This Spanish Family

Our beautiful home exchange family

Joe and I arrived in Spain two weeks before our home exchange was to begin.  We like to squeeze as many weeks out of a vacation as we can.

After our week in Madrid, Cordoba and Sevilla we were invited by our home exchange family to spend the weekend with them.  How could we say no to that?  We immediately accepted their kind and generous offer.

They picked us up at the Granada train station and there were hugs and kisses all around.

We found out there was to be a barbecue later that evening with many of their friends and family in attendance.  Yahoo!  I love parties!

But first there were preparations to be made!  I offered to help in the kitchen.  Not my strong suit I'll grant you, but I do like to help out.

Who said I can't cook?

Los madres.

I can't believe these are going to be our digs for the month of August!

Joe likes to help out too.

New friends.

More new friends.

People have sent me messages asking how do we manage not understanding anything people are saying.  It's not bad!  Spanish is a beautiful language to the ear and we just let the music of it float over us.  We've discovered that it is quite freeing not understanding everything that is being said.

And when we do 'talk' to one another, we smile and laugh a lot.  And use big hand and arm gestures.  And I probably contort my face a lot.  In fact, I know I do.

The next morning they took us out for breakfast.  People!  Churros and chocolate.  BEST BREAKFAST EVER!  Drinking this chocolate is like velvet and heaven and richness sliding down your throat.  Dunk a churro into it and magic happens.

 Amazing chocolate.

 A mountain of churros.

The best food combo in the world.

After breakfast we drove out into the Andalusian countryside to a relative's cottage for lunch.  Lunch?  Didn't we just have breakfast?

 Abuela stirring the paella.

 Joe getting a jamon slicing lesson.

 Like a boss.

 Mmmmm...jamon.

 This amazing meal went on for three hours.

 Eating, eating and more eating.

 Joe fell into a deep food coma shortly after lunch was finished.

We walked back out to the car to drive home for a much needed siesta.

Thank goodness we had a three hour snooze in the afternoon because we'd been invited to attend their eldest daughter's graduation party from pharmacy school later that evening.

A happy family.

The next morning they drove us to their condo on the Costa Tropical in Salobreña.  They offered to let us stay there for our second week in Spain!  See what I mean when I say they are generous?

Back seat selfie.

Thank you Lopez family.  The kindness you have shown to Joe and I will never be forgotten.  We will always remember the weekend we spent with you in La Zubia.  Thank you for choosing us to exchange homes with!

Madrid, Cordoba y Sevilla

Our 10 months of waiting was finally over!  Our much anticipated trip to southern Spain was finally here.  We left Vancouver on July 18th and after 24 hours of travelling, finally landed in Madrid the following afternoon.  We had a small nap in our hotel room, but we didn't want to sleep too much or else we'd be awake all night.  We often find it best if we just plunge into the time zone we've landed in.

Madrid at night.

We found out there was a shuttle bus going from our hotel to downtown Madrid for the evening.  The only glitch?  It left the hotel at 8:30pm and wouldn't pick us up in the city centre until 12:45am.  I was a little unsure of this as I didn't know if I could stay awake that long.  But Joe said, "Come on, it'll be fun!"

So off we went to explore Madrid for a few hours.  

We wandered the backstreets of town until we came to a very loud, very crowded tapas bar.  "This is it!" said Joe.  He waded into the throng of locals, ordered 2 beers and tapas in his best high school Spanish and we were off to the races!

Joe and the locals.

The Spanish have a curious custom of throwing used napkins and toothpicks on the floor when eating and drinking at the bar.

We had a great evening wandering around Madrid.  But staying awake until the bus came to pick us up at 12:45am was very difficult for a certain someone who had been awake for a long time.  So Joe did what he does best.  He fell asleep.  On my shoulder.  On a park bench.  On a busy downtown street of Madrid.  And I did what any good wife would do.  I took a photo of him.

Travelling is so tiring...

Our next stop was Cordoba.  An ancient city full of Moorish and Roman influences.

The Mezquita, a ancient mosque-turned-cathedral.

A mere 3,000 pounds of multicolored glass and enamel cubes panel the walls and domes of the Mezquita's mosque.

The cathedral's bell tower as seen from Calle de Flores.

 Joe gazes longingly at the Iberian hams hanging in a shop window.  His dream is to smuggle one of these babies home with him, complete with the slicer stand.

The Spanish eat dinner at 10:00pm.  We happily adopted this custom.  We love going to bed with full stomachs.

Spain agrees with this guy.

Next stop, Sevilla!  A flamboyant city of bull-fighting, flamenco and tapas.  We enjoyed staying in the old Jewish Quarter for a few nights.

 Our hotel Las Casas de la Juderia.

The hotel's rooftop pool.  Joe had it all to himself one afternoon.  For about 8 minutes.

One night we luckily stumbled upon a street festival celebrating Santa Justa and Santa Rufina, the patron saints of Sevilla.

Iberian hams hang everywhere.  In bars, in shops, in restaurants.

Beautiful grilles let you look into the gorgeous courtyards and patios of Sevilla's homes.

'The Mushroom'.  Locals either love it or hate it.

A bird's eye view of colourful Sevilla.

Columbus' tomb.

Sevilla's flamenco scene is HOT HOT HOT!

The best tapas we've eaten so far was in Sevilla.  This tapa is an egg yolk on a bed of minced mushrooms sitting in a reduced wine sauce.  It was absolutely DELICIOUS!  I could have eaten ten.

It is so hot here in the summer many of the plazas and streets are shaded.

On top of 'The Mushroom'.

And that, my friends, was our first week in Spain.  

Good grief, I love this country.

You May Want To Consider Doing A House Exchange

Graffiti in the old town of Salobreña.

Not that Joe and I are home exchange experts, but we have hit the jackpot twice in a row now!  Readers of this blog will remember that last year's home exchange to England just fell out of the sky and into our laps.  A colleague's parents wanted to swap houses with someone in Squamish and we were the lucky someones!

As soon as we returned from our glorious summer in the UK, we decided to take the plunge and put our house on the home exchange website 'intervac.com'.  Our page wasn't on the website for more than a few hours and we got a lovely request from a family in southern Spain wanting to exchange houses with us for August 2014.

We checked our their place in La Zubia on the website, they checked out ours in Squamish.  An agreement was made to exchange vehicles (they drive a 2014 Land Rover but they will sadly have to make do with my 2008 Mazda 3) and airline tickets were bought immediately by both parties!

Honestly, what are you waiting for?  Check out intervac.com or any of the other home exchange websites.  There are good people out there who want to stay in your house while you stay in theirs.  It saves you a ton of money!

But the best part?  You make new friends!  We've gotten together with our English friends twice now and we were invited to their 70th birthday party when they were in Canada a couple of months ago.  And because we arrived in Spain early, the Spanish family have opened their hearts and their home to us.

So there you have it folks.  Do yourself a favour and exchange homes with another family during your next vacation.  You will not regret it.

Four Random Things. In Order of Bad To Good.

RANDOM THING #1

Why is it when one is madly preparing one's house for a Spanish home exchange family, things like this inevitably happen?  There I was, in my kitchen, minding my own beeswax, when I noticed one of the buttons on my dishwasher's control panel was askew.

"Hmmm,"  I thought.  "That's weird.  It wasn't like that yesterday."

So I did what any sane person would do.  I pushed it.  I prodded it.  I stuck my fingernail between the buttons and tried to flick it back into position.

FAIL!

The dishwasher repairman is coming on Tuesday.

So now our dishwasher will only wash the dishes on Power Scrub Plus.

RANDOM THING #2

The daylilies in my garden are so pretty right now.

Hemerocallis 'Dancing Veils'

I bought this double daylily many years ago on Mayne Island.

RANDOM THING #3

The super moon.  This is not a good picture and it was taken a couple of nights ago but I am anxiously awaiting the biggest moon of the summer.  I am so excited that Joe and I have borrowed a tent and are planning to sleep outside in our backyard tonight!  Camping at its finest.

Soon-to-be-super-moon.

RANDOM THING #4

Last night Joe and I went downtown to take in the new Friday night summer festivities.  I don't know if we went too late or too early, but the streets were pretty much empty.  So we decided to change plans.  We grabbed some pizza from the wood-fired pizza truck that was parked on the main drag, picked up a couple of cold beers from the nearby liquor store and headed to Nexen Beach to have our supper there.

While I was waiting in the car for Joe to get our pizzas, I watched as a couple walked by a lovely girl playing her guitar on the sidewalk.  They stopped in front of the young busker and spontaneously began to waltz.

Such a sweet moment.

Suppers at the beach are the best.

So this has been my life for the past few days.  Full of good things.  (I can't even count wrecking the button on the dishwasher control panel as a bad thing.  Just an inconvenient thing.)  I hope your week has been full of good things too!

Cleaning For Complete Strangers

Joe and I are getting ready for our second house exchange.  Good Lord, there is no better motivation for getting one's house in order than to have complete strangers come and live in it for the summer!

Last year at this time we were madly preparing our house and garden for the lovely Brits, Jo and Alan.  Just before we were to depart for their home in England, I was in my laundry room scouring grey soap scum off the washing machine agitator.  I was horrified when I noticed it!  It even had a high tide mark!  And the next thing I knew, I was in our woodshed frantically raking wood chips from the dirt floor.  Honestly, raking dirt may have been taking things a tad too far.

People have said to me, "Nancy, relax!  Your house is fine!  It is neat and tidy."

And I replied, "Yes, that is true.  But what is neat and tidy is what everyone can see.  Remember, this family is going to be fully living in my house.  That means they will be opening my kitchen cupboards, bathroom drawers, linen closets; they will be sleeping in our beds; bathing in my tub.  They will be seeing things that the general public do not normally see.  And I have to make bloody sure things are up to snuff!"

My 'to do' list is still a mile long.  And every time I cross a chore off the list, I seem to add another three.  I am confident I will get everything done before we leave.  But in the meantime, here is what I've been up to the past couple of days...

Vacuuming crumbs out of the cutlery drawer.

Washing all kitchen cupboards and drawers.

Crawling on my hands and knees around the house wiping down baseboards.

Mopping out the stinky garbage can.

Power-washing the driveway. 

We are REALLY looking forward to spending the summer in Spain.  And we hope our Spanish exchange family enjoys their time in our Squamish home.

Home Exchange = Clean House

I am happy.

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And in other breaking news....

UPDATE on the JOE-CAN'T-BUY-ANY-MORE-FOOD-UNTIL-WE-EAT-EVERYTHING-IN-THE HOUSE PROJECT:

Regular readers of this blog will remember Joe and I were involved in a project meant to rid our house of the mountains of food that resided within its walls.  I told Joe he had F.B.A:  Food Buying Addiction.  He told me a couple of things that had Fs in them.  (And the Fs sure as hell didn't stand for food.)

We started the project in January of this year and by March he wanted out.  I was okay with that.  I waved my white flag and surrendered.  He had made a substantial dent in the quantity of food in the house and for that I was grateful.

Well, whaddaya know?  Here it is the beginning of July, a good six months since the start of that ill-fated project.  And guess what?  Joe continues to systematically use up the food in the house and is showing great restraint in buying replacement food!

This is progress, people!  

Please take a look:

Left side of the freezer, January 2014

Left side of the freezer, July 2014

Right side of freezer, January 2014

Right side of freezer, July 2014

Our plan is give away the chest freezer and purchase a smaller, upright freezer in the fall.

I am proud of that guy.