We found our longer-term accommodations. In Spain, that generally means an 11-month lease. It's seriously lacking the Spanish charm we wanted, but it is literally across the street from your school. You walk out our door, walk down some stairs, walk up some other stairs, walk out the gate and BAM, there's the sign to your school that I posted last time.
However, the owners never received some of their shipments, so we're still living with lights hanging from the ceiling with no fixtures, everything echos because there's nothing on the walls and there aren't simple, but convenient things like toilet paper holders or towel racks. Also, our shipment still hasn't arrived, so we don't even have our own things to make it more homey. And I can't fail to mention the owner's extreme obsession with the color white. But not like the HGTV lady who always said her design style was "light, bright and airy." This is like some gray white, some beige white, some peachy white and then insane asylum white on the walls. The one place that isn't some version of white is the hideous peach tile in both of our bathrooms. Neither you or I are excited about that choice.
A few other things I wanted to document about our move:
- I said Xena did well with all of the crazy. This was mostly true. She was good on the plane, good for the night we had to spend in a hotel in Madrid and good at the Airbnb. However, at the airport in DFW, she clawed my neck pretty viciously. I spent my first few weeks in Spain looking rough!
- You and the crew are as tight as ever. You went to a Zombie event with Claudia, Renata and a young lady named Kertu. Then there was a costume party/sleepover with the same group plus a couple of boys (who left before the sleepover) and you went ice skating and then to a local hangout for Halloween proper with Claudia.
- Your school has been a-mah-zing. They're so communicative, they really seem to care about your success and your mental well being. It's kind of crazy compared to where we came from. The language barrier is still a point of frustration, but you're navigating that as best you can (navigaTING 🎶). You spend a couple of hours a week with Miss Magdalena (Miss Muffin) for private lessons and you really like working with her. You also found out yesterday that your class voted for their annual trip to go to Germany and Switzerland. My mind is kind of blown. I think the furthest I ever went with my school was Houston. And you know what they say about Houston!
- It's been really fun hearing you talk about school every night at dinner. You actually enjoy quite a few things about it and give us some pretty hilarious updates each night. It seems some boys in your class are really quite excited about your name. It started as a very exuberant "ah-Rileyyyy Buh-ryaaan!" but has evolved to a clipped "Rilay." There's also the fact that when you first started, everyone called you Relay. But that was actually your teachers and it was because of how vowels sound in Spanish.
- Also, you recently got cast as Cinderella in the school play! Claudia is the wicked stepmother and Miguel is the prince. We're very excited to see you three tear it up on stage. After all the BS you had with your middle school and high school theatre teachers, I'm thrilled that you're finally getting a chance to shine. (Since I think I missed writing about all that, the short version is that you were the victim of nepotism and favoritism in middle school that we were hoping would go away in high school. It did not.)
- Speaking of names, we rented a car for a couple of months. Its name was Not Gary. Now we bought a car and we're trying to figure out what to name her. In the meantime, she's Not Not Gary.
- We don't live super near any of them, but we've kept in touch with some people I've met through the moving to Spain group I'm part of and also with Arnaldo, whom I had met through Sabre and he lives in Fuengirola. Otherwise, your dad and I are a bit slow to make friends here. But we've had lunch a couple of times with Catherine, Ricky and their daughter Violet, who is a couple of years younger than you. They're British. And there are a handful of ladies my age and a little older: Sheri, Terri, Pam, Redfox and Raquel, all led by the woman who runs the business, Natasha. They've been a really great support system and resource for information as we figure things out here.
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