Cosas de la Casa

After all my words of saying I would post updates often, I look and it has already been a week and a half!  Sorry.  It’s not that we haven’t been busy. With Kaela not taking a nap anymore, time at the computer is rather valuable. I have to say that most of the things we are doing are ‘things of the house’, that are new for us, but not very exciting to read about.  We are in our new apartment, going shopping, scoping out the neighborhood and more grocery shopping.

So, we have now been in our apartment a couple weeks and it is beginning to feel like home.  It is beautiful!  The person who furnished the apartment did a good job (I think every item here is from IKEA) and we like it a lot, although it is not kid-proof at all.  We got a tiny artificial tree and a couple strands of lights to make it feel like Christmas, which I cannot believe is only a week away!

The apartment is two bedrooms, with one as a loft upstairs.  The girls are downstairs and we are up.  The stairs to the loft are terrifying.  They are semi-spiral with no railing and huge spaces in between.  At the top there is a railing that ends about a foot above the floor.  Eliora easily could crawl under it; as a matter of fact, Lee doesn’t have much difficulty in sliding through.  So, all in all, the stairs are barricaded and when the girls are upstairs, they are vigilantly watched. 

In the bedroom downstairs there is a glass sliding door with some curtains to diminish the light.  But the curtains are in sections and are lots of fun to tug on.  I hope and pray that they last these next few months.  Kaela knows not to play with them, but there are only so many ideas that a 10 month old can understand.

The kitchen is much bigger than the last, it has an oven and a few more dishes.  For an early Christmas gift Lee bought me a couple Cocina Espanola cookbooks so I can become a real Spanish Cook.  I’m sure I’ve got some pictures of the beautiful things I am making.

Going grocery shopping is a totally new experience here.  There are three kinds of grocery stores: “mercados”, “super mercados”, and “super mercados grandes”.  The first are like convenience stores that have the necessities like newly made bread, boxed milk and canned beans.  The super mercados are small and have produce, meats and some frozen.  Now the last ones, the Super Mercados Grandes are much more what I am looking for because they feel more American and I can usually find the things on my list.  Things I have had a hard time finding: baking powder, brown sugar, chocolate chips, yeast.  They sell flour and sugar in 1 kg (~2lbs) bags, which does not last long in baking.  I guess people here don’t bake much.

Normally I take the stroller and whatever fits into the stroller is what can come home with us.  That is not many groceries as you would think.  I feel that I’ve been to the grocery store every other day to get a cartful.  But we recently discovered that some of the big grocery stores offer free home delivery on certain days of the week.  So, you go and choose everything you want, pay for it and they box it up and deliver it about an hour later! How cool is that?  They keep frozen stuff in a freezer and bring everything right into the kitchen!

On another shopping note, we have recently been to El Corte Ingles (The English Court) and that is rather a cultural experience.  Lee called it, “A modern day bazaar”.  It is like a mall, or a department store, or both squished into one.  If you have ever been to a real market where tons of vendors are squished together all in one place, people galore and general mayhem, it was like that but the vendors are Chanel, Bvalgari, Salvatore Ferragamo and other big names that I didn’t know before I worked in retail, and everyone working wears suits.   The ‘store’ covers about 7 floors and has everything from clothing and shoes, to groceries and restaurants, to mobile phones and books.  But it all flows together like a department store, where you can buy anything at any register across the 7 floors.  Walking in there with all the people, I felt very small, and  bit overwhelmed.

Important note:  There are little parks everywhere.  I think we have 4 within 3  blocks of our house.  We visit them a lot. More later.