The Erwins: Settling down in Spain!

This post is just kind of a general info/my impression of Spain so far and an intro to our house (which I LOVE!)! I’ve been writing down a few things here and there that I wanted to put in here so I wouldn’t forget. So this will be kind of random and wherever my thoughts go and in between. 

Ok so when we first got here one of the things we noticed was that there are cats everywhere here, all strays too. It’s kind of becoming a problem I guess. But someone said that people will have pets and then decide not to bring them back to the states or can’t bring them back so they just leave them. And now they’ve multiplied and they’re everywhere. It’s kinda weird. Second pet/animal related thing is that everyone seems to have dogs and they take them everywhere! Walking along the walking streets and doing shopping- they have their dogs, at the beach-they have their dogs…and they don’t pick up after them very much either so that’s pretty unpleasant…definitely gotta watch where you walk on the sidewalks here! Third animal thing is there are also horses everywhere here! There are about 6 within walking distance of our house and the kids love to look for them. Sanlucar has a famous horse race on the beach in August which is pretty cool. And there are horse schools all around and trails and it’s just pretty big here! Kinda cool, better than the cat thing anyway 

Next…let’s see…the towns are definitely different here…I’m kinda used to the idea of the big city area and then suburbs and towns spreading out from it. Which they do have the city center here too of course but no suburbs really. It’s the town and then farmland/nothing. Then a town and then farmland again. I guess what I mean is it’s more distinctive between town and country (I guess more similar to small country towns in Missouri but it’s been a long time since I’ve been around that!). The city centers usually have the churches/oldest parts of town, a castle if they have one, the walking streets, restaurants, markets, etc. The streets here are SUPER narrow and tiny and there are TONS of one ways so it’s super confusing to get places sometimes because of the restrictions on which ways you can go. The city centers are usually the worst with the narrowest too. It’s pretty crazy how tiny the streets are…so with that the cars are definitely way different than America…everything is small here and if you do see a big car it’s 99.9% for sure gonna be an American’s  haha!

Another thing with the streets is that there are roundabouts EVERYWHERE! Which I knew Europe was more prone to the roundabout but man they are seriously everywhere. It’s kinda nice though…flow of traffic is pretty good…we can drive all the way to Mark’s work on base and only have one stop sign the entire 20-25 min drive. The only time I don’t like them is when there’s two or more right back to back…serious sense of motion sickness on that one!

The lifestyle here is obviously different too, which we knew coming in, but I’ll still mention it. So here’s a Spanish day/time frame. They wake up later and don’t really do breakfast like we do, more of just coffee and something small. Then they work til lunch, which is later around 2:00. And pretty much everyone knows Spanish people have their siesta in the middle of the day, which is after lunch.

Then they go back to work after that and stay up late and eat dinner late and do it all over! So the crazy thing here, and slightly annoying, is that everything pretty much closes between 3:00 and 5:00…if you’re lucky…most places don’t open back up til 6 or 7. Restaurants don’t open til 7 so it’s hard to find somewhere that is open before that. Rota has gotten used to having lots of Americans around so I’ve heard they have more restaurants that are open a little earlier. But the Spanish are all pretty la-di-da about time…it’s not unusual to have an appointment and they don’t show up for an hour. There are signs on some stores (jokingly but it’s got a little truth behind it) that say “we are open when we get here and we close when we leave”. Then in the summer they close even earlier in the day..well the little shops mainly at least. It's kinda annoying sometimes :)

Now onto our house! I absolutely love it. We moved in mid-April and had some temporary furniture at first along with the arrival of our express shipment of household items. Then after a couple weeks we got our main shipment and had a long fun time of unpacking and settling in! There are still a couple of spots in the house that aren't finished but overall we are settled and happy! There are 7 "bedrooms" but one is being used as an office/craft room, and another is being used as my Photography Office/Studio, then each of the kids has their own room, we have our room of course, and a dedicated guest room! It's pretty awesome :) The whole house goes around a courtyard in the middle, which has been pretty great so far. I've loved using it for a play area for the kids when they want to be outside but I want them more contained and somewhere easy to watch ;)

Our yard is huge though and the kids have made good use of it...there's a good sized front yard with grass, which we don't really play in or anything but it's nice to have a barrier from the road and other houses. Then we have a patio type area on the side of the house with some trees, a sitting area with a bbq pit type thing (we use it for a bbq area anyway, it's awesome!), and next to this area is a tennis court area...it's kinda run down but we do have a net and it's a great place for the kids to run around, play ball, and ride their bikes. A lot of houses here don't have much of a yard or room to ride bikes so the yard was a huge bonus and reason to get the house. Along with all that there is a back yard area with a hedged bbq area...it's pretty cool too and one of our favorite spots although we haven't quite used it yet...it's more buggy than the other area and less open to the main yard so harder to watch the kids while we are bbqing. We'll probably use it more in the fall. There's a bunch of fruit trees on the property though which is really cool- orange trees (not edible though- they're bitter), a lime tree, a lemon tree, some type of plum bush, I think a pear tree, and some other type of fruit...maybe a loquat or something weird? They were good though :)

some of the pottery our landlord left in the house :)

this is another piece the landlord left in the house...a handpainted tiled kitchen table...I love it!

and I love my stairs :)

The main bedrooms have tiles outside each door...kind of like a room marker. they're so cute!

we have a ton of rose bushes too!

The front of our house!

they're so happy to be done moving around!

two blocks away is this beach access! it's so pretty!

They've had fun going to the beach :)

the view from the balcony upstairs :)

upstairs room- which is my office! :)

I found these two chairs at Ikea and I LOVE them!

I love my office :)

oh I forgot to mention here that Lizzie finally started walking while we were in temporary housing! she took a few steps there anyway- and then a couple weeks later in our house she fully started walking. She was so proud of herself!