Posted by: Dee Andrews | August 30, 2008

Casa Andrews

We are home. At least for the next ten months. It sounds like a lifetime given that we have been in transit since December, though when I really think about it, the six months in Boulder before we left and the three months of traveling in Spain this summer, have all went by very quickly! Ten months will fly by too, and then we will see what next adventure awaits us.

I have been thinking about “home” and what it means for as many months as I have not had one. I tend to be a home-body, a nester, someone who needs some solitude and comfort in each day. But I do like change and exploration and travel too. I’ve just always had a home to return to at the end of the journey. This trip has forced me to consider a mobile home, one that goes with me from place to place, hotel to hotel, villa to villa.

The easy and quick part of defining home for me is family. I have Scott and Grace and Emma with me. I have left behind parents, sisters, brothers, grandparents and friends and they are all already sorely missed, but I have their voices and pictures and memories to sustain me from place to place. And I am hopeful they will visit us and add to our experiences here. And there is something about that “absence makes the heart grow fonder” saying; I think it might be true. I’m willing to experiment with it for a time.

I recently ran across a book I am now eagerly awaiting from Amazon called A Sense of Place: Great Travel Writers Talk about Their Craft, Lives, and Inspiration. The author, Michael Shapiro, talks with seasoned travel writers, such as Bill Bryson, Frances Mayes and Isabel Allende, about their views on writing, the world and home. Perhaps it will help me define home and place while on the road.

Well, enough philosophizing about home and on to the details of our new one! It’s wonderful! We really just lucked out with it, through a Boulder connection none-the-less! (One of those small-world stories. Thanks Judy for putting us in touch with the Ramseys!) We moved into nuestra casa a week ago. We’ve all had a great first week of swimming in the pool, dinners on the many terraces, organizing our rooms, finding secret places to relax, breathe deep, read, smile.

The house is considered to be in the campo or “country!” I suppose given the big yards, views of the open valley and eight minute drive from the pueblo, it would be considered the country to Spanish families escaping their village houses to the weekend family country house. Many Spanish families who live in the village during the week all congregate to the family home on the weekends for long meals and lazy time together. Siblings, parents, cousins, grandchildren, young and old all spend the weekend together. It is a tradition that reminds me of Eudora and Sunday morning breakfasts after church where the entire extended family shows up for biscuits and gravy, eggs and sausage, and time together.

The house though doesn’t feel like the country as we would define it in America. It is more like the town has grown and neighborhoods with it and we are one of them, nestled under the Montgo. The mountain is behind our house, like a stage backdrop hanging from the sky, its facade so abrupt is doesn’t look real. Because it’s behind the house, I forget it’s there mostly, until I glance out my kitchen sink window and find it soaring up. Its sheer beauty makes me smile. It is most appreciated from the pool though and whether swimming laps or pretending to be a circus seal, diving through the floating pink ring, it is staring down at us.

The house suits us and our family. Lots of outdoor spaces and terraces, the pool, the mountains and valleys. There are tall pine trees along the east side of the house that remind me of Alma and our camping trips there when the wind whispers through the pines. And the pink and blues of the sunsets are calm and inspiring from the upstairs terrace. The kitchen is newly updated in the American style (i.e. big and with a refrigerator that has an ice and water dispenser on the freezer door!)

We look forward to another week of nesting before school starts, building our home, settling in, and finding our place.

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Posted in Expats, Javea, Life, Mountains, Moving, Sabbatical, Spain, Where to Stay | Tags: , , , , ,

Posted by: Dee Andrews | August 20, 2008

Ratatouille

We pulled into the roadside venta, eager for some lunch on their terrace and a cold beverage. The grapevine covered patio was shady and several tables full. We happily sat down for our main meal of the day.

The waiter approached with a friendly “Hola, buenas tardes.” We responded in like and all smiled at each other, the international greeting accepted by all. The waiter proceeded to tell us of the plato del dia. We all made out the word ratatouille, and Emma squealed her interest in having that for her lunch. Grace chimed in agreement. They have seen the Disney movie Ratatouille many times this summer and actually getting to eat the dish sounded fun! Scott and I figured why not, and cuatro ratatouilles were ordered when the waiter returned.

Some time later, manana, during our second round of beers, after the chickens in the back yard were explored and the girls went to the bathroom twice, our plates arrived. We were all silent for a moment, taking in the plates with one fried egg, french fries, and a stew-like mixture of peppers, onions, eggplant, tomatoes….ratatouille! The girls were thoughtful but didn’t put up any protests. It definitely didn’t look like Disney ratatouille though. With pinched looks on their faces, they picked up their forks and tentatively tasted. Grace liked it, but she is the one who likes bell peppers. Emma was a little more hesitate but made do with the tomatoes and egg.

It wasn’t the layered, baked Julia Child dish I was expecting either, but I like all of the ingredients and dug in. It was really quite good. Scott reminded me that it is a French peasant’s dish, and I discovered later at www.epicureantable.com that peasants across many countries all have their own version. In Spain, it’s actually called pisto, and the egg on top of ours made it a really home-cooked version. I suppose calling it ratatouille though gave it some Disney glamour!

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Posted in Children, Foreign Food, Spain, Traveling with Kids | Tags: , , , ,

Posted by: Dee Andrews | August 10, 2008

Bous a la Mar

We all really enjoyed this annual Bous a la Mar festival in Denia, Spain. It pits man against bull to see who will go into the sea first! The bull won this round, but there were plenty of times when the bull went into the sea too!

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Posted in Festivals, Spain | Tags: , , , , ,

Posted by: Dee Andrews | August 1, 2008

Donkey in Gaucin

Ran into this ass today, right in the middle of the street…
of course, Grace had to have her picture taken with him!

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Posted in Children, Gaucin, Sabbatical, Spain | Tags: , ,

Posted by: Dee Andrews | July 29, 2008

Gaucin Village House

Front Door of our Village House in Gaucin

Front Door of our Village House in Gaucin

Oops, this post has moved to my new blog, Travel and Travails. If you’re interested in the white Spanish village of Gaucin, I highly recommend it! Click here to read about the village house we rented in Gaucin and our experience in this charming Spanish village.

For other Spanish villages, I recommend Frigiliana, near Nerja, and Javea, just south of Valencia.

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Posted by: Dee Andrews | July 24, 2008

Javea, Spain: Our New Home!

After a year of talking, dreaming, researching and planning, we finally have picked a place to live! Javea, Spain will be home for the next year or so. It’s quite amazing and sometimes overwhelming to consider the world and think about where you would want to live. Initially you have wanderlust, and it’s fun and exciting to dream about all kinds of places. Beautiful white sand beaches, one of those quaint little huts, buying your daily meal at the market. Then you eventually start to consider you are a family of four, you like plumbing and septic systems, aren’t sure you want to live in the jungle and share your bed with scorpions, and have two kids who, while adventurous eaters, consider a mussel a cute little animal they wouldn’t ever consider eating.

First world, here we come. For us, a Spanish speaking country near a beach was the main driver. Eventually we threw in some basic infrastructure and moderate 75 degree average weather. School options narrowed it down further. Once we decided upon Spain and the coast, we started looking for towns that weren’t too overrun with foreign tourists and high-rise condos. A friend of a friend, who grew up in Madrid, mentioned the beach towns south of Valencia, where her family used to vacation when she was young. A look at the map, two international school options, and Javea made it into the top three!

We had our first glimpse of Javea when we spent our first three days there on our way down the coast from Barcelona to Nerja. We drove into Javea late evening, the sun not quite down, but the light fading, and ventured down country-esque roads looking for the town and our rental apartment. We found l’Arenal which appeared to be a main commercial area, the sandy beach running parallel a block over, and after stopping to ask for directions, wound up into a neighborhood to find the Aparthotel Pinosol. It turned out to be a great find with several pools, a restaurant and nice clean two bedroom apartment in a great location. We headed back to the arenal at 10:00pm that night to find dinner. We were pleasantly surprised to find the boardwalk alive with families, Spaniards just beginning to have dinner, kids still running through the sand. We had a great dinner at the corner pizzeria, listened to the Spanish of the waiters and other customers and felt like we’d landed in a pretty good place!

Six weeks later, after spending time down south on the Costa de Sol, we knew Javea was the place for us. While it is busy in July and August with tourists visiting its great beaches and many restaurants, Javea supposedly settles back down to a sleepy town of 28,000 locals after that. There are three main areas: el Arenal, the port and old town. One of the things we enjoyed on our first visit, while dining in the port, was the many old ladies out at midnight slowly walking home up the winding streets after dinner out. They had a cane or the arm of a daughter-in-law, and we decided there must be plenty of people who lived and worked in Javea if the old ladies were here.

One of the other captivating things about Javea is the Montgo. It is a huge wall of rock, suddenly rising up out of the valley and forming a natural border with Denia, located on its northern side. It feels like you’re driving along these little one-way country rounds and then…. caramba…..you come around a corner and there it is! At 753m high (that’s 2,471 feet for us Americans,) it is the second highest peak so close to the Mediterranean Sea. We found a house to rent right under it. What more could we ask for….the beach is ten minutes away, an immense mountain behind us and a valley of orange groves spread out below….it’s starting to feel like we’ve found a home!

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Posted in Beach, Expats, Javea, Mountains, Moving, Sabbatical, Spain, Where to Stay | Tags: , , ,

Posted by: Dee Andrews | July 21, 2008

Laundry on the Line

I have been out hanging up laundry on the clothes line, remembering my Grandma Martha and the stories about how her clothesline was the tidiest and most organized in all of Eudora, Kansas. The German orderliness in her lined up the four pairs of overalls, the three stair-stepped pairs of Don, Paul and Dee and then Grandpa Bert’s. Next came the Sunday white shirts and trousers. When I was a little girl spending my summer days with her, I helped hang up the sheets and towels, and here I am now, in Spain, pinning up shirts and shorts and little girl socks with the village ladies.

A clothes dryer is a rarity here. It is much more common to see everyone’s laundry strung out the window, across the balcony, along the roof-top terrace line. Supposedly it is only for two weeks in the winter when it becomes a problem and you have wet clothes. Mostly the sun beats down and dries them in no time. The girls miss the softness of their clothes out of the dryer; Scott and I are enjoying the fresh smell and crispness to ours.

The washing machine too is a whole new process. The shortest cycle here must be about 47 minutes. Don’t dare choose the one for whites with hot water and various soakings as it may be tomorrow before they stop washing. I remind myself it’s all part of slowing down. The longer cycles I suppose give me more time to write and ponder life and remember my days with Grandma.

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Posted in Life, Spain | Tags: , , ,

Posted by: Dee Andrews | July 12, 2008

Now, if only I knew where to find pig’s cheek!

Ran across this recipe this morning. I did want to experience another culture, guess that means eating the local delicacies too!

Olleta de blat picat
Ingredients:
• wheat flour
• dry white beans
• chard
• turnips
• parsnip
• carrot
• garlic
• tomato
• pork ribs
• pork bones
• pig’s cheek
• onion
• olive oil
• salt
• water

Preparation:
Fry the meat with the chopped onion, garlic and tomato.
Add the dry white beans, wheat flour, meat and veggies.
Cover it all with water.
Add the salt, bring to boil, cook medium heat for 3 hours approximately…or until pig’s cheek is done, to taste.

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Posted by: Dee Andrews | July 12, 2008

The Bells of Benimeli

I realize my blog posts dried up there for about ten days! Has it really been that long? I’m losing track of time and days, a hallmark sign of a good vacation. Thankfully the church bells of Benimeli give me a vague sense of the time, chiming out the hours, as my watch battery gave out on me on our third day in Spain. I took it as a sign to not get another one.

We are now in Benimeli, a very small village of about 362 people, nestled in the Rectoria Valley, about thirty minutes drive time from the beach in Javea, just south of Valencia. It too is a quaint and beautiful Spanish village! I realize they’re every where now! Our rental house, El Sequer, and its view is pure storybook. The house itself is an old riu-rau, which once upon a time was a stone barn used for drying grapes and making raisins. It sits up against the mountain so has a view across the whole valley with the town falling down below. The church steeple in Benimeli pokes up into our view everyday, right over the stone fence, with the valley spread out behind. The church bell chimes the hour, twice actually, for those of us who don’t count correctly the first time. It’s one of my favorite things about this place. The house has been renovated with every detail in mind, and Jenny and Oswaldo have been wonderful hosts, letting us know where to find the best beaches and calling to remind us of the paella festival in the neighboring town of Denia. They had stocked the house with bread and beers, tea and hot cocoa for the morning, and the most wonderful honey and almond coca cake from Delores at the local bakery. We were surprised and a little distressed to not find a coffee pot that first morning. It turned up two days later, a crazy contraption that looks like one you’d take camping. It’s metal and screws all together and heats on the stove. Fortunately or not, it only makes about three tiny tiny cups of coffee so my morning coffee intake has been severely reduced.

Most of our time the past ten days has been in moving/driving/settling to our new home here and scrambling around for more visa documents that the Spanish Consulate finally decided to ask us for. We applied for our visas in February; it’s now July. Welcome to our experience with Spanish paperwork! New friends we have met here told us it took them 18 months for their NIE card and 22 months to get their driver’s license. Well, we’ll be back in Boulder by then! Needless to say, we jumped at the consulate’s requests and spent our last days in Nerja finding a scanner to scan our FBI records and a translator to translate them. How one actually translates fingerprints is beyond me, but it seems to be status quo for those who work in that industry.

New town also means finding new internet access. Luckily for us, we finally discovered that some official Department in Spain decided that the rural areas here needed a network so they too could have access. So every little town square has about 2 bars of wireless strength and once we figured out how to subscribe, we now can sit in Benimeli’s little church square and email away. Sending attachments and calling on Skype aren’t too reliable because of the weak signal, but we’re making some progress! Give us time!

Ah, there go the church bells again! Must be time for morning coffee!

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Posted in Immigration, Javea, Spain, Where to Stay | Tags: , , , , , , ,

Posted by: Dee Andrews | June 30, 2008

Gaucin, Spain

When Scott and I decided to move abroad, we spent months reading and researching countries and towns, but we both knew from traveling that there is only so much you can get from paper and pictures. At some point, you really have to visit to understand what you’re getting into! I distinctly remember the house in Portugal I was so excited about only to discover upon arrival that the neighbors were on top of us and the bedrooms smelled like they hadn’t been used since they were built, judging from the linoleum on the floor, probably in 1964! It was awful. We managed two nights before finding another villa ten minutes down the beach.

So with that experience in mind, we decided to use this summer to scout out the towns we were considering up and down the coasts of Spain. We narrowed it down to four places (Frigiliana/Nerja, Javea, Casares and Gaucin) and rented a house for three weeks in each. Our four choices were based upon being relatively small (we didn’t want to live in a city,) near the beach, having an international school nearby and still having a flavor of Spain. While you might wonder about this last thought, given we were moving to Spain, wouldn’t everything have that flavor, we knew that towns along the Costa del Sol were fairly developed resort towns. We weren’t looking for a Marbella or Malaga experience, which are mostly tourist destinations and home to Brits looking for better weather than England offers, so we looked on Google maps for towns up off the coast by about 30 minutes.

By this point in our journey, we had been to three of the four towns and had a few days to thin-slice each of them. (If you haven’t read Blink, by Malcolm Gladwall, you should! It’s about making decisions with your gut, taking a “thin-slice” of something and going with it, instead of over-analyzing and second-guessing yourself.) So we were off to see Gaucin and get our first live impression while we were in the general area. (We were not staying in Gaucin until August so wanted to have a look before heading up north to Javea for most of July.) Upon leaving Casares, which I’ve said, was beautiful but perhaps too small for us, we headed up the mountains further. It only got better in terms of the scenery! Perhaps living in Boulder, I’ve fallen hard for mountain living, because these mountains here too were speaking to me! Beautiful colors and forests, dramatic in how they suddenly rise up and drop off. And then we came upon the goats! That must be the Kansas farm-girl in me! A herd of goats were on the road in front of us, their bells tolling as they scampered across the road and headed down to the creek for water. Our car was surrounded by them, the girls squealing their delight, me whipping out my camera, of course! So far I was enjoying the drive to Gaucin and eager to see if it offered the beauty of Casares with a few more people and restaurants….and perhaps a bookstore? The village itself finally came into view, perched too on top of a mountain, as all good villages do to naturally defend themselves from invaders hundred and hundreds of years ago. We turned into town and found parking straight away, in front of the organic market, none-the-less. Hum. No signs for a tourist office so we went into the market for some general directions. It reminded me of what homegrown Wild Oats must have been like when it opened in the 60s or 70s. Fairly small but full of fresh vegetables and fruits, natural soaps and sunscreens and even two computer terminals for that elusive internet connection! Hum.

We spent the morning wandering around and taking our thin-slice. It too offered amazing views of the countryside. Breathtaking, relaxing, calming. I could envision waking up to a coffee and time on the terrace watching the sun rise. It was bigger than Casares, more restaurants and shops and what looked like a fairly new public school. That might prove to be the deciding factor as we were still not able to enroll without our visas. The drive back to Nerja, about two hours, gave us time to ponder. Gaucin offered the most so far from a small Spanish village, but was it enough for a long period of time? A perfect relaxing vacation for sure, but I still needed to think about a year there. Perhaps Gaucin would take more than a blink!

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Posted in Gaucin, Mountains, Spain | Tags: , , ,

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