First week 'home'

After a fairly strenuous week of adjusting to school and hard-core Spanish language immersion (I had a bit of a scare at the Farmacia trying to explain what type of contact lens solution I needed! Thank the good Lord I didn't get that requisite oh sh*t this is hard lens solution and was spared digging my lens out of my eye! But when she said "desachable" (sp?)---disposable---which she acted by throwing her hand out over her shoulder) I knew I was probably good to go. And I was.

We had some definite high points and low point this week. Getting into the apartment on Sunday was nice, but getting the kids into any sort of a normal schedule is probably the hardest thing I have ever done independently for their educations. Thankfully the girls are getting into a beautiful routine of working in their rooms at their beds on books and laptops (Doe could probably stay in there all day!) while Tank was having to get up and move around a little more. Poor guy. 4 out of the 5 texts that he was supposed to be working on this semester have not arrived yet! Rrrr! I have shed some tears and had a few sleepless nights over this shipping fiasco. Apparently Customs had some issue with the way the Kentucky book company addressed the package and sent it BACK to them in the US. So hopefully we are going to be able to find some sort of redemptive schedule next week when the boxes are to arrive again. We are currently approximately 4 weeks late with Mark's schedule. About Thursday night I threw in the towel and said "Screw it" (actualement I said something much fouler) and said, we are just going to have to make do. Any schedule PGA has ordained for us, any type of progress that they expect from him, that might just have to go to the wayside. 

I know my boy is stressing majorly about this, and it is my job to help formulate a plan to get him back onto a semblance of a schedule by hopefully the end of the month. Seeing as the girls are making leaps and bounds in their courses I am confident Tank can do likewise. Part of me wanted to pull a Barry Pepper and yank my kids out of school completely, buy a sailing vessel after Spain and sail out of Portugal... and just learn through life experiences. ;) 

(*Edit: currently as I sit in our apartment at 12:40 am Sunday morning I am hearing a loud series of booming noises---hmmm)....

Oh...I think it is fireworks.

Friday late morning the maid comes to clean. Not a bad dividend I have to say ;). She does a fabulous job and said not a peep about how we totally reconfigured the kids' beds into their current orientation. We needed to get out of the house and so Doe grabbed her ball and we headed to the soccer field that we had found earlier in the week on one of our evening walks. We had the place basically to ourselves for about an hour until this group of boys came onto the pitch. Walking like outlaws these three ninos came onto the pitch and started yelling at us in rapid-fire Spanish. I understood only "partir" which I think meant "leave". Quickly I stumbled through a proposal " Usted jugar futbol? Nino y ninas jugar futbol! Usted y los jugar futbol....uno dos tres, uno dos tres" (counting out the players on each opposing side). Ikar, the seeming gang leader (in the orange) who was truly a riot, lifted his hands in reliquinshment pattered something to his friends and they all agreed. FInal score was 6-7 (them). Doe said at the time "I didn't want to go all out on them!" like she was embarrassed to beat a mess of Spanish 12-year olds. But Tank played well, scoring twice, and made quite an impression on the three boys. They asked if he played futbol, and he sort of shrugged. I thought maybe he might get invited for another Friendly. It is obvious though that this is a sport that the entire nation starts at a young age, these boys had footwork speed and agility that is unheard of in 7th grade boys, and we were impressed.  

Here is some fun video: 

(Ba ha!! That was a joke! It won't let me load video! I'll just have to spend some time and make a Youtube channel....wait for the link)

http://www.youtube.com/user/tadanaramama?feature=mhee

Hopefully the boys will come back next Friday at the same time for a repeat performance. They were such a joy to watch. Afterwards the four of us went to a cafe, ordered Coca Colas with orange slices, and discussed what just happened. It was a great day. 

As I had said earlier, Spanish playgrounds are a thing to behold and experience. Here's some shots: 

zipline - those are outlawed on any public school playground.

some type of look-out tower out of the Flintstones

metal palm trees

don't get a splinter on all this untreated wood! 

I think if two people took two red cords, tilted the bowl  on its side and stretched the  cords back it would make an awesome child catapult

I have fallen in love with this hulking mass of a pirate ship. I have christened it the SS Betadine. 

Crow's nest. First thing that got conquered. 

I see this as a prime locale for teenagers to get into trouble but it's some sort of holding cell for rogue pirates

Don't rock the boat, baby

This is the best. It has a center nylon rope to hang onto. I was giggling so hard watching Tank and Bumpo trying to keep their balance on it. 

Doe on the pitch

All in all it was a good week. Not our best...not our worst. Beloved came home every  night unclear of what mood his wife would be in. The frustrations in virtual school were compounded by the fact that our apartment's router was for sh*t and kept dropping us. Hard to do when you're trying to study. So finally we spend 20 euros and bought our own. Problem solved. The other good thing is that Beloved is seeing research at the Company that he studied about, but never saw firsthand. He's met lots of nice guys, engineers, who are offering to take us out and show us the ropes. The other nice thing this is his supervisor is looking into two possible soccer teams for Doe to train with during the week.

Starting to make connections <3