Homework Sucks

This year all four of us are taking Spanish lessons. Jacob and Lily have classes at school; Mike and I are taking adult classes. Mike and I believe that this year is an opportunity for us all to learn, expand our horizons, develop an international perspective blah, blah, righteous blah, blah.

My work...waiting to be done.

It's all good except that I suck at homework.

Like many children, Jacob and Lily started to receive homework very early in their academic careers. Each afternoon they would come home from school and I would hover and nag them to have good study habits...do your work before you play, don't have distractions, stay organized, don't procrastinate. As the children received more difficult homework we encouraged them to go the extra mile, have somebody review their work, and never turn anything in late.

Lily doing Spanish homework.

For the first time since Jacob and Lily started school, I now have homework. After years of coaching the children you would think that I would be responsible, efficient and earnest in completing my deberes (homework in Spanish). Turns out that the maxim, "those who can't do, teach" fits me to a T  (apologies if I just offended all the great teachers I know!!).

I suck at homework. I procrastinate, do the minimum, am sloppy and a couple of times have done the wrong assignment. When I first started doing homework back in September the procrastination and mediocrity immediately felt familiar. It was like discovering an old ugly sweatshirt and finding that it still fit and was still unflattering. Even as I write this I have homework to do and yet I am procrastinating by blogging.

Getting it done!

Jacob and Lily however come home from school, sit down at our dining room table and get to it. Until I had homework hanging over my head I didn't realize what a good job they were doing. Watching them dig in is rather inspiring. They have started to say to me, "Mom, have you done your homework?" Often the answer is "No," and then they mock me (which I deserve).

As the weeks pass I am improving, being more responsible about my homework and of course learning more Spanish. I am slowly regaining the moral high ground and this is of course far more important than learning dumb old Spanish!! Hmmpffff.

Why? Whhy? Whhhhy?

After a day of traveling

Traveling with children is not for the faint of heart. It involves planning, schlepping, whining, sweating, sleep deprivation, yelling and an unrelenting outflow of money. Yet, we love it and keep going back for more.

Why????????

Are we sadists? Maybe. But, I think it is more likely that we are optimists and cultivators of selective memory.

Here's how it goes for our family....

Pooped

We get a notion for a trip and I start planning. We have a couple of tiffs as we chose transportation, hotels, and activities. I feel resentful that I have to be our family trip planner...oh woe is me (ok, I understand that this is not a sympathetic position!!). Soon we find ourselves venturing to REI to buy a picnic knife and compact first aid kit. We get excited for our adventure and embrace the fantasy that our experience will mirror the sunny faces we see on Facebook and in travel magazines.

Exploded yogurt

And then we launch. The journey to our destination usually involves overpriced, crappy food, a spilled beverages, an argument either with each other or an airline about who is sitting where, and fairly regularly some vomit. Soon we are in our destination. We are tired, we are hungry and we are discombobulated.

The drama of locomotion quickly ends and settle into our trip. There are highs and lows. We enjoy flaky croissants for breakfast and beautiful afternoons on soft sand beaches but more often than not sweaty, grumpy hours plodding through "important" historical sites. Fairly regularly I fantasize about abandoning my children. Every traveling family I have ever spoken to experiences the lows. Even when it is great, it is hard.

So why do we keep doing it? For two reasons:

First, we do it because even though there are hard parts, there are even more awesome ones. Swimming with schools of fish, the vista from a turret, seeing something up-close you have only seen in books, realizing your child loves calamari, enjoying a sunset cocktail with your hubby while your kids watch Sponge Bob  in a hotel room....

Muddy fun

Equally important however, is that my memory of our travel experiences is totally selective. In my memory a tantrum becomes a humorous story, the lost child an anecdote of new found independence, the emergency room visit an opportunity for cultural reflection and of course vomiting on your sibling is always funny in the retelling. I forget the pain and look back happily on the family memories we have created.

Giggles in Valencia

We are not the only suffers of this selective memory. When our friends tell of their grand adventures it is a pollyanna version. We could be liars but I think that we honestly all forget the cruddy parts and focus on the best ones. Our photos probably help since we take pictures of the best parts and rarely pull out our cameras when our child is proving a urine sample in a remote emergency room.

Just floating around

David Hockney recently said, "Happiness seems to be a retrospective pleasure." This is especially true about traveling with children. In the moment every trip has its highs and lows but as time passes and the edges of our recollection are softened an adventure is refined and distilled into something purely wonderful.

And when we get to the point of wonderful we start the cycle all over again.

Size Does Matter and Other Life Lessons

Living in Barcelona has led to a few poor decisions. Nothing has been very major but each time we make a mistake we chalk it up as a "lesson learned."  We are getting better and hopefully  learning our mistakes. Here are a few things we have learned....

Lesson One - Size Does Matter
Many things are smaller here than in the US. Predictably, cars, washing machines and people. Some things I
did not predict. When doing immigration paperwork we were turned away because our passport photos (from Kinkos) were too big. Really? I thought they only came in one size. Wrong! When traveling within Europe our cute matching set of REI roller bags did not
meet the European size standards. Arrgghhh...four smaller suitcases later we are rolling again. Living here means challenging our assumption about everything including size.

Lesson Two – Function matters

When we arrived we needed to stock our kitchen completely with dishes, pots, glasses and a few pieces of key kitchen electronics. One thing we felt we needed was a toaster. Since we are only here for a year we bought the cheapest toaster without really thinking through our usage. While the toaster worked perfectly for what it been designed, normal flat bread, we only toast baguette. So, back to the store we went for toaster number two  with little baskets for skinny or wide bread.

Lesson Three– Not all clocks tell time and always eat hot a churro

When school started we found that we were in need of alarm clocks for our bedrooms.  We went to the local flea market hoping for a bargain. After discussing the various features with the sales person at the electronic stall we bought three for 5 Euros each. Sadly only one of them actually kept the time. I guess the joke was on us because while we were asking about all of the features we forgot to ask about the accuracy of the time keeping. The good news was that there was a chucharria (stall selling crisp fried foods like churros, potato chips, and donuts) at the market so the journey may still have been worth it.

Lesson Four – Some days we want to suck

The box is all I have left!

This week I will be buying our third vacuum. Third you ask? WTF? The first was in our apartment when we arrived. It looked good but the socket at the end was broken. I went to the hardware store and bought the piece to fix it. Mike fixed it but when we plugged it in, we smelled smoke. The second one we bought second hand. We were very optimistic. Mike washed the filters and we were good to go. We decided to store it in a vestibule attached to our apartment that is accessed by a locked door or service elevator. Poof, it is gone. We think that our portero  (doorman) accidentally threw it out….or it was stolen. Regardless, I now need to buy #3.

Lesson Five– Choosing to live with my decision…for now.

In the US I have a Nespresso that makes delicious coffee. I love the machine so much that we brought it to Spain. What I hadn’t counted on was that it would need a big ass converter since it has such a high wattage. The converter I need weighs over 20lbs and costs about $50. So, I bought a….yes, you guessed it….a cheap coffee maker. Guess what? I hate the new machine and really want a Nespresso. I keep visiting the Nespresso machines at our local department store.  I am conflicted. Yes, I can afford it but is it worth it. I have decided to live with my poor choice...for now.


Lesson Six - Cut myself some slack
I started writing this post a few weeks ago. Since then I bought a Nespresso maker (see lesson six). I am now much happier and seem to be making fewer mistakes. Maybe the real lesson was to relax, cut myself some slack and drink a good cup of coffee in the morning.

Paella - A love story

Mike and I recently celebrated our anniversary. Typically we mark
the occasion with small gifts and dinner out. This year was different. On my constant quest to “shake things up”, I enrolled us in a day-long Spanish cooking class. Mike was game and even seem pleased by the idea.

The class was targeted at English speaking tourists, which felt shameful since it was back tracking my quest for an “authentic” Spanish experience but the TripAdvisor reviews were good enough for me to get over it.

Barnacles

The class started with a tour of the main marketplace in Barcelona and included a review by the chef of the best stalls to buy particular products. Some of the products were familiar, like nuts, spices, fish or fruit. Some were things I had heard about but not seen, like bull penis or goat heads. And some were things that had never

Turkey Eggs

occurred to me to be food, like barnacles or turkey eggs.   I am not sure why it never occurred to me to eat turkey eggs, it just hadn’t. Also, it had never occurred to me that bull meat was different from cattle or cow meat but at the market in Barcelona it gets its own stall. Who knew?

Our class of about 10 people wandered through the market acquiring the food we would use to cook our meal. We bought monkfish carcasses to make broth, razor clams for an appetizer, eggs for crème Catalan (like flan), shrimp and mussels for paella and melon for soup. Each ingredient was rather humble on its own and nothing was terribly special but we were assured it would come together. The class returned to the kitchen and together we made a feast.

Mike and torch

We learned to crisp Serrano ham between baking sheets, the difference between a Spanish and French omelet, how to make fish stock and most importantly for Mike, how to caramelize sugar on top of a dessert using a blow torch.

The pièce de résistance of our cooking was a large paella. We chopped, cleaned, trimmed, stirred and with lots of attention built our lovely, fragrant paella. From rather humble ingredients we created something special. The chef told us that. “yes, he makes paella for every class” but even knowing that it was delicious and felt special because we had made it.

During the whole class we were constantly plied with wine, which contributed to the merriment, but I like to think that the meal was like our marriage: with some attention and work something marvelous is within reach.

Nudists on Rosh Hashana

School started last week. Despite the long days (leaving home before 8am and coming home around 5pm, Lily and Jacob did well and have quickly made friends. Although everything went smoothly, it was busy and intense. To add layers of complexity, Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year holiday, started on Wednesday.

We had aspirations to do a good job marking the New Year. We would have a nice dinner the first night and practice tashlikh the second by throwing bread crumbs into the sea.

The afternoon of erev Rosh Hashana, Mike went to the market and bought a chicken. In the US buying chicken means picking out a package...here it means asking for it to be de-headed and gutted. Mike also found a recipe on-line for honeycake which required converting to Fahrenheit to Celsius and teaspoons to milliliters - it was a little dry but very tasty. Dinner was lovely and we were all quite happy with ourselves  even though we did a bharucha with Fanta-lite (I forgot to get juice) and our candles were votives (forgot Shabbat candles too!).

The second night was more ambitious: our plan was to take a taxi to the beach with a loaf of bread (Spanish baguette for 45 euro-cents) and throw bits into the water to symbolize casting off the sins of the past year. Before casting our sins away we would have a nice dinner beach-side

We had previously had bad experiences eating at the beach. The restaurants are generally tourist focused, and either very expensive or very mediocre. This time we did our research ahead of time and found a place online called Base Nautica (a sailing club) that was known for low-price simple but tasty food.

Usually getting to the beach takes only 15 minutes in a cab. Unfortunately since we left at rush hour it took us more than 45 minutes and over $20 to get there. Ok, so we start a little late. We were dropped off about half a kilometer from the restaurant, so we enjoyed a leisurely evening stroll down the beach. Along the way we found some public exercise equipment (think Spanish Muscle Beach) that the kids had to be pried away from. The beach was beautiful and we marveled at how lucky we were to be there and to be together.

We finally got to Base Nautica  around 7:30. Unfortunately they closed at 7!! This is HIGHLY unusual in Barcelona since most places don't OPEN until 8pm!! Our only choice was to walk around and find another place.

What we found first however was that Club Nautica fronted onto Barcelona’s nude beach. What kind of million-person city has a nude beach? Barcelona. Who goes to such as nude beach? Mostly men. How does one respond upon finding one at a nude beach on Rosh Hashana with one’s family? You walk around and check out the scenery of course. What do you do when you realize that it is probably inappropriate with your children. You leave feeling a little embarrassed for yourself.

We finally found a place for dinner (worse than mediocre) and threw our bread into the water just as it was getting dark. 

This was not our most religious or reverent or observant New Year, but probably one that we will never forget. 

Who Shoppe OMG

By Jacob...

Finally there!!

When we were in London my dad and I decided to go to the Who Shop (a Doctor Who themed store). I am a big fan of Doctor Who and thought it would be an enlightening experience. On the tram from Gatwick Airport I met a kid who said that the Who Shop was great yet he had never been there.

Our route seemed easy… we would take the Hammersmith & City tube line to Upton Park and then walk ten minutes. Unfortunately many of the tube lines were closed for maintenance and we ended up taking four trains instead of one! I was so excited when we finally got to Upton Park I speed walked to and even ran the last few hundred feet to the Who Shop.

In the Tardis

I am sorry to inform you that the Who Shop was a bust. I had watched the 10th and 11th doctors (like James Bonds) but the Who Shop was focused on the first nine. Posters, pens, key chains, and action figures all irrelevant time interests. That huge journey seemed pointless.

There was a Doctor Who museum with a TARDIS for an entrance (pretty cool!!) but even the museum was focused on doctors 1-9. I did like the cool space blasters and awesome guns.  Even though the shop a bust the museum helped made the journey marginally worth it.

After the Who Shop we walked dejectedly to a Tesco Express (English equivalent of 7/11) and got wraps and sodas. That was probably the best part of the morning

It was quite an adventure and I am glad that I got to spend the time with my dad but I would not recommend it to any one who has not seen the first 9 doctors!

Cheers from Jacob

Burkas and Golden Almonds

When most people travel they head for major points of historical interest. We try to make time for the "important" places but often we find ourselves visiting shops as well  to explore local household products, cuisine, etc. A recent trip to the UK (England, Wales and Scotland) proved no different. While we did hit hot spots like The British Museum, castles and more, it kicked off with a visit to the world's ultimate super store, Harrods.

Mike and Jacob were appalled that Lily and I wanted to go to Harrods first but we couldn't help ourselves. After a breakfast of baked beans, the girls headed off to the Knightsbridge tube stop while the boys headed to the "Dr Who Shop". I anticipated that we would spend an hour admiring the pretty cheeses and cupcakes and then meet the boys for a more serious exploration of the Tower of London. Turns out I was wrong.

We went through the golden doors of Harrods and into a cloud of perfume. Initially it looked and smelled like any other high-end department store in Chicago but we noticed an immediate difference. The shop was filled with women in beautiful, embroidered black burkas and on their arms were well tooled designer handbags. Peeking out from narrow slits in the fabric covering their faces were the discerning eyes of very sophisticated consumers. The suit-wearing English salespeople scurried to help them with their every need. Lily and I were ignored. Clearly the cachet of being American is OVER! For years I have read about the influence of Middle Eastern oil money and the shopping of fasionista Muslim women, and it is not a myth.

A golden almond $45/lb

When we went to the ladies room a woman in a burka had removed her veil and was facing the mirror. Lily and I could see her reflection and we could not take our eyes off of her. I embarrassed but I couldn't help it. She was beautiful and had so much more mystique than any woman I had ever seen before.

Since my last visit (about 14 years ago) Harrods has reoriented itself to cater to a broader audience. The beautiful cakes, bread and seafood still there but now one can buy dates, Halal meats, persimmons and halvah. There are still rows of chocolates but now beside them are candied almonds, apricots and Turkish delight. Harrods has followed consumers needs from other parts of the world as well. One can now find a beautiful array of sushi, caviar, vodka and more, which I am guessing does not end up in the bellies of Haggis-loving Scots or Yorkshire pudding-ingesting English.

Stuffed animals galore

Mike and Jacob met us in Knightbridge. The "Who Shop" had been a bust so they wanted to visit Harrods too. We ended up spending the rest of the afternoon exploring the store again, including seeing the amazing stuffed animals, the pet shop (real dogs and cats!), Harry and Hermione's wands, a $50,000 TV and sooooo much more.

We never made it to the Crown Jewels but they are static while Harrods is a reflection of a small part of the changing world that we are an itty-bitty part of.

Sushi