el primer día

Collin woke up at 9 am. I woke up at 11 am along with Ian and Aidan. Emma had to be woken up. By the time we all got dressed and ate breakfast it was noon. We walked along the river and saw a water snake. The kids rode their heelys along the bike path. We went to the grocery store, saw some awesome artistic graffiti and found the route to the kids' school. According to our pedometer, we walked 9, 138 steps today. In the grocery store everyone was interested in different stuff:

Collin: bare essentials

Tara: CHEESE

Ian: MEAT and CHEESE

Emma: napolitanas (chocolate croissants) 

Aidan: FANTA

Ian took a bad spill on his heelys while we were out and so we stopped at a Farmacia and paid 10 euros=about $17 for Bandaids and ointment. Collin and I ate a bonito (fancy tuna), cucumber and tomato salad with balsamic vinegar and salt as well as some Spanish bread. The bread here is hard and crunchy on the outside and soft in the middle--full of mouth cutting goodness.

Here is Emma's Adventures in Spain Journal entry for today (reprinted with her permission):

"So far, I have not discovered anything 'cool' yet. It's so hot here that I am getting dehydrated almost every minute of the day. I can't translate what other people are saying yet but I'm sure I'll understand soon." 

Aidan took the picture of Ian with the graffiti as well as the one of the water snake with his new (our old) digital camera. 

Ian's favorite things today were using his heelys inside the apartment (which has since been banned) and watching Sonic the Hedgehog in Spanish.

It is surprisingly hard to hang laundry on a line. We are on the fourth floor and I managed to drop one of Collin's socks down to the 1st floor which is also the roof of the ground floor (here the first floor is zero and the second floor is the first floor). I tried knocking on that apartment door to ask if they could get my sock for me, finding the porter (he wasn't in his office because it was the middle of siesta) and climbing a tree in my dress . . . . and was totally unsuccessful. About an hour later the porter returned and Collin asked him to help us get the sock. He had to get a ladder and climb on the roof to get it. Next time I am just going to ask Collin to give me a boost.

There are orange trees growing along many of the streets and our courtyard in front of the apartment building has a tree that grows tiny red plums. The kids and I picked and ate a bunch.

One out of seven lost bags arrived today so Collin has all his clothes. LUCKY! The rest of us are forced to wear our same clothes we have been wearing since we left home. I wash them while we sit around in our underwear and then when they are dryish we put them on and wash our underwear and dry it in front of a fan. I never thought I'd get so much wear out of my lime green dress.

It is 3 am and our kids are doing their Lewisburg schoolwork for next year. I guess jet lag can be productive.