Alhambra, Flamenco, Gymnastics, and a lot of Ice Cream

Friends came to visit from London this weekend.  Everybody was psyched.  Girls told us "I'm so happy to be able to speak English!!"

Friday we toured the Alhambra together. I remembered my camera but didn't think to swap out my zoom lens.  So the visit was an exercise in admiring the details.  A  few are here (the rest I posted on Facebook).

Taking children to an ancient palace falls into the category of Things You Should Do With Your Kids As Long As You Set Your Expectations Way Down Low as it will be another 30 years until they can appreciate the concepts represented - time, history, age, architecture, beauty, art.  The best they can do at this point is tag along and play Miss Mary Mack while they embarrass their parents.

 



I found this on my phone when I got home:

Touring Granada and the Alhambra during the day, we had clocked in 10 miles of walking so the kids were exhausted but I don't think any of them technically fell asleep at the Flamenco show we took them to that night.  We were seated right up front, at a table right next to the stage and a few feet from the dancers who did an excellent job of focusing on the wall directly behind us and not making eye contact with the audience, in particular the four kids yawning and asking their parents questions in front of them.

Ella: “Lauren?  Why does she look angry?”
Lauren: “Well, Flamenco is about expressing the emotions of life, especially a hard life.  It's mostly about love and lost love.  Like when you love somebody and they don’t love you back or when somebody stops loving you.  Sometimes life can be really…..”
Ella: “Mom, can you hold my necklace?”

Willa: “Mom.  Are her stockings too big for her?”

Lauren: “No.  Why?”

Willa: “Then why does she keep pulling her skirt up?”

Lauren: “Shh.  She’s just showing you her legs and her feet.”

Clio:  “If she’s going to keep pulling her skirt up, why doesn’t she just wear a shorter skirt?”

Lauren: “Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!”

Waitress brings food to the table, during a particularly quiet and dramatic moment.

Tess: (in her 5-yr old British accent) "HEY I DIDN’T ORDER CHOCOLATE!!!!!!!”

 

Moms throw back the rest of the red wine.

Female dancer finishes.  Male dancer comes out.  He has a ton of hair and an elaborately shaped goatee.  He is the Spanish Flamenco version of Gaston from Beauty and the Beast – large torso, slim waist, long hair, big biceps.  I try not to stare at his crotch, though his choice of pants suggests that we are all meant to stare at his crotch.  He dances for a few minutes and I decide that staring at his feet for the foreseeable future would make me feel much more comfortable. 

Willa: “Mom!  Do you see his underwear, they’re red!”

I don't think it's a question, it sounds more like a statement, but at least I’m not the only one staring at his crotch.

We take the kids back to the apartment and leave them with the babysitter, Ana.  She's 20 and she speaks a little English, enough for the kids to interrogate her about her life.  We learn that she is one of 13 kids, she is the 8th, her birthday is tomorrow, and we all notice her tongue ring.  The adults go out to grab some drinks in a lounge that looks out towards the Alhambra, all lit up and beautiful at night.  We catch up for a few hours, laugh, forget for a hot second that we have all kids, end up talking about our kids, and then around 11:30pm we text the babysitter to make sure the kids are asleep.  She texts back that three of the four are still awake and playing cards.  She wants to know if she’s allowed to tell them to go to bed.

The next morning, exhausted all of us, we drive down to Nerja for a bit of beach fun.  Weather.com says it’s going to be 67 degrees.  But Weather.com does not mention gale-force winds.

After we arrive and unload, we walk down to the beach to find lunch.  We settle on a relatively shabby looking restaurant because it's right next to a jungle gym.  But Shabby Looking Place With Jungle Gym actually makes the best grilled fish and paella any of us have ever eaten and we stuff ourselves.

Then we hop across the street to get ice cream for the kids and coffee for the adults.  

Despite the sugar and caffeine, none of us feel the boost and we decide our next best move is back to the hotel for naps.  Three of the four adults nap but Jenny takes one for the team and watches the kids swim in the indoor pool in the basement.  At some point, though none of us are at all hungry, we decide to head back to the old town and meander around slowly while we look for a place to eat dinner.

The Balcon de Europa is decidedly colder and emptier than the last time we were there.  But that doesn't stop the kids from doing cartwheels on it and filling their hands with germs.

We eat a fantastic dinner at Casa Luis.  The kids eat their third ice cream cone of the day for dessert.  All except for Clio who tells us she is feeling a little shabby.  She says she's just tired but I think she may have gotten a chill from the pool so I buy her a fuzzy leopard print scarf for 6 euros and she rocks it on top of her hot pink fleece.  We drive "home," tuck the kids into bed, I read three pages of a terrible book that someone left behind, and fall asleep.

At 1AM Clio walks into our room and tells us she can't stop shivering.  We bring her into bed with us to warm her up.  At 2AM she wakes and complains that her stomach is hurting.  At 2AM and four seconds I run to the kitchenette, grab the trash can from underneath the sink, and stick it under her face.  At 2:01AM she throws up in it.  At 2:10AM she is asleep in our bed and I am wide awake for the next hour, in and out of sleep for the next six hours, up making coffee at 7:30 and napping again by 8:30.

At some point, after packing and taking one more dip in the pool, we all head back towards Shabby Looking Place with Jungle Gym for a breakfast.  I'm pretty sure there was one more stop at the ice cream parlor, and then we all hit the road.  Because some little girl had a gymnastics tournament to get to!

The girls' school offered them a few different extra-curricular activities when we first arrived.  Clio chose basketball and Willa chose gymnastics.  It took a few weeks but we finally heard from Willa that the gymnastics was maybe less like gymnastics and more like dance with a few cartwheels and somersaults.  But twice a week she would practice with her coach and the five other girls on her "team."  She was very excited for the competition and for the prospect of winning a medal.  Although she was realistic about it as well.  She told us numerous times that the choreography was not likely to win any awards.

We had to arrive a half hour early with Willa dressed and in "make-up," which was supposed to included red lipstick, blush, and glitter.  I was traumatized enough by having to go out and buy her red lipstick so I decided to plead ignorance on the glitter front.  But in case you're wondering what all that is supposed to look like...

After we dropped her off with her coach, Clio, Michael, and I found seats and waited for the show to begin.  It was a long one.  There was some excitement at the start for the cute little ones who started the show.  Each school had their own flashy (and fleshy) costume.  And each early routine, while we waiting for Willa's team, was fun to watch for the sport of wondering whether holding another girl's leg in the air or jumping over someone's foot constitutes a dance move or a gymnastics move or something else entirely.  When Little Miss Willa finally made her appearance, she was all smiles and confidence and she was clearly having a blast.

Willa's team did not win a medal and she was bummed for an hour or two but she cheered up after we took her out to dinner and bought her a steak.  We all collapsed into bed Sunday night and Monday I hung out with our washing machine, 18 loads of laundry, and NPR so I could catch up with Ted Cruz, Donald Trump and The Greatest Show on Earth.
 
Miss you guys!!!
xoxoxoxo
  

Basketball Diary

I wrote this post about a week ago, maybe more.  But then I got sick (for the third time) and while I was sick I picked up the one book in English that I've been able to find in Granada - The Goldfinch.  I am better now but I'm hooked on the book so I'm staying in bed a few days longer just to make sure I'm really all better.  You can blame Donna Tartt if I haven't returned your email yet.

Right, so, here's a little recap of Clio's first basketball game ever (played in a foreign country and in a foreign language).  

Two weeks ago was Clio's first basketball game.  She’s a good little recreational player, but has never played on a team before and she’s being coached in Spanish.  Michael and I highlight the ‘Have-Fun-Don’t-Worry-About-Winning’ component while Willa pipes in with “Yeah, but I hope you win!”  

On the morning of the "big game," twenty minutes before we had to leave the house, Clio realized she’d left her gym bag with her tennis shoes, sweatpants, and jacket on the school bus Friday afternoon.  She wailed.  I suppressed the urge to kill her and said “It’s ok, it’s going to be ok.  We’ll leave now and go buy you a pair of shoes.  Somewhere.  Somehow.”  As the four of us scrambled to leave 20 minutes early, I looked down at my own sneakers and wondered if they’d fit her.  Mercifully they did, she wiped her tears, we got in the car, and headed to the school.

 

Now, it's important to understand a little bit about the information that we get from the girls about their activities at school.  As best I can tell, the teachers give their instructions in Spanish and every now and then they have the time or the presence of mind to remember the two English-speaking kids who need a quick translation.  Hopefully the teacher speaks English.  So, our kids either understand it, understand pieces of it, or pretend to understand it.  They will usually, wisely, turn to their friends and ask for clarification but at this point, the information is again at risk.  Because it now relies on whether another 7-9 year old girl, whose second language is English, is both listening to the teacher in the first place and then has the English words available to her to translate correctly.  As you can see, the chances of accurate information coming home to us are slim to none.

With little to no information that morning, my best guess for the upcoming basketball game was that it would take place somewhere akin to my junior high school gymnasium with old wooden fold-out bleachers.  Willa could sit and color there.  I could use the bathroom at half time.  The score board would probably be the old-fashioned kind where the numbers flip.  Clio, it seems, had somewhat grander expectations because she asked me if I thought there was going to be an announcer.

 

When we pulled up to the school the mix of mis-information, dis-information, and non-information slowly played out.  A group of girls that Clio did not recognize were huddled together on the sidewalk.  They appeared to all of us to be 3-4 years older and 6-12 inches taller than Clio.  We reasoned, entirely in denial, that they must be here for a soccer game.  I stalled in getting out of the car because it was just slightly above freezing outside and there was a dense fog blocking most of the sun.  I thought it best to wait in the warm car until I saw a grown-up with a set of keys.  We asked Clio which door to stand near so we could quickly walk to the court inside and be that much closer to indoor heat.  But she said, "Oh, the basketball court is outside, over there."  She pointed past a big metal fence and across a dirt field to a playground blacktop with basketball hoops and no bleachers or sitting devices of any kind.  The now familiar urge to kill her came over me again.  I hoped against hope that she has mistranslated something.

We stood around in the cold waiting for someone to tell us what to do.  Her teammates started to arrive little by little.  Michael helped a very lost British couple in a car find the Alhambra.  Clio’s coach arrived at some point.  I made a mental note to adjust our punctuality towards tardiness.  Parents and kids and coaches stared to gradually and very casually organize themselves towards the court.  It was a bit too casual for my taste but laissez-faire is where the Spaniards excel and where I do not and this was my daily reminder of that fact.

Poor Clio had only a pair of shorts on her skinny little legs and I was afraid she was going to freeze to death but she insisted she was just fine with her little purple fleece jacket.  The other kids arrived with big socks pulled up to their knees or sweatpants over their basketball shorts.  Meanwhile I had on my winter coat, my scarf wrapped three times around my neck, and my hood pulled up over my wool hat.  Clio seemed completely preoccupied with how she was going to defend the very large girls of the other team to notice how cold she was.

As a group, we made our way over to the OUTDOOR!!! (did I mention?) basketball court.  We stopped to pick up a bench and I experienced a brief flicker of hope that there would be more of these collected and brought to the court.  But the bench was not for spectators, it was for the players.  We stood around for half an hour more while the kids warmed up, more players and parents showed up, the adults organized themselves, and the score keeper got out his pencil and paper.  

Clio played in the first and last quarters.  She did a great job defending, even when her team was on offense.  The parents and coaches screamed a lot of things in Spanish, the girls on both teams sang cheers over and over in Spanish, mostly to keep warm, I think.  The referee blew his whistle every eight seconds because the kids were fouling each other, or travelling, or double dribbling every time they moved.  And no one except the score-keeper ever knew what the score was.  The next ten years of my life flashed before my eyes.  (60 second video of the game is below).

Reader Discretion Advised

I am home today, finally feeling better (more on that later), but Michael is out of town, and I thought I would get a post off to you about our weekend.  It was quite full.  Clio had her first basketball game.  And we spent many, many (many) hours with new friends (as you do in Spain).  But the story of our weekend is going to have to wait one more day because now that I am back from my morning excursion to the market we have slightly more pressing things to discuss.

Last night I told the girls I was going to try to make the fish that they liked so much in Almunecar.  “The sweet fish?!?!?!” they asked.  It was a salt-crusted whole fish that they devoured and loved and they remember it as sweet, which is sweet.  But I’ve become pretty adept at setting low expectations for myself and those around me so I warned them that I would probably mess up tonight but get better at it with time.  I had no idea I could fail before I had even started.

Before hitting the square where the fish market lady is, I stopped by the little organic grocer and stumbled my way through the purchase of some bananas.  When the price of a purchase doesn’t appear on the screen, I am at the mercy of a cashier who will speak either exceptionally slowly or with endless repetition to buy me enough time to make the translation in my head.  Today was not my day. 

Long Haired Hippy Guy who owns the store recognizes me now and has figured out that I’m not just here for a week.  I think his tolerance for me has worn thin.  Today, after patiently-ish waiting for me to figure out what number he was saying when he gave me my total, he asked me if I was new to Spain, or something along those lines, as if the answer wasn’t painfully obvious.  I replied “Si.”  And then I threw in “Para seis meses.”  Surprisingly, after we had just spent five minutes trying to get me to understand “$2.75” in Spanish, he launches into some rapid fire statement with at least 50-70 words in it and, not surprisingly, I couldn’t pick out a single one.  My best guess, based solely on his inflection, tone, and hand movements, was that he was saying “Oh good, you’ll be here long enough to learn the language.  SURELY after six months you’ll be speaking Spanish and properly buying bananas.”

Well.  We’re all allowed to dream.

My next stop was Plaza Larga.  Veggie and fruit stalls set up today in the middle of the square and racks of clothes, too.  Lots of old people milling around and chatting and catching up with each other.  Super cute and quaint.  Picked up three apples, a huge bunch of carrots, parsley, and a huge bag of huge strawberries, all of which would have set me back $15 in NYC.  $5 here.  The woman who sold them to me seemed to be speaking more simply and slowly than Long Haired Hippy Guy and I was grateful.  Though there may have been some miscommunication/misunderstanding when I asked her for ten strawberries.  She grabbed handful after handful and I wondered if I had inadvertently asked for 10 kilos of strawberries.  “Esta bien!” I said, trying to get her to stop.  “Esta bien” is pretty much my go-to phrase.  I can make it work in almost any situation.  It probably also indicates I don’t exactly what I am saying but at least I’m trying.

Fish was next.  I was relieved to see that Fish Lady was open.  This is not always the case.  One cannot and should not plan their meals or day around the fish store being open.  That would be a really stupid thing to do.  I walked in and the first thing I noticed was the smell – fresh and delicious!  Not what you were expecting me to say, huh?!?!  I wish there was an app to capture scent.  Fish Lady, who is large, friendly, and handles fish like nobody’s business, was very busy today.  There were lots and lots of short, cute little old ladies stopping in to get their sardines and to gossip with Fish Lady.  Everyone seems to know everyone here which is lovely and quaint (there's that word again) and makes for lots and lots of chatter.  I was taking all this in, marveling at the old-worldliness of what was happening around me.  And then suddenly it was my turn and Fish Lady turned her attention to me and said something super-duper friendly.  I have no idea what she said but I wish more people behind counters would do the same thing.  I was so taken aback by her politeness that all I could manage was “Hola” while pointing to a fish.  She said something, the name of the fish I think, picked it up, and placed it in her scale.  Then she turned back to the old woman on my right, continued their conversation, and collected the old lady's coins. 

Maybe now is the moment to tell you that Fish Lady, while I am a little in love with her for being at once super-friendly and not at all disgusted by handling fish, was not wearing little plastic food gloves.  And I'm trying to figure out how much I care about this.  I wash all my food when I get it home anyway, but it was a little odd to see someone grab a handful of sardines with her bare hands, place them in a bag, and then receive coins with the same hands.  I didn't know whether to be worried about the sardines or the coins.  There are a few people in my life who would, at this moment, without hesitation, turn and leave.  I, however, have been conditioned to assume that things that are “best-practice” in America (like picking up after your dog, politely moving out of someone’s way, or wearing plastic gloves when you handle food) are all, somehow, representative of a country and a culture with its priorities in the wrong place.  So I stayed, waited for my fish, and made a mental note to rinse it well.

While Little Old Lady On My Right had paid for her fish, she also stayed because she had some gossip to finish apparently.  But Fish Lady, though super busy, is also super skilled - she can chat, gossip and handle fish simultaneously.  She grabbed my fish from the scale, plopped it on her counter, and pulled out a knife.  "Oh, that’s weird," I think.  "Why doesn’t she just leave the head on?"  But her knife worked quickly and before I could say anything, the head was off.  And just as I was thinking about how relieved I am that she took the head off so that I wouldn’t have to look at it tonight in my kitchen, she started to descale the fish.  "Shit," I think.  "I was supposed to say something so that she would keep the scales on.  I don’t think I can salt-cover the fish without the scales.  Well, maybe I can fudge it."  And just as I was thinking of a way to fudge it, she started slicing the fish for me.  "Damn it!!!  There goes my plan for salt-baking a whole fish.  What's my Plan B?"  And just as I am coming up with Plan B, Fish Lady pulls out a mallet and starts beating the shit out of the fish head. 

Um......

What.  Is.  Happening??

I want to look away but I can’t. 

Over and over again she is somewhat violently bashing in the fish head and I cannot comprehend the purpose of bashing in a fish head.  I want to back up because little fish bits are starting to fly, but there are too many old ladies behind me.  "Keep Calm and Don’t Vomit," I think.  "Surely this exercise is almost over."  She mercifully puts down the mallet and stops beating the fish’s head and I take a deep breath, grateful that the brutality is over.  But then Fish Lady…still chatting with her friend.....reaches her hand….INTO the head……and pulls out a handful of ohmygod…..that I do not even want to discuss.  And unfortunately for my senses, the entire episode played out in a painful slow motion.

“Oh my god.  Oh my god,” I pray.  “Please do not let this fish head be for me.”   

Fish Lady looks up at me and says "Like this?” 

“No!  No, no, no, no, no like this!  No at all like this!!  Really, NOTHING like THIS!!” 

But instead I said.  “Si."  And then I added "Pero, no cabeza por favor.”  Which I thought was a decent compromise. 

Suddenly, all the Little Old Ladies around me went quiet.  In fact, I'm pretty certain the entire Plaza Larga went quiet.  Then, just as suddenly, all the Little Old Ladies started speaking at once.  To me, to each other, probably to god, in a Spanish that suddenly I could understand perfectly.  “Que?!!?!  Why wouldn’t you want the head??  The head is the best part!!  You can’t just leave the head.  You have to take the head.  Don’t you even know what you can do with the head??  The head makes wonderful soup.  And broth.  It has healing powers.  You will live forever!  Ugh.  Stupid American.  You waste everything.  Your priorities are all in the wrong place.  You don’t take siestas, your stores stay open too long and for too many days, and you don’t even know that the fish head is the best part of the fish.  Plus you are too skinny.  Blech!!”

“Esta bien,” I say.  “La cabeza.” 

And with that, it’s all bagged up for me.  All the pieces plus a bashed head.  I take the bag from Fish Lady’s hands, keenly aware of the fish brains that now cover both.  I hand her my Euros.  I watch her take my Euros and give me change, keenly aware that they, too, are now covered in fish brains.  I walk home in a daze.  I nearly step in shit.  I think about how quaint and charming it all seemed just half an hour ago, walking into market to buy vegetables and fish.  But now I have fish brains in my wallet and a fish head in my bag and I'm going to have to either come up with a new word for this town or adjust my definition and understanding of the word "quaint."