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!

The sunsets are gorgeous here!

our household goods finally arrived! 

She thinks she can ride a bike like the big kids :) 

They love playing in the water table in our courtyard :)

everything all set up in the main room :)

she loves sitting on the stairs :)

she thinks she can ride the scooter too! she is growing up way too fast :( 

Catching up in Spain!

(This was written at the end of April so on top of the apology below this is another apology for taking so long to post again :) )

I apologize for waiting so long between posts after promising to do good here in Spain…it’s been out of my control though because we went from a hotel with spotty wifi, to a temporary house with no internet, and finally moved into our house, picked a provider, signed up, and then discovered that the technicians for the company were on strike and wouldn’t be able to come out to install until the strike was over…which was pretty sucky! So that whole time my sole internet connection was the data on my phone, which I used up a LOT, let me tell ya! Goes by so fast on the phone.  But anyway! I’m back and starting with some posts I wrote in the meantime so I wouldn’t get backed up!

So since my last post...like I just said, we went from the hotel to a temporary house (I think we stayed there almost two weeks? I honestly can’t remember now!). We had been looking at houses in different towns outside base for a house and nothing topped the initial one I found and liked online before we came so we got the contract going on that but the house wasn’t going to be ready to move in until April 14^th so that’s why we decided to go to a temp house. No way was I gonna stay in a hotel for two more weeks with those kiddos! It was way too crazy. The temp house was a nice go between though, I could separate the kids for naps and have space at night to not go to bed when they did and there was a yard and parks nearby. That two weeks went by quick thankfully!

One big thing that happened in those two weeks is that we found a car to buy (since we’re living 20 minutes from base it was kind of a must to have two here)! It’s been so nice because it has an optional third row so we’ve had the kiddos separated for the first time! SO NICE! The only downside is it’s an automatic and I don’t know how to drive it  I’ve practiced a couple times here and there since we got it but not enough to drive it on my own. I’m gonna have to buck up and just do it though cuz driving the kids in one row in the Subaru is gonna be hard to go back to!

Since I was stuck in the temp house with the kiddos all day with nothing but what we packed on the plane, we’ve been going around to the close surrounding areas getting to know places and see what awesome stuff Spain has after Mark got off work. It’s been super fun so far and I looove everything we’ve seen! Spain is so cool! I love how much amazing stuff there is to see within 25 minutes of base! We’ve done more here in the past month than we did in the whole three years in NC! 

So I’ll just go through each town we’ve been to and share what we’ve seen there so far. We really have been doing a lot, in part to getting out of the house, and second because my niece Santana asked us to have Flat Stanley visit (which he visited us last year for Abrahm in NC but that was right around the time Elizabeth was born so we really didn’t do too much with him). This year is WAY different though and I think they’ll have to narrow down all the pics we’ve taken with him because there is a LOT! He’s been having a lot of fun with us in Spain 

First up is Rota, which I touched on a bit in the last post with the field trip for that class. We did go back to some of that same area with the kids and FS (Flat Stanley from here on out). We went to the beach in Rota for a little bit one day, which was GORGEOUS! Nicest beach I’ve ever been too! They win awards for it too I’ve heard and not hard to see why! We showed the kids the castle and church right next door to it, which it was Easter week when we went, which is pretty big here. They have processionals (parades) every day of the week with these intricate, gorgeous floats with statues of their Saints and of Christ. It’s pretty cool how much detail and care they put into it but man was it busy!!! We barely got a glimpse of the processional when we were there.

 Another town we went to was Cadiz, which is the longest continuously inhabited town in the entire world which is pretty cool! We kinda went with no knowledge of what to do there but someone had told me that there were these routes around the town (four in total, each color had lines on sidewalks to follow so I figured as long as we followed one of those we wouldn’t get too lost and we’d see some of the important stuff ) We didn’t see everything there cuz it’s pretty big for a little area but it was really fun! We did a LOT of walking (we walk around a lot here…which is good because we eat yummy treats ALL the time!) so the kids got tired of that but it was still fun. We took a ferry to and from there so that was a fun part for the kids though. But anyway, we wandered around the colored paths and took lots of pics! We didn’t know what most of the monuments were since it was all in Spanish but it was still cool 

My favorite parts of that walk were seeing all the amazing architecture around the city and seeing these amazingly HUGE trees! There were two of them near each other and man they were massive! SO cool! Cadiz was really gorgeous and definitely a spot we are gonna go back to some time! I’ve been making a list of awesome places to do for sessions too and can’t wait to start going with my photography here. It’s seriously so amazing and beautiful! I really hope some of you come visit!!!!

After we officially chose our house we decided to spend a weekend exploring the area of the town we’re living in, which is called Sanlucar de Barrameda. Sanlucar is bigger than Rota and we haven’t seen all of it yet but we’ve got a few familiar spots we’ve been to multiple times now and I really like it! We live on the outskirts of it, which is nice, and about three blocks from the beach, which is AWESOME! But more on that when I talk about the house . The first day out in Sanlucar we went to this area where it’s all “walking streets” and shops and restaurants. I think most towns here have a walking street/shop area, which is super fun to walk around in. The shops are fun and interesting, there’s always bakeries and treats everywhere (SO good but SO bad!), and it’s usually in the city center so the buildings and roads are always really cool to look at.

So we were walking along the area like that in Sanlucar (we’ve been back a few times, it’s super cute!). One thing Evelyn has been asking to do since we told her about it is eat snails…I know crazy right?? She totally braved up and at the restaurant we ate at they had snails! (which was next to this open plaza area and was so gorgeous! The kids played next to us while we ate cuz there was this guy with bubbles for the kids to play with…such a great distraction for them   ) Mark did it first, which he wasn’t too excited about but she got nervous so he did it, he didn’t quite like it but he said it wasn’t horrible. So Evelyn tried it for a second, chewed it and made some interesting faces and spit it out. It was disgusting to me but it was pretty funny to watch them eat it!

Next to this area was one of their main markets I guess…it was full of vendors with fish, butchers, fruits, veggies…pretty interesting to walk around in but also super gross and smelly! There’s fresh fish everywhere here, which is great if you like it but not so great if you don’t! (Although I don’t mind tuna and man do they have GOOD tuna here! They put it on the salads at restaurants and it is SO good!).

They have a lot of cute shops in these areas though, my favorite being the ones for little kids. People in Spain really DOLL their kids up! All the babies and toddlers have on these adorable outfits with tights and shoes and little cardigans and cute hats/bows. Then they have these amazing, super cute strollers that make mine look like ghetto sadness. They are SUPER expensive though!!!! But I guess they tend to have their kids a little later in life and don’t have as many here so they spend LOTS of money on them. That’s what I’ve heard anyway and by the price tags at these stores I can see it easily! I’m totally getting my girls matching outfits though for family pics or something though!

 We also went by the Sanlucar Castle which is pretty cool!

The latest town we’ve gone to is right next to us and is called Chipiona. It’s a cute little town and where Evelyn is going to school! She’s super excited to go to Spanish school and before we even came here was talking about learning Spanish. So that’s the goal there! We’ve only gone to Chipiona one day but we walked around the walking street there, ate some doner kebabs and homemade potato chips, and walked around the beach boardwalk type area that they have. It was SO pretty over there! It’s one of the areas I’m excited to go take pictures at.  It even has a working lighthouse! It’s so pretty!

There are a couple other towns nearby that we’ve gone to too but haven’t done as much as these towns mentioned already. Puerto de Santa Maria is a big town real close to base and is where a lot of the people we know live. It’s also where our church building is. We’ve gone there to go to some stores (we bought our feria dresses in Puerto) and we bought our car there too  The other town we’ve gone to is Jerez de la Frontera. We’ve gone there quite a bit but mainly because it has the biggest shopping center, including an Ikea  We’ve gone there quite a few times to get things for the house and sometimes just to go somewhere and walk around. The kids like walking around the upstairs area that’s all set up and sometimes we put them in the kids area downstairs to play while we walk around.