Provision

Well, it is nice to see provision in life... Yesterday was a hard day because for two weeks we have lived in transient housing and we have shared our room with a one-year old who normally might wake up and fuss a bit and put herself back to sleep. However, now she wakes up and looks over and sees mom and dad and is inconsolable until she is finally snuggled between us. We are also living out of 6 of our 9 bags of luggage. All this to say we were hoping to move into our apartment yesterday and that did not work out and now it looks like Monday.

Also, Kevin, Eden, and I sat down to eat last night at a pizza restaurant where you order at the counter. I got in line and 10 teenage girls got directly in front of me and I was not in the mood to be aggressive, as the Basque are to make my claim in line. We ended up leaving thinking how long it would take to make all of their food and we went to the place next door. There we sat down to look at a menu we can hardly read and order from. They eat pintxos which are similar to tapas at a lot of places and Kevin is always disappointed because he is still hungry. So we ate and left but were still hungry and went home just frustrated.

Well, provision took place this morning in the form of another American couple here: Chris, Megan, and their sweet little girl. We got to know each other over some coffee at a park and then they showed us around an area of town near our future piso, which we were unfamiliar with. We told them about last night and Chris showed us their favorite place to eat. We parted ways and we ate lunch at this little place. We had the BEST rotisserie chicken we have ever had with fries and paella. It was a lot of food and we left stuffed and happy. Kevin and I talked about how different our two days have been and how thankful we were for such a great day today.

Tonight will be fun as well, we are meeting with some friends to work on preparing for a Christmas party we will be offering to the community in week and a half. I think the plan is to have chicken pot pie!

Eden's First Haircut

Well apparently it is Basque tradition that a child's first haircut is free. So the owner of a salon near us cut her hair for her for free. It is very cute! All the children here get their hair cut for the first time when they are probably younger than 6 mo old. So they were shocked that this was her first haircut. Kevin gave me a hard time afterwards asking why we had waited so long but he was only kidding because I have been wanting to trim her scraggly hair and he has made us wait until now. So here is your baby minus some scraggles!

Our First Week

Does it come as any real surprise that we love it here? Our first week here has been incredible! From the people we’ve met to the beautiful views, life in Spain is simply wonderful. The past six days have been filled with excitement as well as typical tasks involved with moving. We hit the ground running with an awesome weekend helping out with the English project. We met some great people and had great conversations. Other items on the agenda were opening a bank account and getting local cell phones. We quickly discovered that customer service in Spain is a little different than what we are used. We were told that we could not open an account at the first bank we went to without having our proof of residence, but that if we came back in a few days it might be possible. How does that work? Funny how banks in the US would love to have our money. We were able to open an account at a different branch just a few blocks down without a problem.

Although we are beginning to get settled into a new culture, we continue to wait on the piso. We are supposed to sign the lease this Friday, but we won’t be able to move in for probably another week after that. We are super excited because the place is awesome! It is brand new and has a two car garage and is located in an awesome part of town. We are getting a great deal on this place because it is in an area with lots of new development, which has been drastically effected by the economic crisis. Several of the new buildings in the area are not yet complete, but the government is requiring the buildings to at least be finished on the outside. We will be within walking distance to our language school, Eden’s childcare, a grocery store and mall, an awesome park, restaurants, and several banks.

That’s all for now. We have enjoyed hearing from some of you and we are grateful for your encouragement during this time of transition.

Casa Dia

Here are a couple of pictures of the Casa Dia where we are staying for the next few days until our piso (apartment) is ready...BEAUTIFUL!

We live in Spain!

It’s so crazy that we are finally here! Mandy and Eden arrived in San Sebastian last night and I stayed behind in Madrid. Eden did great on all of the flights and slept the entire night last night. I made the trek up this morning, enjoying the beautiful countryside the entire way. A four hour drive goes by pretty quick when you are enthralled with a new and unfamiliar place and don’t know how to read any of the road signs. As far as culture shock, I think I’m most amazed at the way people park. Although I’m grateful for my days as a valet, my parking skills having nothing on these people. People park in the tiniest spaces that you would never consider parking in. Not to mention that a lot of it is parallel parking, even on ridiculously steep hills...and manual transmissions. I’m convinced that most people make pretty good use of their bumpers.

We spent the day with some of our new friends from the team. They are awesome people and we look forward to working with them! This weekend, the team is hosting a project for 6 Basque people who are learning English and will have to speak in only English the entire weekend. We are excited to be here just in time for this event.

We are supposed to sign the contract on our apartment on December 1st. Until then, we’ll probably be staying in a hotel. However, tonight and the next few nights we will be staying in a Basque bed and breakfast type place on the side of the mountain. We drove in tonight and it was dark, so we are excited to see the view in the morning. Tomorrow we plan to open a bank account and go ahead and get local cell phones.

Not sure how often we’ll have the internet until we settle into our own place, so our blog entries might be a little infrequent. We are excited to be here, but cannot believe it’s really happening. We look forward to the journey ahead!