Getting Oriented?

Hello one and all!

Did you know that there is no tooth fairy here?  Instead they have a tooth mouse, Ratoncito Perez.  Makes a lot more sense to me.

This is the view I regularly wake up to, too bad about the crane...

I have been in Madrid for about two weeks now, and I am quite a bit more settled in.  I have a good idea of what my days look like and I'll give you the lowdown. I did this in Spanish Class yesterday, so I am basking in the ease of English.

One of the many places I can spend my morning.  

Weekdays I wake up, get ready, and take the kids to school at 8:30.  I drive them to school. In a manual car.  In the city.  This is an extremely daunting task for me as I am not very practiced in both driving manual, and driving with lots of traffic.  Nebraska was a bit different.  I am happily down to an average of two stalls a day, but when I began, oy.  I then take the metro to the city center, and read or explore until class at 10:30.  My classes are at the very center of everything, so there is a lot to discover.  I have about an hour of Spanish a day, then after I have some time to wander about, meet up with folks, go to a cafe, until I go back to pick up the boys at 1:30.  We have a two hour break for lunch, etc, then they go back to school for a couple of hours.  I help with their homework, and their English especially. 

Tintin is everywhere!

  Afterward, sometimes I go to the city and meet up with friends, or we play futbol (they are about 10x better than I)  I have the weekends off, and so far I have stayed in Madrid, where there is surely enough to entertain someone for a lifetime, but in the future I hope to travel around Spain.  Madrid is smack dab in the center of Spain,  they planned it that way.  Convenient!

Now let me indulge in telling you about one of the greatest things that the Spanish have contributed to human race.  They are called Chocolate con Churros.  It is yummy fried sweet stuff that you DIP IN thick hot chocolate.  Holy cow. Can it get any better than this?  Chocolate and fried stuff?  Wow.  This is typically a breakfast  treat here, and traditionally they especially eat it on the morning after new years.  Wow. Its amazing and delicious. My mouth waters just thinking about it. The most famous place here to eat chocolate con churros is the San Gines Chocolaterie.  Its only open at night, which will tell you something about the Madrid nightlife, but that's a whole other story.   

Not to be outdone by the fashionable Nebraska, just a couple of streets away we have Iowa!

Good Golly, I'm living in Spain.

The road goes ever on and on...

Well!  This is my blog.  About living in Madrid as an Au Pair.  I'll just go at it then.

My journey started at 4 in the morning at a somewhat sketchy hotel in Tacoma.  I had one and a half days of airplane travel ahead of me.  For some crazy reason, I thought it would be cheaper to fly to London first and then Madrid, in the end it was about the same, though I had 10 more hours of travel.  I got through my three flights and hours and hours of waiting in the airport without a hitch.  Thank god for those duty-free stores with loads of perfume and makeup for me to play with.  I arrived in Madrid at 10:30 the next evening, exhausted and somewhat bedraggled, for in two of my three flights I was stuck on the window side of a old, large, and grumpy couple.   

Carmen (the mother) and the two kids I am to take care of, Jose(10) and Felipe(12), were there to welcome me.  The family is lovely, the father, Felipe, is a surgeon, and Carmen is a family physician.  I'm set for medical emergencies.  They live in a large house in the north part of central Madrid, and the house has all marble floors.  Woah.  All marble floors.  It floored me.  

I have my own mini-suite, complete with bathroom.  And marble floors.  These are especially important because marble is 11 degrees F at room temperature.  The rumors are true.  Its hot here.  Siesta is a survival skill.  I made the mistake of walking to the park at about 3:30 yesterday, and it was a ghost town.  For good reason, I did not stay 2 minutes it was so hot. 

I haven't started Spanish classes yet, and the boys haven't started school, so things are quite relaxed until Tuesday.  I am well settled in, and have had  a chance to explore the city a little, this morning we went to the Sunday Market at El Rastro. Its huge and glorious, I didn't get pickpocketed.  It was at this market where I tried something that I never thought I would.  Caracoles.  Snails.  Oh boy.  Carmen assured me this was the best restaraunt to eat them, and that they were "typical espanish".  Well, I did it.  I at 4 snails.  Suprisingly, they tasted good, but I couldn't quite get past the idea.  I'll have to work on that.  

  Everyone thought I was going to Madrid. Nope!  Living in good 'ol Nebraska.