The Sweet Road

Out of the Woods and into Magosto

After a week-and-a-half of illness, the kids and Nate are finally all healthy again. No one knows for sure if it was the swine flu, but whatever it was, it was extremely contagious and came with fever, aches, a cough, and some throat discomfort. There were no deep respiratory problems, though, thank the Lord. So, if it actually was the swine flu, it was very "light" and easy to take care of. On the other hand, if it wasn't the swine flu and this area of Spain still has it coming, then that's reason for concern. I can't imagine anything even more contagious than what we just contracted.

During the days that the kids were home sick, Nate taught them a new game: chess. Brennan loved it and understood it for the most part, and he wanted to play it over and over again even though Nate always creamed him. Ryan didn't understand it as much, but he enjoyed playing it by himself to pass the time:

 Finally, by Saturday night, the boys were feeling better, so we left a sick Nate and a sick Kathryn at home and drove down to our friend Betty's house in Santiago. Her daughter, Dahiala, turned 7 a few days ago, so Betty threw a combined birthday-and-Halloween party. The Spaniards are just starting to get interested in Halloween as far as carving pumpkins and trick-or-treating. Their big day of dressing up in costumes comes earlier in the year, during Carnaval (Mardi Gras). These days, though, they also sell costumes for Halloween, and the nice lady at the grocery store told me that some kids are starting to go trick-or-treating. But, she said, the adults aren't ready for them, so it becomes kind of silly, these kids going around to the different houses but nobody giving them anything. I think trick-or-treating would also be hard here because most people live in apartments.

For the party, Brennan dressed up as a pumpkin (costume by Nate!):

And Ryan was Bob the Builder. We bought this costume 3 years ago and have gotten so much mileage out of it, I'm so glad!

All of the kids at Dahiala's party:

 

The pumpkins they carved. Pretty impressive!

 

Tomorrow, the boys' school will hold its annual fall festival, called Magosto. All week the Spaniards have been getting ready, going out into the country and collecting chestnuts, bringing them home, and letting their kids paint them and make necklaces. Being the ignorant Americans that we are, we bought our chestnuts at the grocery store. Then I panicked and had to ask my friend Silvia how in the world we were supposed to thread string through hard chestnuts to make them into necklaces? I was imagining hours and hours of hard work ahead. She came to the rescue and told me to boil them first to soften them. Ah. Perfect.

 

I googled "Chestnut Necklaces," and laughed when some funny results showed up which were more jewelry-related than chestnut-related. It dawned on me to google "Colares de Castañas" (Chestnut Necklaces) in Spanish instead (duh), and subsequently I got to watch some videos of little kids threading string through their cooked chestnuts. If little kids at preschool could do it, so could our boys! Feeling empowered, we got out plastic crochet needles, kitchen twine, stickers, and scrapbook paper (all the crafty stuff we had in the house), and put the kids to work.

 

Here are the first chestnut necklaces the Walters have ever made:

 

Sergio, Brennan's teacher, told Brennan that he thought his necklace was pretty cool. Nate joked that since we had no idea what we were doing and were approaching this project as clueless Americans, our boys' necklaces probably would look pretty unique. It made me wonder what kinds of projects my parents, Taiwanese immigrants, had to figure out and help Clement and me create when we were growing up in Maryland schools. Things like Thanksgiving cornucopias and pilgrim costumes, Christmas ornaments, and Easter baskets must have been so foreign to them. And I vaguely recall having to make dreidels for Hanukkah, too. Oh my.

So our third Magosto approaches - we were here for Magosto in 2007 and 2008 as well but we barely registered the fact that kids were bringing chestnut necklaces to school - and this year we feel more involved than ever before. It's another nice milestone.

Cars in Europe: The Cute, The Orc, and The Brands

When we moved here two years ago, we didn't realize that one of the changes we would have to make would be getting used to different cars and new car brands. Cars and car brands were one of those things that we just took for granted in the US, and we never thought about the differences we would find here. Of course, this change was not as big of a deal as others - like suddenly needing to speak Spanish and to drive stick-shift - but we still find ourselves commenting on the cars that we see around us.

Here's our winner for cutest car:

Some people love these Smart Cars, and some people hate them. Nate and I tend to fall in the "love" camp, since we find these cars so tiny and so different than anything we ever saw in the US. The traditional Smart Car holds two people, and is just a little bit longer than the width of a normal car. This factor means that it can parallel park perpendicular to the curb. The picture below, though not a parallel-parking situation, gives a good idea of why they're so popular here:

 

Now here's the car that we find incredibly ugly:

 

It's a Fiat Multipla, and we literally shudder every time we see one. We think it looks like an Orc, specifically the one from the battle of Osgiliath in "The Return of the King." (Photo taken from a website called Resim Motor.)

It's great that Fiat has now given it a facelift, removing the two "eyes" right below the windshield:

Aaahh. Much better. I can live with seeing this car every day. (Photo taken from Wikipedia.)

Regarding car brands, it's fascinating to us:

1) The US brands that do business here:

Cadillac

Harley-Davidson - they have a large store just down the road from our apartment, complete with clothing. I guess people like their Harleys everywhere.

Ford

Chevrolet

Chrysler

Dodge

Jeep

2) The brands here that we don't see much of, if at all, in the US. Our vocabulary has expanded to include these words in our everyday conversations:

Seat (Spanish)

Opel (German) (originally I wrote that Opel is Spanish but my friend Matt Reed sent in a correction :) )

Citroën (French)

Peugeot (French)

Renault (French)

Fiat (Italian)

Skoda (Czech)

SsangYong (Korean)

Smart

(I sense a resistance to French cars in the US?)

3) The differences in the car lines offered even when the brand is well-known. For example, check out these Spanish websites for:

Ford

Toyota (Scroll along the gray toolbar that begins with "IQ" and you'll see the cars Toyota has on the market in Spain. No Camrys or Siennas sold here.)

and 4) The US brands not found here:

Pontiac

Saturn

Buick

To close, one of the funniest car-related things we've heard is the urban legend that the Chevy Nova was marketed to Spanish-speaking countries and failed to sell. Why? Because "nova" in Spanish is translated as "no go." I still chuckle at this story, even though it's not true.

A "Bare-Minimum" Kind of Week

Ever since last Friday night, we've been in sick mode and doing the bare minimum to get by. Brennan and Ryan were both sick and out of school for three days (along with 70+ kids from their school - amazing!), and today Kathryn and Nate started developing symptoms as well. It's a weird virus, starting with a fever and bringing either a stomachache (Ryan), headache (Brennan), or snot everywhere (Kathryn). 

Poor Ryan was the first to get sick - he had a fever and his tummy bothered him on-and-off from Friday night until Wednesday. He usually looked like this when it was hurting:

 

 

 

Brennan, too, had on-and-off fevers and on-and-off headaches. However, these moments would pass and then both boys would be their normal energetic selves again: only 20 minutes after we took the above pictures of Ryan, both boys were jumping all over our bed:

 

 

Added to all of the illness, our car has been in the shop since last Tuesday, getting repairs done. The service center tells us they don't know when it will be ready. So with kids sick at home and no car, we've had to do things like pay for taxi rides to and from the urgent-care center and drag the two sick boys on 40-minute round-trip walks to drop off Kathryn at her preschool. Nate's been taking the bus to and from Spanish class, which makes for long mornings for him. And me - I have so much work to get done that it's been hard for me to enjoy the kids' company at home when they're "supposed" to be at school. I've waffled between feeling stressed-out and a bit angry that I've had to change my plans for this week and feeling guilty that I would ever resent my kids' presence. It's been a stretching, refining few days.

Yesterday, while Nate and Kathryn were both in school, the boys were finally starting to feel better so we walked around our neighborhood to get some grocery shopping and other errands done. Back at home, we carved pumpkins:

 

...and baked crescent rolls for the first time:

Something went horribly wrong with these, though. They turned out pretzel-like on the outside and gooey and undercooked on the inside. 

 

We also rented "Monsters vs. Aliens" to give the kids something to watch. So yesterday was a good day, and then Ryan went back to school today. Brennan will go back tomorrow, since he, too, has been fever-free for over 24 hours. But poor Kathryn - her fever started today and it's higher than were the boys' fevers. We'll see how she does over the weekend. One thing about her that's making us laugh these days, though, is this:

 

This is Kathryn, alternately fascinated and repulsed. She can't stop watching herself go poop, but she also carries on a steady stream of whimpering and whiny crying until it's all over. It is seriously hilarious to watch and listen to. The best is when she's finally produced something, and we all clap and say, "Great job, Kathryn!" Then her whines turn into smiles and she looks very proud of herself.

Have a good night! Hope your week is turning out more relaxed than ours!

Steve and Rebecca

From October 8-19, Steve and Rebecca H. visited Vida Nueva, our church here. They will move here in February to start a 2-year commitment, and although their main priority will be fulfilling Steve's pastoral internship at Vida Nueva, they may also be able to take some time to help us with the business planning of our hostel. Steve is completing an MDiv/ Master of Management from North Park Theological Seminary, and Rebecca is a nurse and musician. And we're simply excited that this American couple will be joining our community here - we felt an instant connection with them and look forward to the time when Rebecca and I can watch "Bride and Prejudice" while Steve and Nate play Axis & Allies (what a bore!!).

Here are some highlights from their time here:

We took them to Santiago one day. For the first time ever, we saw some pilgrims who had brought a donkey along the trail:

 

Steve and Rebecca, with one side of the Cathedral behind them:

 

Steve's plate of shark. It tasted like fish!

 

Another day we took them around Coruña, to show them their future home. Here's Rebecca and me on Monte San Pedro:

Another photo. One can only be on tiptoes for so long so I had to reach out to steady myself after a while:

 

Steve and Rebecca like to take "freedom" pictures wherever they go, although this one didn't turn out as they'd hoped:

Laughing:

 

Can't wait until you get here, Steve and Rebecca!

I haven't felt this patriotic in a while

Nate found this commercial yesterday. Maybe it's that we're far from home, or perhaps Nate's obsession with soccer has finally worn off on me, or maybe because the song is so...robust, but I felt such a strong surge of patriotic pride that I nearly cried. I can't stop watching it.

Milestone: Barrettes!

We've been waiting for this milestone for a long time: Kathryn's hair is finally long enough that she can wear barrettes! Hurray!

Hostel Progress October 2009

Daily life trucks along. Nate goes to Spanish class every day, the kids go to school and then have activities on a couple of the afternoons, and I have the mornings to work on our hostel project and get housewife-y things done. Regarding the hostel project, our lawyers gave us a set of preliminary statutes that we're in the middle of revising so that we can create a new non-profit organization. It will take us a bit longer than we thought; our pastor Roberto helped us revise the document, but then our friend José looked through our second revision and had several challenging suggestions. For example, he wanted us to define what we meant by "ecumenical" and "association member," and encouraged us to think about the worst possible scenario that could befall the organization in the future and try to include provisions in the statutes to protect the mission and vision of the organization in that case. This stuff would have been hard in English, but to do it all in Spanish would have been impossible without help.

Out of the blue, the Lord has given us a new teammate: Ana is from Lincoln, Nebraska, and she's an exchange student at the University de Santiago de Compostela this school year. After she was accepted by the University of Santiago, she started becoming fascinated by the Camino and the pilgrim culture, and she hoped to do her Senior Project on some aspect of the Camino. So she was really excited when she arrived in Spain, started coming up to Coruña on Sundays to attend our church, and found out that our vision is to start a new hostel for pilgrims! And we're excited to have her - she's a Spanish and math major, and she will be a huge help to us as we conduct research on pilgrims, other hostels, and the Camino itself. As part of her Senior Project she'll be surveying more pilgrims in Santiago, then analyzing and compiling all of the survey data into a report.  It's a perfect combination, Ana's skills and our team's needs! 

We took Ana on a tour of Coruña yesterday, and here she is, seeing the ocean for the very first time in her life! She's so brave, too - spending this year in Spain is the first time she's been outside of the US!

And here are Brennan, Ryan, and Kathryn on a rock. Ryan insisted on having his picture taken, so we made the other two get in the picture with him:

We didn't even realize that the kids were all wearing orange until we downloaded the picture! I guess orange has just become part of the modern fashion consciousness.

Glee Episode 2

Hmmm...now that I'm actually done with episode 2 of "Glee," I'm not as enamored of it. Did they have to have an anti-celibacy speech and sing "Push It"? The kids have talent, that's for sure, and we love Principal Figgins, but the way they painted Christians in this episode - and the way Jesus songs were lumped in with circus songs - was a bit disturbing.

We're not in the US anymore, that's for sure

Here are several highlights from this past week, things that wouldn't have happened in the US:

Monday: Two weeks ago, Nate signed up at the government-run, official language school for a 9am-11am daily Spanish class. At that time the administration didn't know when classes would start (how can they not know?!). I checked the school's website last Thursday and there was still no information about a start date. Today, I came home at 11am after grocery shopping and Nate said, "I just found out that my Spanish class started today." He only knew that because he had checked the website one more time. This is the same language school that never tells us when the last day of class is, either, until a month beforehand. Doh!

Wednesday: When entering a traffic circle, Nate banged the right side of a car that was already in the circle. It was just a minor car accident, but repairs to both cars are needed. Instead of calling the police, both Nate and the other driver filled out a form entitled, "Declaración Amistosa de Accidente" ("Friendly Accident Declaration"). The form requires each driver to write out his name, address, and insurance information, and one of the drivers gets to draw a little diagram of how the accident happened. Then they both sign the form and submit it to their respective insurance agents. The insurance companies take it from there. The process of sharing the information is efficient and streamlined.

Friday: Nate and I had a date morning, and we took a walk by the lighthouse. It was a beautiful day, high in the 70's, and as we rounded a bend we saw an elderly man, completely naked, sunning himself on some rocks.  Seriously, between the beaches (there are always topless women at the beaches), the pool locker room, and horrible movies that are for kids older than 13 years old but have nudity in them, I've seen more boobies and other assorted parts these past two years than I have in my entire life previously.

Well, you all don't want those lasting images in your mind, so here's something benign that we see all the time here:

 

Most people don't own dryers, so they hang their laundry out of their apartment windows. When we came back from the US, our neighbor had had her baby. We hadn't seen it yet, but I discovered that it was a girl from seeing all the pink on display on the laundry lines. 

I'm on episode 2 of "Glee." Love it!

La Fuente del Peregrino

This past Saturday we drove 1.5 hours to the town of Ligonde to visit Campus Crusade's hostel on the Camino. It's called La Fuente del Peregrino, which means "The Pilgrim's Fountain," and it's run by Campus Crusade's Spain arm, an organization called Ágape. La Fuente is a unique hostel in that the manager, Fructu, comes in June to open up the hostel, returns for a week or two in the middle of the summer to help out, and then comes back in September to close it up. Fructu and his wife live in Zaragoza, which is about a seven-hour drive from Ligonde. In between his visits, volunteer groups come from the US and from Europe to run the hostel for 1 - 3 weeks at a time. The leader of each group reads La Fuente's Director's Manual, and then his or her group manages the hostel without any direct contact from Fructu. Nate and I find this amazing, that these volunteer groups do such a good job running the hostel perhaps without having seen it before and perhaps without speaking Spanish, and that Ágape is willing to let strangers come in and run their hostel.

La Fuente has 10 beds and several tents, and the pilgrims who stay overnight are also treated to dinner and breakfast. In the evening, they can also watch the Jesus film in one of a dozen languages if they so choose. In addition, any pilgrims who are simply passing through during the day can help themselves to free coffee and Christian literature.

Our family had a great time meeting Fructu and his two friends as they were closing up the hostel for the fall and winter. They showed us around the building and explained a bit more about how they operate. Nate and I could tell that they loved the pilgrims and really wanted to make La Fuente a welcoming place where people could encounter Christ.

After Fructu had given us the tour of the place, we all sat down and talked, getting to know each other better. I made the enormous faux pas of asking the three guys if they spoke Catalán in Zaragoza, and they all reared back, horrified, and exclaimed, "NOOOO!!!" very loudly. I had thought that Zaragoza was close to Barcelona, thus located in the province of Catalonia with its people speaking Catalán, but after Fructu and his friends - not to mention our kids and us - recovered, they very kindly told us that Zaragoza is firmly planted in the province of Castellano-speaking Aragón. What a good geographical lesson to learn, and I guess I'll never make that mistake again!

Here's our family in front of La Fuente. There are yellow arrows every few steps on the Camino directing you where to go, and you can see one here on the side of the building:

Inside the building, here's the kitchen where the volunteers cook for the pilgrims and for themselves. Note the stone walls which are common for the old casa rurales ("rural houses") in Galicia:

Fructu and me talking in the movie/common room (this picture is for you guys, Jeff and Ingrid - it's the only one we got of Fructu!):

A map of the Camino from Ligonde to Santiago - once you're in Ligonde there are about two or three days left before you reach Santiago.

A close-up of what a pilgrim wrote underneath the map:

The translation of these two lines is: "Yo soy el camino, la verdad y la vida. Jesús" = "I am the way, the truth and the life. Jesus",

and "Para mi mami, por que las etapas duras no se superan solo" = "For my mom, because the hard stages are not surpassed alone."

A picture of the upstairs room where 10 pilgrims could sleep:

Nate, the kids, and Dani (one of Fructu's friends) outside - this is actually the Camino as it heads toward La Fuente. We saw about 10 pilgrims pass by today.

Have a great weekend, everyone!