On the evening of August 6, we arrived in Higuera de la Serena, my wife’s family’s summer town in Extremadura, the original hometown of her maternal grandmother, and town where her mother grew up. Despite only having known my wife for fewer than twelve years, this was the third time I have watched the Summer Olympics from Extremadura, having visited every August since 2003.
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My wife and I arrived in my father-in-law’s hometown of Zahínos on the evening of Saturday, August 4th, right at the height of the town’s summer festival. Our daughter, Nora, who had not seen us in a week was ecstatic to be reunited with us. After sitting and chatting for a while with my wife’s aunt, uncle and cousins, we headed down to the town fairgrounds for the most Spanish of all pastimes. A portable bullring had been set up and there were two bullfighters, including a hometown lad, scheduled to perform.
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I was going through some old photos and videos and discovered this gem that my mother-in-law recorded last Easter when she and my wife took Nora down to Extremadura and left me de Rodriguez. It was a great example of her Spanish language skills at 25 months old. Now, however, after the death of her great-grandfather, it’s a poignant video of them playing together in at his house in Extremadura. They had a really great time playing together that week.
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When we go on summer vacations in Extremadura, as we do most Augusts, the weather is usually too hot to do much besides drink and sleep during the day, but at dusk, it’s just the right temperature for a nice stroll through the countryside. Just after sunset, the stars come out with a light-pollution-free brilliance that I almost never get to enjoy. In the past, I have been a bit more serious about photographing the serene beauty of an Extremadura sunset, but this year, in a marriage of convenience and laziness, I decided to only take my iPhone with me.
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I had my third ever run-in with the traffic division of the Guardia Civil, Spain’s national police force, this past week. I was on my way out of Higuera de la Serena, the small town in Extremadura, southern Spain, where we spend a week each August drinking beer and complaining about the heat. Luckily, it was early in the day, before the day’s imbibing had begun. Before I explain what happened, let me briefly summarize my first Guardia Civil encounter, because the lessons it taught me came in handy this week.
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When my in-laws came back from their annual Easter trip to the La Serena region of Spain, they brought back a wheel of the typical cheese of the region, Queso de la Serena. It’s made from the milk of Merino sheep, and it takes almost two dozen sheep to product enough milk for a kilogram of cheese. It’s coagulated using a natural vegetable rennet taken from the cardoon, a thistle-like plant related to the artichoke. The coagulation happens very slowly, allowing for a rich, but tart, flavor to develop. Cheeses coagulated with cardoon tend to be very creamy, making the interior of the cheese very oozy. In fact, a traditional way to eat it is by slicing off the top and eating the creamy inside with a spoon. I’ve never done that, but it sounds wonderful.
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It’s been over a week since I’ve seen my daughter, and I miss her a lot. Her grandparents will be bringing her back on Sunday. If words from the front line are to be beleived, Nora is being extremely well behaved, is being polite to strangers, and even offering up her cheek to be kissed by total strangers (giving kisses is reserved for loved ones). Perhaps this kiss reception was learned with her “friend” Carla.
Carla is the daughter of one of Marga’s best friends from Extremadura. Nora and Carla first “met” last June in Madrid. Even though Carla was born 25 days after Nora, she is waaaay more advanced than Nora by just about every available metric. She walks freely, speaks several words, follows instructions, and gives people kisses…man, does she give some kisses! Carla’s parents suggest that it might be from spending 7 hours in daycare every day (Nora spends 3) with older kids that challenges her to excel. Nora won’t be where Carla is now for another four months.
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I am unable to watch this video without laughing. It’s my favorite video I recorded last weekend. It demonstrates both how Nora does a good job of commanding her mother to do her bidding and just now irritated she gets when her great-grandfather does or says anything. I declined to subtitle it because the conversation is so mundane. At one point, she does call him something that sounded to all the Spanish ears like “malo” (bad).
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Last Friday, August 6, my wife and I headed down to Extremadura to see our daughter, Nora, who had been down there the entire previous week with her grandparents and great-grandfather. It was a little disappointing not to be able to present her to our friends down there, as most of them had already seen her earlier in the week. She clearly recognized us (whew!), but was pretty unenthusiastic about it. We were immediately merged into her ordered hierarchy of people she likes to be with:
She spends a good portion of her time in her great-grandfather’s house prohibiting him from touching things. If he puts his hand on a chair or table or toy or glass, even if the object is across the room from her, she will race over (still holding someone’s hand) shouting, “No no no no no!!” and remove his hand from the object in his home that he had the nerve to touch. It’s actually pretty cute, and I think she understands that it’s a bit of a game. He certainly does.
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Here are a few photos from my summer vacation in Extremadura that fell through the cracks. As the title implies they are mainly of grass and pigs.
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Whitby Harbour, UK
Fantastic.
Four year olds are pure id.
“Daddy, after I finish this dessert, I want another bowl filled to the top with nothing but [whipped] cream. Okay?”
Convinced my daughter to watch Star Wars with me by promising that it had a princess.
George Catlin, Prairie Meadows Burning, 1832
From the Smithsonian American Art Museum:
George Catlin painted ominous, swirling clouds of black smoke that loom out of the distance and drive the Indians before them. The artist was an eyewitness to such terrifying events, and described the fire’s “thunder rumbling as it goes.” But he also wrote that prairie fires made for “some of the most beautiful scenes that are to be witnessed in this country, and also some of the most sublime.”
