Feria!

Before coming to Spain I had never heard of feria season. It didn't take too long to learn about it...they told us about it in the culture class that Naval Station Rota required us to take our first week here.  Each city in Andalusia designates a week usually sometime in April or May for feria.  We live in El Puerto de Santa Maria, which held feria at the end of April. Seville, the capital of Andalusia, is suppose to have the best feria in all of southern Spain.  

 

Dancing at Feria

Feria means Fair in Spanish.  Their are special feria grounds that are empty all year until feria season and then out of nowhere hundreds of tents pop up. It's not quite like a fair back home.  There are amusements, food and drinking.  But other than horse and carriages there are not live animals.  The only fair that I am familiar with is the Topsfield Fair held in October.  It is really nothing like that.  All of the women dress in flamenco dresses.  Each tent is individually decorated, usually by a restaurant or business but sometimes a family will own a tent.  In addition to drinking sherry and other Spanish wines and eating tapas people go to feria to dance.  The type of dancing is called Sevillana.

The boys at Feria

  

My Sevillana dance class

A few months ago I started taking Sevillana lessons with a few other military wives in my neighborhood. I really wanted to quit after the first class but I decided to go back and am so glad I did. I learned how to Sevillana dance, bought a flamenco dress and even danced at feria! It was so fun and definitely worth the lessons.  The girls also have flamenco dresses and love dressing up in them. They were so excited to wear their dresses to school.  Rebecca even came with me to feria in Puerto and we danced together...she took lessons at school. This year we made it to feria in El Puerto de Santa Maria and Rota. Hopefully next year we can make it to Jerez and Sevilla.  

Back to the States...again!

I'm not the greatest at keeping up with this blog but I keep telling myself I'm going to stick with it and not give up on it entirely. I have been meaning to write about our quick trip to D.C. last month...mainly because I feel like I have to keep defending myself about why we've been back to the states so many times since coming here in July (3 times...which is a lot to some people considering many military families don't go back at all during their 3 year tour).

Eric was invited to a wedding in Baltimore in April. He spoke with his friend and we RSVP'd yes to the wedding with the understanding that if we couldn't get on a Space A flight to the area then we wouldn't be able to make it. We just couldn't see spending $4000 for the four of us to fly to the states for only a few days. As it turned out the Wednesday before the wedding (the wedding was on Friday) there was a flight from Rota to Andrews Airforce Base. We did some research on return flights and saw that there were a few different flights out of Dover that weekend that would get us back to Rota on Sunday...like I said a very quick trip. 

The trip could not have gone more smoothly. We left Rota at 10:00 on Wednesday and arrived in D.C. at 2:00 in the afternoon. We were able to spend Wednesday and Thursday night in Northern Virginia catching up with old friends. The girls even got to visit Laila, their daycare provider! The look on Rebecca's face when she saw Laila was worth the entire trip! On Friday morning we drove to Baltimore.  We spent the day in Inner Harbor and then went to the wedding Friday night. Thanks to Melissa for coming to Baltimore and watching the kids. On Saturday we drove to Dover, DE, it was about a two hour drive and that night caught a flight back to Rota. It was a quick trip but one that I would do again.

Many people here in Rota always ask why we go back to the states so often when we have all of Europe at our fingertips to visit. The thing for us is...family and friends are important to us. If I can get on a free flight back to the states why wouldn't I do it? I miss my family and friends back home and in Virginia everyday. I don't want to go three years without seeing them. We are also taking advantage of being in Spain and have traveled a lot since being here.  The way I look at it is that we have the best of both worlds.  We have this amazing opportunity to live in Spain for three years and experience the culture and travel but we can also hop on a military flight and visit home too!

Adios!

Living in a Spanish house

When we arrived in Rota last July base housing was not an option for us.  Because we only have two kids we only rate a three bedroom house on base, which there is a waiting list for. I'm so glad that we were forced to look out in town because not only does our house have a pool but it is a five minute walk to the beach. Also, instead of living in a three bedroom standard military home we live in a five bedroom, beautiful Spanish house! However, there have been some things we have had to adjust too...

Last night I was frustrated because I was doing laundry and cooking dinner at the same time and the circuit tripped...AGAIN! This happens all of the time and then I realized that I had the washer, dryer and oven on, which you are probably thinking is no big deal.  Well, here in Spain it is a big deal. So, I had to shut off the washer and dryer until after dinner.  This got me thinking about how many adjustments that we've had to make since moving into our house in Spain. Our house is beautiful and we love it but there are some things that are a little frustrating. For example...Spanish people do not use dryers...they hang dry everything. Our house didn't even have a dryer when we moved in so I guess the circuit breaker isn't used to running a washer and dryer at the same time. I have gotten used to washing a load then drying it before I start another load...but sometimes I forget!

One of the biggest adjustments has been the outlets. Spain is on the 220V system.  Therefore none of our small kitchen appliances, lamps, alarm clocks, night lights, chargers, televisions, etc. fit into the outlets. The base gave us transformers but you can only have so many things plugged into one at the same time. So, when I vacuum I have to make sure nothing else is plugged into the transformer because the vacuum uses a lot of volts. We also only have 3 transformers so there isn't one in every room. Rebecca and Lily don't have transformers so they don't get to use their cute little night lights that match their bedroom sets...we just keep the hall light on now!

The biggest adjustment for us has been the lack of central heat and air conditioning.  Since we live in a beach town the houses were built to only be used in the summer so there is no central heat. Although we live in Southern Spain it does get cold in the winter. Not two feet snow, below freezing cold but it has reached 40 degrees at night, which is cold. Especially because our house is all marble floors. We have radiators in each room that are fueled by gas. You have to make sure to turn them on at least an hour before you would like the room to be warm. We usually only heat the girls' rooms at night and the living room because utilities are so high. Coming from Virginia we were used to central air.  Our house only has two air conditioning units...one in the living room and one in our bedroom. So, on really hot nights in the summer we have slumber parties with the kids!

Pictures of our house coming soon!

Adios!