No hablo Español

 No hablo Español

OK we have lived in Spain for two whole months now, it is time I blogged.  The photos above show us in our beaten up old mini bus traveling as a family to Spain and a few photos I have taken since we have been here.

Well if our plan was to shake up our life a bit, it worked.  The drama, problems, and fun we have had since leaving Wales two months ago would take me months to write.  So here is a brief summing up/report –

1.    We left Wales!  We stayed with John’s brother Dave in Birmingham for a couple of days and then drove to Oxford for John’s academic paper.  We then left Oxford for the tunnel, next stop France, we had every intention of stopping at hotels on the way and taking the weekend to drive to Seville.  But John and I just kept on driving.  Except for a few toilet and food stops we did not stop - as one slept the other drove.  We finally arrived at our home at 2am Sunday morning after leaving the tunnel into France, late Friday night.  Our now dear friends from church helped us unload our van into our new home – we slept.
2.    Paperwork!  Oh how they love paperwork here in Spain and we are not even half way through.  We spent the first week filling in forms going from one office to another.  What took us a week would have taken us months and months doing it all alone, but our friend Jordi had prepared everything in advance of us coming and drove us around and translated everything we needed to know.  After a week we had all the kids in school and had most of the official paperwork we needed to live here.
3.    Injuries!  Our children have become so unbelievably accident-prone.  Jared fell from monkey bars and could not stand up for half an hour; we thought he had broken something.  Jared has also fallen head-first off a park bench winding himself, fallen while his brothers chased him and his little finger swelled up and is still purple and bruised . . . well to count all his bruises would take days.  Similar stories for all the children.  Caitlin was rugby-tackled by Cam and ended up at a local clinic in terrible pain, she then had a whole week off school while her leg healed.  The list is too long.  Watchers of Michael Moore's SiCKO will be glad to know that health care is free here too.
4.    Emotional drama!  Of course we knew that this was going to be difficult.  But we didn't know that it would be this difficult.  The children are all starting over.  They do not know the language here.  They had no friends.  I do appreciate the fact that we are a big family, which of course has its benefits, no one is lonely.  But there have been a lot of tears and drama, which has left me drained.  I don’t want to highlight any particular drama as it may upset some of the children, but for John and I this has been the most pushed-to-the-limit we have been as parents.  Yet I sit here with everything calm and well.  The children happily went off to school; they have all quickly made friends and are slowly learning the language.  We knew that their education would suffer a little but decided as a family that learning a new language was more beneficial and they can catch up on the subjects.  I do still worry about their education though honestly.
5.    Everything keeps breaking!  Our van wheel fell off as we were driving a few days after we had just had it fixed by a local garage!  Our washing machine has broken twice and there does not seem to be any launderettes here in Spain – wth?  Our car got broken into and is still missing the window as we still have not had it fixed.  I accidentally smashed the kitchen window moving a chair, we still have not had that fixed so there is a lovely cool breeze blowing through the house night and day.  We are on much less money than we were in the UK so affording to fix anything is interesting.  Owen sat on Cameron’s laptop breaking it, which we did replace immediately to protect Cameron’s mental health.
6.    Nothing is going in!  I have been learning Spanish since we have been here and I still look blankly at anyone who talks to me.  I pick out a couple of words I understand, like 'tambien' or 'algo', etc. But it just seems to be the little words I remember, I have no meat yet, I just seem to have a few side dishes.  John and I have both been given callings in our Spanish speaking church, John is second councilor on the bishopric and I am first councilor on the relief society presidency.  John was promised in his setting apart blessing that we would be blessed with learning the language here – so here’s hoping!

That all sounds very negative.  There are so many wonderfully good things.  We have no regrets and know that we were supposed to be here.  We have visited some amazing places, we have enjoyed beautiful weather, we have had the honor of meeting some amazing people.  There is no doubt in my mind that forcing yourself out of monotony changes your life.  It is a humbling experience learning a new language and finding your way around a new country.  I still do not drive very much here as the one-way roads and confusing road systems still scare me a little.  But I feel that I have given my children a gift coming here, the gift of experience, a new language, new friends, an important new aspect to life with tolerance and acceptance of other people’s differences.  I hope they will look back in a few years and see it that way.  I hope they do not look back and hate us for forcing these new changes on them and shaking them up a bit.  One thing I do know, they will never forget these experiences, their days will not be a blur of doing the same thing day in, day out.  Their memories will be clear and lasting because of the break from the norm.  Clear and hopefully wonderful!