Update on Claire, and Exporing the Spanish Coast.

Update on Claire

Here is a photo of Claire from a few weeks ago. She was on a trip with other American Field Service students in Italy. She says that she has really enjoyed meeting other teenagers from around the world who, like her, are crazy enough to land themselves in a foreign home with a language they don't know. They all speak English as well as their own language, and while some knew more Italian than Claire (it would have been hard not to) most had little knowledge of Italian.

Claire said that, as far as she can make out, she is, at 15, easily the youngest AFS student in Italy. Most people assume that she is 17 or 18. I suspect that she just smiles that enigmatic smile of hers and lets them think what they like.

Claire also says that her Italian is improving. She is starting to have real conversations. So now her teachers are actually expecting her to produce work. Two months into learning Italian she is now writing essays.

Greetings from the north coast of Spain.

                                                             

Holidays make short work of school days in Spain in November and December. Between the two months, there is just one week without a holiday.

All Saints Day is a national holiday in Spain, and it happened to coincided with a holiday  of our cousins, Michelle, Remy and their boys, Gael and Dima, from France. So, our well experienced travel agent, which would be Matt, looked at places on the internet and arranged for us all to meet at a posado, that is an inn, near Santander.

Then, about 10 days before the trip, Oracle (not Delphic, not all knowing, but definitely all powerful) asked (kind of the way I “ask” the girls to do their chores) him to go on a business trip to South Africa. This trip followed closely on the heels of a trip to Dubai and London. Which was not long after a trip to Germany, and not long before a trip to Russia. So, Matt is pretty much Mr. Traveling Businessman.

Perhaps wanting to make up for not being with us, he got us first class tickets on the train

The girls painted pictures as I read Harry Potter, and the landscape zipped by at 150 to 200  miles an hour

When Remy asked me what kind of train we had been on, I was wishing Matt was there. He would have known that it was the high speed AVE, imported from France.

Adele, Iris and I agreed that this was quite likely the most comfortable and pleasant 4.5 hour journey we have taken. And thank goodness I didn’t drive, because I thought that Santander was on the Mediterranean coast, just south of the French boarder! We would have been a few hundred east of the Posado.

                                            You will find Santander on the coast, exactly due north of Madrid.

At first, when we saw the city:

And an abandoned developement by the posada (these are endemic in Spain),



and we realized that this part of Spain, called Cantabria, has the least sun and the most rain

:





we were thinking that we should have researched this a bit more. However, the coast is beautiful, it was great to be on beaches, and we had a wonderful time with our cousins.



Iris with Dima, Adele, and Gael holding up a "rock"

Me with my cousin, Michelle

Michelle's husband, Remy







On the coast east of Santander

Concord, Massachusetts and New England are never far from Iris and Adele's minds.

Our favorite beach was the stormiest.

Iris and Remy

The tide was coming in fast.

We could see a hermitage built into the cliff and, despite an approaching storm, Remy, the girls and I, decided to make our way out to it.

View from the Hermitage.

On Saturday, when it was particularly rainy, we retreated to a cave: the ancient caves with paintings in Altimira.

They are amazing. The caves we went into are reproductions, but quite good, and thank goodness for them, because some of the originals could only be approached by crawling through long narrow tunnels. And the people who made the paintings did so with torches.

We also went to a lovely medival village called Santillana del Mar.

We stopped and had a not very authentically medieval snack:

Remy and Gael watched a football match on the television.

And here is my very decorative, my girls would say horrifying, dinner at a Spanish reastaurant:

It was delicious. The Spanish LOVE to eat fish.

                                     Now on our way home. The girls discovered the Club Car.

That is it for my account of Santander. If you have any questions or comments, as always, leave a comment here or send me an email: margotkimball@gmail.com .

NEXT: Stay tuned for our visiting blogger. Matt will give an account of his time in South Africa:

View of Capetown from the top of a Gondola ride.

Dinner Party Entertainment and Halloween: North American Exports

We threw our first dinner party in Spain a couple of weeks ago.

Here I am with Victoria and Javier who we met at the Aparthotel during our first month here. They are from Madrid, but only moved back recently after 8 years living in New Cannan Conneticut and San Paolo. Not being used to city life, Matt and I did not realize that the other guests were circling the block for 20 minutes looking for places to park.    

Sandra showing off her flan. The national dessert of Spain.

This is Sandra. (Not at our house now, I did not get a pic of her there) She and Stefano and their two daughters were the first people here to befriend us. Sandra is from Mexico. Stefano is from Switzerland and they met in London where they had both gone to learn English. Their children have grown up in the States as well as Belgium and now Spain, and they speak English, Spanish and German. Their history is not unusual at the American School.

Here are Adele and Iris at their house in September, with their daughters and a couple of other girls.

Also at our party were Yoshiko and her husband Hiro. I met Yoshiko in the cooking class that Sandra has organized.  Hiro works for the Japanese government to facilitate cultural exchange with Spain.

 The kids ate first so that we could wash our modest supply of glasses, utensils and so forth.

Coming from the suburban culture of Concord, where finished basements, large yards, and vast quantities of games and toys seem ubiquitous, I had worried about what the kids would find to do in our small and sparsely attired apartment. Turns out that 3 varieties of ice cream is sufficient to entertain 6 girls in a kitchen. And “Apples to Apples”

Followed by a Disney Game that you play on the TV set was enough for everyone for after dinner entertainment.

We played the adults vs the children.

 

Each team had to be the first to identify the Disney Character or spot the Mickey Mouse Ears.

                                           The adults were as into this as the children,

Kids and adults of all nationalities played this game with enthusiasm and expertise. Matt and I were probably the least well versed. We also seemed to be the only ones who felt a sense of resentment and distrust toward the Disney Corporation for their game that seems so well designed to reinforce people’s knowledge and attachment to Disney characters.

Strange to consider that Mickey, who Walt Disney based on his pet mouse, Mortimer (his wife pursuaded him to change the name for the cartoon), nearly 85 years later has become one of the world's most familiar icons.

I commented on this to Yoshiko who said that in Japan, Disney movies and characters are so well established, so familiar, that people don’t think of them as being from the United States or anywhere in particular. People think of them as a part of their own culture. We wondered if perhaps Hello Kitty

and Manga novels and films

 have become absorbed into other cultures in the same way. Are people aware that they are Japanese exports?

And speaking of exports:

Halloween at the American School of Madrid.

What do Americans abroad miss most?  Hamburgers, peanut butter and Halloween would all be strong contenders. Peanut butter is not often embraced by those who did not grow up with it, but hamburgers and North American style Halloween inspire many. At ASM, which is just 1/3 Americans, the Halloween Carnival is celebrated with great enthusiasm and this year about 1,400 hamburgers were sold.

Here is Matt, doing his community service at the grill. Most of his hour long shift he was obscured by smoke.

I do believe I had the better job, or jobs.

My first contribution was a life size witch that I painted in my “studio”, that is the space between the red couch and the wall in the living room,

My second contribution was to do face painting:

I have to give the headmaster, Bill O'hale, credit for coming as a witch, and having me paint his face.

Iris’s teacher, Ms. Law, opted for the day's favorite, a demure jack-0-lantern.

 This activity brought me back to many years of face painting at the Thoreau School Cake Walk, as well as assisting Mr. Lemaire with make-up for his annual production of “Monster Madness”.

Adele helped out

Iris with her friend, Caroline.

 

Adele with friends



In the gym

I don’t think I have realy managed to capture this event in my photos. If I had seen this carnival depicted in a Hollywood movie I would have thought it was  unrealistic, overdone but definitely entertaining.