One week down...

Well, we are just over a week into our journey, and we are doing great. We have taken a road trip to the Mediterranean Sea and had some cervezas on the beach, walked around the old town of Granada and stopped in little bars for tapas, woke up on Sunday and went to a Catholic Pentecost mass in Spanish and Latin in the old Catedral, and went climbing in the Sierra Nevada mountains…but most of all, started to ease into our new life.

While the Instagram and Facebook pictures may look glamourous and carefree, it is easy to spend a day just trying to complete one simple task, like finding a place to print, scan, and email a legal document, or trying to get a car service to come jump our dead battery, or looking for a longer-term rental apartment. All relatively easy tasks, but in a new land and new language present themselves differently. All in all, though, I think we are doing a good job of keeping a sense of normalcy in a rather abnormal situation. Colette definitely helps with that. Her naps and relatively early bed-time (10pm!) are keeping us to a semblance of a schedule.

What is interesting to me is that I can now see how retired people fill their day. I always wondered what they did, but they do this! And somehow it is still rewarding and interesting, with a few less restrictions.

A typical day looks like this…Colette wakes up between 8 and 9, and one of us gets up to feed her breakfast while the other lays in bed for a bit. We eventually all get up and have a little coffee and snack before we head out of the apartment to do XYZ, which usually involves a lot of wandering around the city, stopping at parks for Colette to run and play in, and getting lost. Kate and I perform a basic task, like making a phone call, and then find a place to eat lunch around 1-2pm. We usually pick the meal of day, which is typically a starter, a main course, a dessert, a drink and bread for around $10 per person. Not bad. Then we usually wander a little more, eventually getting Colette back for a nap (or quiet time in her room) while we catch up on emails or phone calls back home (as it is +7 hours here to CDT in the US) to catch their morning. When she gets up (around 5pm), we head back out to discover a new part of the city, eventually finding a nice café or bar to grab a snack and drink while Colette runs around (she has lots of energy). After that, we may head back to our place, or the park for a bit before making a small dinner at home around 9pm. A quick shower for Colette and she goes to bed, while Kate and I watch a little Netflix or GoT episode. Not bad huh?

Kate and I are also working on our Spanish, and trying to get Colette to use a few words here and there. Her being just 2.5, she seems to understand the words, but doesn’t like to use the Spanish words, sticking only to the English. Kate is much more advanced than me, go figure, but I am getting there. We try to use nap time as our study time, as it usually affords an hour or so for Duolingo, our audio books, or dictionary time.

Tomorrow, while Kate and Colette hopefully finalize paperwork for the new apartment (fingers crossed!), I am going to go check out the highest point in Spain, Mulhacén, at around 3500m in the Sierra Nevada. It is unseasonably cold right now, so lots of snow might impact any progress at all. We will see… Stay tuned!