Friday, March 20

Scott's been working hours throughout the day, but then making time to take off during the day to explore a little bit.  He'll have this luxury for another week or so, and then the onsite project work should be in full swing and he'll be at work leaving home at 7am each morning and returning around 6pm each night.  

On Friday, Scott worked all morning and then joined me to pick up the kids for lunch.  The boys are picked up 15 minutes before Rosa.  

While we were waiting for Rosa, a fire truck tried to
drive down the narrow street in front of the school.

To do this, the post in the middle of the road needed to be put down.
The fireman tried multiple keys to open the hideaway compartment.
Finally, after 10 minutes or so, the correct key was found.

And the truck proceeded down the street.
Our guess is that the firetrucks practice going down each of the streets,
so that they're ready if there's a fire emergency.

The phone drama continues.  At lunchtime, we checked out the Metropol Parasol that's next door to the kids' school.  It turns out that upstairs is a playground that is mostly shaded.  The kids had fun playing there and eating their picnic lunch.

Then we dragged them on our errands.  First stop was to our bank where we picked up our new ATM cards and signed more paperwork.  While there, the kids helped themselves each to a calendar.

Next stop was to the phone store.  Our cell phone application was DENIED.  Ugh!  The way we understand it is that in the states we have a credit history that can be looked up by our credit scores.  Here, the credit history is often based on bank accounts and since ours is not even a week old, we have no Spanish credit history.  Back to the drawing board.

Before bringing the kids back to school, we treated them to an ice cream snack.

In my research earlier in the week, I'd found a secondhand phone and games and videos store that was super helpful.  So, after dropping off the kids, Scott and I ventured in (after first visiting an Orange network store) and learned more about phones and sim cards.  They directed us to a Movistar location to learn how to buy the sim cards and we learned that we needed our passports, which we didn't have with us.  It seems that we need our passports for a bunch of things here.

At this point, Scott went home to do some work and I did a quick grocery shop in the basement of El Corte Ingles (a large department store in Spain).  There's a special place in my memory for El Corte Ingles because I had the chance to consult with them for 2 weeks, many many years ago (perhaps 1997), in their Madrid headquarters.

Then Scott and I returned to pick up the kids and bring them around for more errands.  This included first trying to buy the sim cards at the Movistar place and being told to get the phone first.  The phone people said to get the sim card first.  Anyway, Scott and I finally bought cell phones at the phone store and then went to a photo place to get pictures taken of the kids.  These photos are needed with their school paperwork.  As the pictures were being taken, the camera battery was dying.  Luckily, there was just enough juice to snap all 3 kids and print out their pictures.  

Then, with the phones, we went back to the Movistar sim card seller.  At this point there was only one person working and we were 2nd in line.  It probably took at least 20 minutes for our turn and then at least another 20 minutes to buy the cards and have all of the paperwork set up.  Finally, we went home, fed the kids, and got them dressed in pjs just in time for our babysitter to arrive.

She was the owner of the babysitting service we'd learned about the previous weekend, Ludonanny.  She was wonderful.  She was prompt, immediately engaging with the kids, and she brought an arts & crafts activity along.  We told her the area of town where we wanted to go and she shared some ideas on places in the area to check out.  

We started at The Merchant because both Scott's alma mater and mine were playing in the NCAA basketball tournament that night and this bar said they'd try and get our games on the tv.  When we arrived, they'd lost their signal and never figured out how to get it back.  But, it was a neat bar.

Then, we walked around and stumbled upon the area the sitter had suggested.  It's a great stretch by the river with ~5 restaurants and bars next to each other with both indoor and outdoor seating.  We think it's on Calle Genil.  At 9:30 at night it was quite the party scene and only just getting started.  We had a great outdoors dinner.

When we returned home, the kids were happily sleeping, the apartment was tidied up, and Isabel was sharing even more suggestions on great places to go both in the city and on day trips.