level and even consider the question. It's kind of a long answer, but since I have you here and I have all the time in the world, why don't I explain it?

Let's start with the fact that banking in Spain is an interesting enterprise. It's not the easiest thing in the world to set up an account. In Spain everyone and their mother want something called your DNI. This is basically you national ID number, what in the US would be your Social Security Number. To open an account at most banks, the big banks, you need either a resident number or a DNI.

We have neither since we are here (at least until the week after next) on tourist visas.

However, some banks, the smaller ones, the ones who charge fees, do not have such issues. As a foreign national you may open an account here with a passport, cash and a recommendation from someone else who banks with them. In this case we have this, via our landlord (who is lovely!). And so we came to bank with Banco Sabadell Atlantico. This is a small bank whose symbol we found to be hysterically funny when we arrived at the bank as you might imagine we would:

Upon opening our account we were told that we could use any ServiRed machines, but that only the BS (LOLOLOL) machines would be free of charge and only then if we took out over 60€. No problem we thought.

No problem that is until we came to learn that there was but one machine in our area. And that one machine was right in the Puerta del Sol. In other words, it was in the heart of Touristlandia. But no matter. I could walk right past it on my way from dropping the Kid off at school. As long as we only took cash out every other week or so, we were fine.

Since moving to Spain, certain things have been a bit surprising to me. For one thing, roughly half the public bathrooms lack both toilet paper and soap. This includes the bathroom in the Kid's school. His current assignment in Art class is to create a sign to put up in school that warns students of a hidden danger. He chose to make one that warned potential potty goers that the bathroom lacked soap and paper. No one thought this was funny. They looked at him like he was nuts. Why, they wondered, would anyone care about that? Bathrooms often lack these things.

The Spanish are impeccably dressed, coiffed and cologned. Their clothing is always neat, pressed and matching. They (unlike Americans) would never be caught dead going to the grocery in sweatpants. As a whole, people here are beautiful, and I always feel that it is important to look nice whenever I leave our apartment.

However, this does not extend to hygiene necessarily. And I don't meant o make blanket statements, because it's no one's fault if they can't wash their hands in the restaurant bathroom when there is no soap provided them. But it's not a hand washing kind of place. Hand sanitizer is expensive (or impossible to find in some places). And people do not cough or sneeze into their arms, but in their hands, which they then use to press the buttons on the elevator, open the metro door with, or place on the escalator.

In addition, like Latin America, Spain seems to be a place where trash is discarded rather than kept upon the person. Cigarette butts are thrown willy nilly on the streets as are tissues, cans, and other detritus. In Mexico once, a woman throwing her trash out the window explained her disgust of Americans to Ricardo thusly: "Why would you want to carry trash with you? It's so dirty!" Which seems to be true here too. And since there is a huge army of people out cleaning the streets at all times, the city is extremely neat despite the way that littering takes place, with people sweeping, mopping, and even bleaching and hosing down the streets daily.

Which brings me to my lugie this morning. There is but one BS machine in my life. And it is in the middle of tourist land. Whether the lugie was placed by a Spaniard with a cold and bad aim, a stupid American without regard for others, an angry Ecuadorian wanting revenge on the Spanish who employ him, a German who missed the hanky, or someone else, it ended up on my BS machine. And I had to make a choice.

Would I spend 3.50€ to use the La Caixa machine next door? Or would I touch the machine with the lugie on it?

We've been in Spain nearly 90 days to be exact. And in this time, I have watched people exit bathrooms where I know they have been going number 2 and not washed their hands. I have seen people kiss hello after they have sneezed into their hands. I have been to dinner with people who have no soap in their own bathrooms (and these are professionals).

3.50 € is milk for a week or more. I used the lugie machine.

And then I came home. And I washed my hands.

I've been craving enchiladas

And making them is no easy feat here in Madrid.

For one thing, the Spanish do not eat spicy food. They think they do. They have chistorras and patatas bravas and chorizo but as yet I have not noticed these to be actually spicy (although they are tasty, especially the sausage products which I love!).

I have actually seen people give up on eating pepperoni pizzas here in Madrid. One woman waved her hand in front of her mouth and claimed it was "muy picante." Pepperoni. Is it even spicy? I've never noticed it to be. Another woman had to switch with her husband because she couldn't go through with the pizza. WTF?

I was not looking for wimpy spicy. I wanted full bodied Mexican spicy. And I knew I'd need to make it myself if I wanted anything that would make my mouth sing. So I went about trying to assemble the ingredients that would do the trick.

As usual, this was no mean feat. For one thing, it meant most of the necessary ingredients were going to need to be imported. I began with the basics: tortillas.

Tortillas are shockingly expensive here. You can get "taco kits" which are basically Old El Paso boxes that include the 1970s hard injection molded taco shells and taco powder (just add meat!) for about €7 ($10). But actual soft tortillas? Much more challenging. Finally I found some, several choices actually. And none of them good.

At home, I can buy a package of 20 four tortillas for about $2 (€1.50). Here I could get 8 tortillas for €2.65 ($4). Andt they were large tortillas (not the actual enchilada sized ones. And they fit the pan well (it's actually an awesome clay roasting pan and I absolutely love it!). But shit!

While were were there in the Mexican aisle (or section. a very, very small section) I browsed for what I could use for a sauce for my enchiladas (not being interested in making one from scratch) and was rewarded mightily with canned Herdez salsa casero which wasn't just something to settle for but which is actually a salsa I use at home! Score! But ouch! €2.75 ($4) for each 150ml can which at home would have been about $1.99 for a 500 ml jar.

Next, beans. Beans are not canned here. They are jarred. This is strange. I prefer my beans in a can. I don't know why. I guess I don't like them looking at me or something. Plus not all the beans are in the same place in the grocery store. So several trips down several aisles finally revealed red pinto beans. Two jars at €1.95 ($3) each.

Lastly, the part I had most been dreading: the cheese. Spain is famous for its cheese and well it should be. I've never had such tasty goat cheese, sheep's milk cheese or hard cured cheeses. What it does not have is cheddar. What to do? Well, you improvise. I found some packages of mixed gouda and cheddar which would melt well and I also used some semi cured cheese we had at home which was perfect since it was so much like a queso fresco. The shredded cheese and the cream cheese (which is amazing and has made me now crave bagels) was about €6 ($8.40)

Added to this were the very cheapest ingredients: 1 lime and 2 avocados purchased at the very last minute today and not quite ripe enough to make into guacamole. Astonishingly: €.90 ($1.25).

These were the most expensive enchiladas ever made. But I swear to you they were also the very most delicious! Thank God yesterday's meal (chicken in grapefruit cream sauce with saffron, mashed potatoes and salad) was a fraction of the cost!

here are things you cannot buy in the grocery stores in spain

I am finding that it is a little difficult to cook things I am used to cooking while here because there are certain things one cannot buy here that I am used to using and/or cooking with regularly. These are:

• bread crumbs
• cheddar cheese
• salsa
• cilantro
• fresh mozzarella
• salad dressing
• cake mix
• marshmallows (although you can get lots of marshmallow creations, none for your cocoa)

Today the Kid has asked for chicken cutlets (the chicken is the easy part) but with no bread crumbs I have had to improvise by crushing crackers into crumbs. This has been strangely exhausting. Especially with no food processor/blender to do it with, just my bare hands and a wine bottle for a rolling pin (picadillo later in the week hence the wine).

I've had a craving for enchiladas and have had to improvise with the cheese by using a combo of a semi-cured cheese not unlike a queso fresco and a gouda mix. but blocks of cheddar? no way. so I guess we're loading up at home and when we fly through Heathrow after we get the visas. Weird.

Back to School Night: Pwn or be Pwned

Last night was Back to School Night at The Kid's school. I wasn't sure what to expect but the beginning was standard 7th grade fare. Your kid is hitting puberty, this is a big transition from elementary school, your kid is going to have to be more responsible, there's much more work now, blah blah blah. Since we make kids go to middle school in 5th grade in our fair hamlet in the US, this has not been a transition at all for the Kid. If anything he moves from class to class less at San Isidro than he did at home. But it was clear that it's massively huge for the other kids since they have been in the same school since K and in fact have been in a single classroom every year with one teacher. Now they have 10 teachers etc. No big whoop for the Kid but I could see it making the other kids' heads spin.

The thing is that in the US at Back to School Night, one might meet the teachers, or get to understand the schedule or things like that. Not at this one.

This one was pwn or be pwned.

If you do not know my son, or the world of online gaming you might not know the term "pwn." It rhymes with "own." I encourage you to follow the link in the term to urbandictionary.com because I know no other term for what ensued once we headed to the homerooms with the tutor.

At San Isidro every class has a tutor. This is kind of like a homeroom teacher. Way back in the day when I taught 7th grade we had a period called TA (teacher advisory) which was a kind of cross between study skills, life skills, counseling, and study hall. I get the impression this is kind of the role of the tutor. When he's not teaching Lengua Castellana.

I liked the tutor. He reminded me of just about every high school and middle school teacher I'd ever taught with. I'd have put him in his late fifties to early 60s. I'd say he started teaching around 82. Back then the kids were easier and it wasn't a stressful job. Now the kids are hard and the parents are a pain in the ass. But he's not far from retirement and deep down he really likes the kids. But the parents? Joder!

So now we get to the pwning.

Apparently in the Spanish school system there is no such thing as privacy. We quickly learned which children were failing (apparently because they are foreigners) and who had attendance problems (but was a very well brought up girl). We learned that one boy was very disorganized and not doing his homework. The tutor just kind of busted out with this stuff. I was shocked. You would never EVER do this in the US. I mean never ever ever ever.

And then the parents started to pwn back. First it was the math teacher. And I have to confess that that man has done a shoddy fucking job of late. Last week he gave a math test, but since he doesn't follow the book (something several parents bitched about) which was rather expensive (shot out another) and never gives the kids practice or homework (yeah! I thought) just how were the kids supposed to know how to prepare or what would be on it. And then one child got a 2.5! Well no wonder! The teacher's not doing his job! the parents strenuously insisted. (Grades here are on a 10 point scale with a 5 being around a C and no one getting much about an 8 or so. However, The Kid has gotten a 9.5 on science and on the impossible math test where it would seem, many got in the 1-3 range, he got a 5.5, not bad having no idea what was on it!). The tutor agreed to speak with the math teacher.

Then the tutor (who I quite, quite like, btw) mentioned he had office hours and is happy to meet with parents if they have concerns. He is free on Thursdays from 11-12. This sent everyone into another uproar! Well they work! How can they come see him? This was outrageous! He agreed to make individual appointments as needed.

And then we moved onto PE. It seems that it's a recent phenomenon that PE has been made a class that people needed to pass. Apparently there has been a long history of PE dodging in Spain because this was a matter of quite some discussion.

The Kid, I should let it be known, detests PE. I mean he hates it with a red hot hate. And that's unusual. He adored PE and the PE teacher that I had been working with both at the school I was in last year and the one he was in last year. But this year has come with a fury I'd never seen in him when discussing a subject.

And it seems he was not alone.

Something needed to be done about PE. She is too much. A doctor's note every time a kid had to miss PE? the parents asked. You've got to be kidding. Well, explained the tutor, she's very strict. She's too mean. She's too strict. She's too hard on them. She yells. She makes them work to hard. And on it went.

Ricardo and I couldn't even look at each other. I wasn't sure if I was at a Back to School Night or if I was in some kind of first year teacher's worst nightmare of a Back to School Night.

I thought of the young English teacher whom I'd seen up front in the pitiful auditorium. The Kid, like all kids in our small burg at home, can smell a newbie a mile away and he'd mentioned the English teacher didn't know what she was doing. When I saw her arrive in the auditorium, the only one in a skirt, not jeans, clutching a shopping bag and looking nervous, I could sense the new on her too. I wondered how things were going for her in her room, if this was what was happening in the veteran's room.

Our tutor was taking it all like a pro. He knew the math teacher sucked and the gym teacher was a bitch. He knew that that would never change. He also knew these parents were hover parents (they have those here too!) and that they needed a reality check. And he knew the real transition this year, as in all middle schools everywhere, would be for the parents, not the kids. The kids would be fine.

After several parents got up in the middle of the conversation to leave, we went up to speak to the tutor. He was kind and caring and mentioned how hard (and nervous) the Kid was. We explained that he'd skipped a year as well as starting in Spanish for the first time ever. The tutor was impressed by his manners, the questions he asked and his work ethic. He wants the Kid to worry less. We do too. He's exactly what the Kid needs. And probably what they all need. And I found that I wished the other parents could see that too.

School in Spain

The Kid has been in school now for about three weeks and so he's into his routine. I thought I would share what it's been like because I know some of you have been curious/concerned about it. It's been an interesting experience and not at all what we'd expected or been led to believe would happen.

I'll begin with the review of what was going on before. The Kid, whose birthday (through no fault of his own) is a mere two days before Christmas (that's right, he is a Festivus Baby) should be in 6th grade in back at home. Had he been born in April when he was due this would be a moot point, but he was not, so it became an issue here. Apparently the age cut off here is December 31. This put him, not in 6th as it would have at home, but in 7th. In other words, instead of finishing primaria here, he would be starting the first year of secundaria.

The educational system of Spain works like this: you go to a prek-k thing. Then 1-6 is primary school. Then 7-10 is secondary school (with many students finishing at age 16). Then some go on to do their IB equivalent in 11 and 12 (also at the secondary school).

We were concerned because not only was The Kid going to be going to school suddenly in Spanish immersion (a language he speaks fairly well, but doesn't really read and write in) but he'd be skipping a grade of school in and would then be going into a high school on top of it. That seemed like a lot to do shortly upon moving to a brand new country.

And as it turned out, the school was a bilingual French and Spanish school. But the students were just starting French so he should be fine, right?

And so it began. Or it tried to. Out of the first three days, 7 periods had no teacher in them. The kids just sat there chatting unless a "guardia" (literally a guard) showed up to watch them. It turns out they had some staffing difficulties. But still there was a lot to look forward to. The school had just gotten a huge grant and had all new Promethean Boards (like SmartBoards) in every classroom, the kids were taking 3 hours of technology a week, Art, French, the geography text for social studies looked incredible (despite the European belief that North and South America are a single continent). This could be a good year. At least he would not be behind.

We'd feared what everyone had told us about how in math, Europeans were so far ahead of the US. Perhaps The Kid would need tutoring to catch up in math. But as we perused the math textbook, it became clear that he would learn absolutely nothing new in math until, maybe April or May. Basically the math he was doing here in 7th was what he did in an advanced 5th grade class last year. So, not a problem.

It became clear very quickly that asking questions and thinking about what you were learning about, much less challenging the teacher's opinions with your own, were no-nos. The students are expected to sit silently, listen to the teachers talk and write notes. Then they come home are read and answer questions. What they will do with the Promethean Boards, I have no idea.

And so we come to the "technology class." It seemed quite strange to me that The Kid had been in a technology class 3 times a week for a few weeks and never touched a computer. He explained to me that they were learning the difference between technology and technique. The Spanish love nothing more than tuna except maybe the process by which something happens, so this kind of made sense to me. He explained that before you could use any technology you had to know how to approach a problem (Ahhhh, how Spanish! I thought). And then I left it alone.

Then on Thursday, Ricardo had a lunch out with a friend and I took The Kid out for pizza (amazing!!! fresh fig, jamón iberico, and goat cheese). He asked if I could help him with some flash cards for his technology vocabulary. I've been doing this for him. I use PowerPoint to make animated, illustrated flashcards with a picture, the Spanish term and then the French term so that he can learn the words and their spelling (because he spells like Guaman Poma apparently). Sure, no problem.

Hey, I asked, when will you guys get to use computers? Well, he didn't know. But they might get to use hammers by December.

Hammers?! Huh???????

Well, it's a technology class, he explained.

Yeah, right. Like technology.

No he says, not like what we mean at home. like building stuff.

So......... shop class?

What's shop class? he asks

Like when you make birdhouses and mailboxes and stuff.

Like woodworking at Spectrum camp?

Yeah like that.

Yeah, that's technology here.

So, my son is spending 3 hours a week in a shop class. In a school with state of the art technology. Where the teacher just got a white board and apparently freaked out because she prefers chalk.

Yeah. School in Spain.

Una Huelga General

Yesterday was the 29^th which meant that it was Huelga General (general strike) day in Madrid. It had been advertised for a while. We’d first seen banners and signs about a month ago when we were traveling in Andalusia. Since it was planned for the 29^th, it began on the evening of the 28^th of course, with a lot of noise, marching and massive amounts of stickering of windows and doors. The purpose of the strike was to demonstrate to the government that the people of Spain were none to pleased with the American style, Bush like bank bail outs (it’s come to my attention that a lot of people in the US seem to think this was an Obama choice which seems interesting since it was put in place under the Bush administration). In addition, they are protesting the loss of their benefits and the attempt to raise the retirement age to 67.

Like many things in Spain, it didn’t begin early. We went out around 12:00 to see what was

happening and found that while there were piles of trash and lots of stickers, there was little in the way of impressive striking. Since we live a mere block from where the congress meets, we thought we might check out the protests there. They were meager and seemed rather half hearted, and we were somewhat disappointed since we had thought that in a socialist country during the first Huelga General in 8 years we might see something impressive.

With that in mind we headed in to the Puerta del Sol where there were more protests happening in various places. Most groups of protesters were no more than 50 or so in size and we left rather confused. We spent some time counting businesses and after counting 20 of them found that 6 were closed and 14 open and determined roughly 40% of businesses were observing the strike, a number we found to be fairly anemic.

Unimpressed by the Huelga General, we dubbed it merely a “huelgita” and returned home.

Later in the afternoon around 5:30 we decided to go out for a walk. There wasn’t anything to do and we’d decided that since we were foreigners (albeit with great sympathy for the strikers) we would not be buying anything or going to any stores that were open on the day of a national strike, we could at least go for a paseo. So we struck out and decided to head in a direction unknown to us. Soon enough we had discovered a new part of our neighborhood and the Huelgote.

The strike had metastasized. As we neared one of the main thoroughfares we saw it was completely blocked to cars because on it were literally thousands and thousands of marchers. Banners, bands, something that resembled the hamburgler, families, hippies, people on bicycles, thronged the street. It was stunning. People had balloons, bells, whistles and rattles. They were chanting, yelling and singing. But the entire thing was peaceful as far as we could tell. We were right in it but never felt at all worried or endangered. The police were there, but not in riot gear the way they would be in the US. Of course, since we had not planned to see any more I did not have my camera (this image is a googled one) but it was something to behold.

Amazingly, this morning as I walked The Kid to school, the streets were once again tidy and clean. Trash had been collected. The only signs of the strike were the stickers that still clung to doors and windows. As I was walking home, I found a part of a roll of CCOO stickers and picked them up. I didn’t know what I would do with them, since it wasn’t my strike, but I didn’t think I should leave them there either. I continued on until I cam to a small plaza with a bronze statue of a man sweeping the street. Someone had put a CCOO sticker on his hat and secundaria kids were trying to peel it off to put on their book bags. I stopped them (savoring the irony of a statue of a worker going on strike) and handed them the roll. They were delighted and began to sticker each other’s bags quite artfully. I realized that this would be a formative memory for them. A city shut down. A citizenry in solidarity over their rights as workers and employees. It struck me that in Virginia it would have been illegal what happened yesterday. And I smiled to think I’d been lucky to see it.

more fun with food!

This morning we went for one of the best breakfasts there is in all of Spain. I make fun of Spanish food a lot. And I am in this post going to to an extent too, but I am going to begin with the following in which I rapturously talk about all the things I love about Spanish food.

1. Coffee. What the hell is wrong with the US? I have never had a bad cup of coffe the entire time I have been here. We've had coffee everywhere too. In the Atocha train station, at the crappy Rodillo sandwich place (don't get me started on their sandwiches), in excellent restaurants, tiny bars, everywhere. And every single place has absolutely amazingly good coffee. The coffee that is drunk here is espresso made in massive espresso makers like the kind that high end coffee bars have in the US. They are everywhere here. It no longer seems like extravagance to consider buying a really expensive (and I mean like $700) espresso maker when I get home. Because I don't think I could ever go back to the swill that Starbucks passes off as coffee after consuming the coffee nectar of Spain.

2. Hot chocolate. Oh my fucking God. There are not curses in my vocabulary (and if you know me well you know that I am stating something above and beyond there!!!!) to describe the richness, the decadence, the sinful delight of a cup of this stuff here. Let's start with the fact that they melt a bar of chocolate to make it. There is no powder, no cocoa, none of that shit. It's a bar of chocolate. Stuff is so thick your spoon can stand up in it people. This morning The Kid had one with dulce de leche on the bottom and whipped cream on the top. This is the kind of shit that would have a street value in the US. At home, we'd bottle this and paint it on each other during sex games. You don't even know.

3. And it's eaten with churros or better yet, porros. These are fried pieces of extruded batter (thin for churros and thick for porros). Like donuts but much better because they absorb the coffee or help to mop up the chocolate stuck to the sides of the cup (although I am not above simply using my fingers).

4. Orange juice. In almost every place this is produced in a machine (and they all seem to be Zumex machines) that has a receptacle on the top for loads and loads of fresh lovely oranges. Order a juice (inexplicably called a zumo –thumo– here) and the oranges roll down, and get squeezed to order into your glass. It's like the Ritz-Carlton, but it's normal here.

And that was our breakfast. Yum!!

Now that you know that I actually love eating here, it's time to resume our regularly scheduled program of weird menu signs. These are on the way to and from The Kid's school and it happened I had my camera today to share them with you, my dear readers.

This is the aptly named "wet fish." It is wet because it is raw, I expect. I think it is meant to be "white fish" which to a Spanish ear will sound almost exactly like "wet fish." But it's baffling nonetheless. The Kid's school isn't really a touristy area although it's a close hop to the Plaza Mayor. I think this restaurant is hoping for traffic to wander down and to dine there because of their prices (much lower than on the Plaza). I suspect they'll want to cook the wet fish first.

This same place also offers grilled sirloin steak. Maybe. It says it does. But it shows the steak raw. Is that so you know it's grilled? Or might be grilled if you order it? The Spanish like their meat rare (I approve of this) but this seems a bit ridiculously rare to me. Maybe this should be "wet steak." And why are there two of them? Will you get two per order? That's a lot of meat!!

And here is my very favorite! As always! The ensalada mixta. Look closely and see what's mixed into your salad! Ah that's right, tuna of course. But also shrimp. And is that eel? You betcha! As well as the ever present jarred white asparagus (which I don't get because asparagus grows wild here and could absolutely be eaten fresh!), hard boiled eggs, jarred peppers and a red mass of something I can't figure out. Vegetarians, there is no room for you here, this salad screams. No room for you!

clean as a whistle

I've always sort of pooh-poohed the European need for a bidet. They always seem to crowd the bathrooms of hotels when you stay in the great capitals of Europe and you never use them as an American. We look down on them. We assume Europeans use them instead of bathing and that that makes them a little gross.

But I am here to tell you that I am a convert to the bidet. I love it. I want one at home. I don't know how I ever lived without one before. These are the greatest inventions known to man!!

I first discovered my deep and abiding love of the undercarriage bath in Granada where we'd walked and walked for hours and hours. Of course I needed a shower after that. So I took one and felt immensely refreshed. But when we came back to the hotel after dinner, I was a little shvitzy. I had only one pair of pants left and I'd had to wear them even though I had just taken my shower and I now felt kind of grimy. The bed was luscious. Was I really going to put myself into that rich, soft cotton bed with my manky ass?

Maybe, I'd try the bidet. And so I did. And it was good.

The next morning, I used it again because I had showered not 12 hours before. Again, it didn't replace a shower, but it obviated the need for two showers (since summer in Andalusia is not to be trifled with).

Since then, I have found that I like a little mini-bath as it were. And I think others would too, if we could get over our snootiness about the whole thing. Personally, while I can't get behind the tuna fixation here, the bidet thing is A-OK by me.

My first day as a Spanish housewife

and it has not gone swimmingly.

Let's start with my wake up call, the now classic collapsed bed. This has happened to me about 6 times now. When we first got to the apartment, we were in the smaller bedroom but Ricardo felt cramped so we moved to the room with the two twins pushed together. It's much larger and airy. But it turns out there is a reason the landlord didn't say it was the "master suite" even though from looking at it it obviously is. And it seems the reason is that the bed on the right has a malfunction. What malfunction? Well it seems that the frame is slightly bent which means that every so often the slats collapse under the sleeper, comme ça:

She'd tried to remedy this (the landlord) by putting in two sets of slats which made it feel a lot like I was a monk sleeping on a pallet (because essentially I was sleeping on a pallet although not a monk). To no avail. Since I had been putting up with this about a month, I had told Ricardo this was it, the next time I fell through the bed we were switching rooms with the Kid. Period.

Guess that meant I was going to be doing the switcheroo today while the Kid went off to school and the husband to the library because now I am the hausfrau. Which is fine, because it's not like I have a job or anything right now. But the thing is the other room is definitely smaller, and the Kid has a tendency to stretch out into every nook and cranny available to him (as middle schoolers are wont to do). So I've spent much of the morning switching closets and dressers which is easy enough.

I then took a break to make some iced tea for almuerzo (the main meal of the day eaten around 3pm). The Kid's school does not have a cafeteria and they do not offer a meal at all. They go to school from 8:30 (today from 9:20) to 2:50 and they get no meal. There is a 1/2 hour break around 11 when the kids usually eat a snack from home but it's expected they will go home for their almuerzo and not really need a meal at school. We've been eating this way and the Kid will likely be fine, but he took a PB&J (you would NOT believe how much a tiny thing of peanut butter is here! we are sooooooo bringing some Jiff back with us!) and a couple figs for his break since there is no playground equipement or anything for them to do during break anyway.

But I digress. One thing I miss a lot from home is iced tea. I can't drink soda because of the migraine medicine I take (which makes everything carbonated taste like the inside of a rusted pipe) so I have become an iced tea addict, particularly green tea, especially Arizona green tea. In fact yesterday I spent an ungodly amount of money at the Starbucks just to drink an Arizona green tea (ok, 3.50 E) because I felt so sick and we'd been walking for hours and I was completely parched and well you get the idea already.

So I've come to the conclusion that the only remedy to this is to make my own iced tea. And since I am now a housewife, this should not be a troublesome thing to do. I have all the things I need, bags of green tea, honey, a liter pitcher, and a kettle and stove.

Let's start with the fact that Ricardo put the pitcher on the top most shelf of the kitchen. Ordinarily, this would not be in the least an obstacle. I would climb on a chair and get it down. No problems. But in the house that Ikea built (as cheaply as possible), it is a problem. All chairs are folding and designed for slim, Scandanavian asses, not mega American ones like the kind I sport. So that was not an option. Not to be dissuaded from my mission, I looked around for whatever I had that would help me poke it down. I found (luckily enough!) my tongs which I had insisted on buying because I am a total baby when doing things like pan frying chicken or even bacon. So using the tongs, I got the pitcher down.

Now I turned to my kettle. This is a bizarre kettle. It doesn't whistle. and you can't tell when it's full or not or if it's boiling. Also it leaks. And it's easy to over fill it. So I put the kettle on and went back to the great room flip. The next thing I hear is a wretched hissing and sizzling and then smell a weird smell.

I bolt back to the kitchen in time to seen that there is a puddle all over the stove and dripping onto the floor. There is water sizzling all around the bottom of the kettle and it's steaming all

over as well. I can't tell if I've overfilled it and it's poured out, or if it's leaked out of it from the bottom or the spout or what the fuck is going on when it begins to spout steaming water out of its joint between the spout and the base and also between the rolled bottom and the burner.

But god damn it I am going to have some tea today!!!

So I don my ridiculously huge and largely unusable Ikea oven mits, grab the kettle and whip it off the stove, spraying steaming geysers across the kitchen as I go and pour the water (which oddly enough is not actually boiling) into the pitcher. I let the tea steep while I go back to try to fix the slats of the broken bed so that it doesn't look like shit, which I do. I manage to set up all "the guys" (The Kid's stuffed animals) exactly the way he likes them, tuck them into his new bed and get back to the kitchen before the tea over brews. I add honey and put it in the fridge.

Missions accomplished!

No, I don't fucking "vale" god damnit!!!

The Spanish have this word, "vale." It means, as far as I can tell, the following:

• ok?
• ok.
• alright.
• alright?
• got it.
• got it?
• understand?
• I understand.
• great!
• let's go
• go now!
• I'm finished with you.
• your time is up.
• get out of my sight.
• you're in the wrong line, asshole.
• what the fuck are you doing back here?
• what is your major malfunction?

The thing is, I don't "vale." And it's their fault. I have reasonably good Spanish. I don't have a lot of comprehension problems really. My productive language is a problem still, but it's not nonexistent. But here's the thing. I've been to and/or spent chunks of time in 10 Spanish speaking countries (11 if you count Miami which Ricardo does) and I don't have difficulty understanding people. OK, a little trouble in the Dominican Republic and Panama, but that is some advanced Spanish.

And put it this way, I nearly cried with joy (literally, tears welled up, and OK I was over tired and jet lagged, but fuck that) when I found myself ordering from the owner at the restaurant a 1/4 block from here. Why? Because she was from Havana and I understood her perfectly. Every. Motherfucking. Word. And she's Cuban.

Yes, that's right. I understand Cubans with little difficulty. But not Madrileños.

When we traveled south to Andalusia, I felt the tides of relief wash over me as I realized that there (perhaps due to the heat? maybe it cools them down?) people actually opened their mouths when they spoke and formed words. I could understand them! Don't get me wrong. Few other tourists could since they dropped every third syllable (not unlike Cubans, frankly). But for one glorious week, I felt like I had a chance to "vale."

But now I am back in Madrid. And once again, I do not "vale." People speak to me and it's like they are speaking a language I have never heard before. Between the bizarre th-like lisping, the fact that no one seems to open their mouths, and the fed-ex man speed of their speech I might as well have moved to Burma. I don't think I have a bat's prayer in hell of learning to speak Spanish well this year because I will be spending all my time just trying to fucking "vale."

Cause right now? Yeah. I don't.

tuna fish

Today I went to El Corte Inglés to go the grocery store. We've ordered a couple times from this French hypermart called Carrefour, and the prices are fine but they ding you on delivery and they substitute a lot. So today, despite the fact that I have this cold/stomach flu thingy, because we had no food other than rice, lentils, and some melon and milk (the lentils and rice were too complicated and the melon and milk too gross) Ricardo and I limped over the the store.

We don't have anything like El Corte Inglés in the US. Imagine Bloomingdales combined with a Harris Teeter level grocery store, a travel agency, car repair service and rentals, Best Buy, and Barnes and Noble. Add to that a Tower Records (now defunct), a decent restaurant, a full liquor store, and a West Elm and you've got El Corte Inglés.

We hadn't intended to shop there. But we couldn't make it to the cheaper Día grocery closer to The Kid's school. And actually it ended up being quite reasonable. I got about 10 packages of pasta (each about .58 E/90¢ each) which was what our stomachs can handle, ingredients for chicken noodle soup which i plan to make tomorrow when I am not sleeping all day, some figs for the Kid, lactose free milk for Ricardo, tea, lemons, eggs, cereal, bread, butter, a couple kinds of juice (including real tropicana because juice here is really odd), herbs, and more all for 51 E/ $70.

But this is rather a long prelude to a more interesting obsession/phenomenon here. And that my friends is... tuna fish.

A one point during the shopping trip Ricardo had to excuse himself to find the facilities (it was bound to be one of us with this bug and had it been me, I'd likely have been vomiting) and this left me alone in the aisle devoted to tinned fish.

Yes, that's right, an entire aisle of tinned fish.

One whole side of which is devoted solely to tuna.

You can't log into the supermarket part of the Corte Inglés website without a Madrid zipcode (go to google maps and get one if you're curious). But if you were to do this you would discover what I did in my nausea and hacking cough haze of horror.

There are more kinds of tuna for sale in this basement grocery store than I have ever seen in my life. It comes in cans, in glass jars and in what look like juice boxes. You can get it packed in water, olive oil, virgin olive oil, vegetable oil or pickled. Worse yet you can get it in sauces. Either tomato or "picante." It comes in chunks, flakes and filets. It comes as light, white or albacore. You can have it in three packs, large containers or small. I've never seen the variety or the array of tuna products. It was stunning. I was held in thrall as I dragged my little basket on wheels of lactose free milk and (hard to find) salted butter from jar to jar, can to can, juice box to juice box. Even without the stomach issues I think this would have made me throw up a little in my mouth. As it was I was too shocked to even move at one point as I stood before the flesh colored chunks floating in oil in their red and yellow labeled jars.

This was where all the salads in Spain began. In this aisle. Now I understood. I would not ever need a vegetable peeler (which btw, I still have not found). All I need, is a can opener.

Musings on bathrooms, restaurants and other odds and ends

I figure that if you want to know what we've done as tourists, you're better off reading Ricardo's blog. I don't do very well describing those kinds of things and I just end up writing some sort of litany. I feel that complaining and making fun of things is really my milieu. So I am here to do just that.

When we were in Venice, we were treated to a lot of squat toilets. I took this as being a part of the fact that when you are a sinking city and you have water issues that antiquated plumbing comes with the territory.

Here is what I did not expect: Spain has a lot of toilets simply missing toilet seats. This is not, strictly speaking, a squat toilet clearly, but it necessitates squatting. In addition, Spain, like much of Latin America, has a thing where you throw the paper that you've used into a trash can instead of into the commode. I can live with these two things. They are not uncommon when traveling, (although unexpected in the first world), but I can let that pass.

Here is what I don't care for one bit. About half of all bathrooms lack soap. It's not that they are out of soap. They don't have any. And they never have had. In one café/bar we were in, I went to use the restroom (and actually this one did have soap) and a guy came out of the men's room with his cigarette in his hand (the men and women frequently share a sink) and made no attempt whatsoever to even rinse his hands. Just moved on. Sometimes, people use toilet paper to dry their hands which just makes the whole thing worse (and it's not like they used soap to begin with).

So basically, it seems that hygiene is not of concern here.

Now I get that we are overly concerned with hygiene in the US and I know as a teacher I am really fastidious about it. But I can't help wondering if this is a problem, the fact that people here so infrequently wash their hands carefully or well. It seems like it would be.

Another thing that is kind of odd here in Spain is the café/bar/restaurant. This is a place where you can go for a cup of coffee or for a rum and coke while your friend has a coffee. Or you can sit down and eat a meal. Or you can stand and eat a tapas. At 10am you can have a beer. At 1am you can have a coffee. There is always food, drink, smoking (which I think is obligatory) and all of it is in the same place. Imagine a Starbucks where you can sit down to a steak and a glass of wine with a full bar. It's kind of like that. Also the prices are different if you're sitting, standing or perching. If you sit at a table, it's more than if you stand. If you perch on a stool it's more than if you stand, but less than if you sit. Weird huh?

Finally, some thoughts about driving in Spain. There are some truly bizarre road signs in Spain. The Spanish are much more creative when making traffic signs than we are. Of course this means that the signs are also much more open to interpretation than ours. Here are my two favorites.

I think this one means that speed is checked by radar. Or it means that the aliens will be sterilizing all of us as we enter town.

This one is also great. This one either means that the motorcycles that follow too closely to cars will be in trouble if they hit the seams in the bridge or that they cannot successfully mate with cars because they are another species.