The Beginnings of our Adventure in Spain

RAIN in SPAIN
We made it to Spain on a wet Tuesday morning with 12 large suitcases and 12 carry-ons.  So far, 4 days later, it is still raining, and the forecast for the next several days is more rain.  We continue to be  told that it rarely rains here in Spain.  This is the third time Brent has been to Spain and so far all he has seen is rain except the day it snowed.  Which of course it never snows, or so they say.

       This is the van that carried our 24 pieces of luggage and all 6 of us. 

We were relieved when we saw it was a "laaarge van".   The left house is ours.

HOME
The house came furnished, which we assumed meant just furniture, but in this case it included 100's of VHS, DVDs, 1000's of books,  glass dishes in every room, several ash trays  (we did not realize we were renting a smokers home)   beautiful artwork, home decor galore, junk drawers full of you know what, 3 coffee pots, wine racks, wine, mixers, beer, dozens of old magazines,  about a dozen large live plants, which requires watering I think and the list goes on and on.  We think we offended the owners when we asked if we could box up a bunch of their stuff.  They said they left it to make us feel more at home.  We would feel more at home if we could allow our kids to play normally without breaking anything.  We still have 21 large boxes of STUFF that still has not arrived and we have no place to put it.

We do have a swimming pool in the backyard which is what the kids are most excited about.  Unfortunately it is too cold and full of worms to swim in currently. 

The kids' first day of school on our front porch.

SCHOOL
Our kids were admitted to the public bilingual school " Virgen de Navalazarza".  Today was their first day and after 3 days stuck in the house they were all more than ready to go.   Kamree was very excited to go to school and kept asking us if she was 5 now.  She has known for years that she wouldn't start school until she was 5.   At age 4, she loved her 1st day of school even though no one spoke English to her in her class.  We don't think the 4 yr olds get any English classes.

The school is small, and includes ages 3- 6th grade and has 3-4 classes per grade with about 20 kids in each class.  The school runs from 9am to 2pm with no lunch time since they don't eat lunch until 2 in Spain they just eat when they come home. They get to bring a snack to eat around 11:30 which they call breakfast.  The other kids said most all the kids speak English.  Kaiya's English classes are taught by a teacher from Australia, Morgan's English classes have a teacher's aide from Tennessee.  The boys both said the kids fought over playing with them at recess, so we think they will all be fine making friends.