Our Horses

We have two horses. One is brown and the other is gray. They graze in the field we can see from our balcony. They have a lot of friends that look like egrets to us. These are very close friends. They stand on the horses and eat bugs off them. Isn’t that nice of them? They concentrate on the gray horse, for some reason.

One day, an egret was standing on the ground in front of the brown horse and it was apparent they were having a conversation. They were very earnest in their discussion and we were sorry we were too far away to hear them so we made up the words.

Horse: “Hey there Sam, how’s it going?”
Bird: “I’m pretty good. I just filled up on bugs from Frank’s forehead.”
Horse: “So now I guess you’re going to say you’re too full to clean my forehead!”
Bird: “Right, but I can see Henry flying over and we can ask him to help you.”

A Happening Place

We live in such an exciting neighborhood! There is drama all around us. The buildings closest to us are too new to be inhabited as yet. We watch as realtors show their clients around. Robert’s computer is right in front of the window so he keeps me up-to-date on the goings and comings.

Recently he noted one particular man visiting frequently. We decided he was a hot prospect for a new neighbor. A few days later, three cars drove up and unloaded an extended family laughing, clapping and cheering. We said to ourselves “the family has come to see the new apartment”. They stood on the balconies. They held babies up to look out the windows. Everyone approved the selection.

Soon, a panel van arrived. A young man climbed up to the roof of the van and started heaving furniture up to the people waiting on the balcony. A quick and efficient method, surely, but only for the very young.

To the Rescue!!

We heard a dog crying. He sounded scared and lonely. We figured someone had left their dog in their apartment and it was unhappy. The crying persisted. And persisted. Robert stepped out to the balcony to see if he could determine which apartment it was.

Oh no! It was not our apartment house at all! It was the one being built beside us and Skippy (our roving surrogate pet) was on the fourth floor all alone. Earlier in the day, we had seen the night watchman and Skippy up there just enjoying the view and had smiled at the scene. Skippy must have fallen asleep and the man left without him. But how sad he sounded! Perched precariously on a precipice with no escape!

Robert went around the corner to see if he could get into the construction site. He enlisted the help of the watchman from the building next door. Together they got the gate open and Robert climbed the stairs. Finally, he spotted Skippy on the third floor and whistled. They descended the stairs together with Skippy crying anxiously all the way. At the bottom, though, Skippy realized the happy truth and, true to his name, skipped happily under the fence to freedom. Now the question is….will he ever come back to the scene of the crime?

Ahhhh, the Red Tape

Our shipment of household goods arrived in Spain but it is being held hostage at the dock because of paperwork! The shipping company said we needed to go to the Agencia Tributario in our town. The nice people at the Agencia said we needed to go to the National Police station in the next town for a form. At the Police Station, they said we needed to go back to the Tributario for a different form. At the Tributario, they made some calls and decided we needed to go to Malaga to the Customs office for yet another form.

So of course, we went to the Customs office. We got a little bit of a late start and that was a good thing because they didn’t even come to work until 10am. We had only a short wait until a lovely woman named Carmen came in to help us. We discussed the situation.

We were in Malaga. Our goods were in Algeciras (about a hundred miles away) but they needed to be delivered to our home in Velez Malaga. We talked about the size of the shipment. We talked about the value of the shipment. We discussed taxes and duty. She called in another person to discuss it. We talked about the normal amount of time goods sit on the dock and how they move from place to place by boat and by truck.

Finally, she called the shipping company that we are working with (that was 400 miles away, in Madrid) and discussed the whole thing again with them. Hurrah! A decision was made! She turned to her computer and pulled up a form to fill out. Oh oh………it was a totally blank screen. Now what? She called the shipping company again. She took our passport information. She entered our address and other details into her computer and said, essentially ok, now we’re done.

Ah, but I’m ahead of her here. While she was entering data, I was making a list of next steps. I showed her the list and she approved it. And then she talked some more and I went back to my list and added step 3A. Only time will tell if we’ll ever see our clothes again. We’re getting pretty sick of wearing the few things we brought to tide us over for a few weeks, since we’ve already been wearing them now for two months.

Update: Huzzah! Our stuff has finally been delivered. Wow, Americans sure have a lot of junk! Look for the upcoming blog entry whose working title is currently “What the He$$ Were we Thinking?!?

Cleanliness is Next to Spanishness

I know, after hearing that Spaniards do not clean up after their dogs, that you are going to think I’m nuts to title this BLOG entry thus. It is just that it seems to us that Spaniards are constantly cleaning their homes and their shops.

They mop the sidewalk outside their shops, for goodness sakes! They wash the outside of their homes. The clean every single little bar on their fancy iron work. They constantly wash their windows even if they have to climb precariously high, or hang out a window to do so.

The night watchman on the construction site lives in a modular building like they use for additional classrooms in the US. We watched him mop the inside and outside of the door to his container! He even swept the dirt.

So we’re destined to be forever friendless here because I will not let a Spanish housewife enter our home. I fear I have neglected to dust the entire house today. You may find some paper in a wastebasket. And then there is the matter of those pesky dust bunnies the size of a house cat that accumulate under the bed in the blink of an eye. I guess everyone needs a hobby but housework is not ours!

Edibles

We have discovered some wonderful “new” fruits here. At least, they are new to us. One very odd looking thing is called a Cherimoya. We asked the fruit seller to spell the name of it and then looked it up on the internet when we got home. The descriptions on the internet made us believe it would be the end-all of wonderful fruits. It was pretty good, but not the end of the world. We were glad to have looked it up on the internet though, because the seeds if crushed are poisonous.

What we are finding to be simply heavenly is a melon grown locally called Piel de Sapo. That is translated skin of a toad. That is a rather off-putting name, don’t you think? Robert, who is a bit more familiar with toads than I am, says that the peel really does look like frog skin. On the inside, it looks a lot like Honeydew melon. All I know is that when we serve it, we can hardly eat our meal fast enough to get to the melon for desert.

Use this link if you'd like to look at Robert's entire Tapas Page.

Is it Safe in Spain?

Well, here is one perspective: the construction sites near our house leave their table saws out all the time in plain view – even over the weekend. They have not been stolen or even tampered with in the month that we’ve been here.

On the other hand, the sidewalks are very narrow and uneven. You really have to watch your step to keep from falling and when the sidewalk is full of strollers (and there are a lot of them – many made for more than one baby) you often have to step off the sidewalk to get by.

On the other, other hand, they take their pedestrians very seriously. If you even get near a cross walk, the traffic will stop for you. That is a good thing since there is only one stop light that we have seen so far in this town and there are a LOT of pedestrians. We keep a wary eye out for tourists who don’t have the same driving attitude, though.

Oh, and the water is not only safe to drink, it is very tasty right out of the tap!