American in Spain

Tonight we went to see one of our favorite musicians, Rosana, in Santander. We saw her once before in 2007 and were absolutely floored by her genuine kindness and generosity as a performer. This time, rather than being in a venue where we could go right up to the stage if we so wished, we were in a theater, with assigned seats. Also, for some reason she was touring just before her new album comes out (later this month), so there were many songs that no one in the audience had heard before. I understand the business need to debut some new material, but the audience at a concert comes almost exclusively to hear songs they already know. She commented several times about how strange it was to sing to a crowd sitting down quietly listening.
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Este post es bilingüe para mis fans locales… Mirad después del inglés.

I’m doing this post in Spanish, too, for my local fans. So bear with me.

On Saturday, when I awoke from my nap, the missus instructed me to make a paté sandwich for my daughter’s afternoon snack, and go down to the town park where she was playing with her Spanish grandfather. I’m still not entirely sure what make me grab my camera on the way out the door, but I think I was expecting to get some cute grandfather-granddaughter playground shots. When I got to the park, they were playing on the swings, but soon there were too many kids at the playground, so we left and went for a walk…and what a beautiful walk it was! The tide was high, the sunset was beautiful and there was the tiniest sliver of a moon. I was so lucky that I’d taken my camera!
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A couple months ago, we started chatting in the street with our neighbors from three flights down, and their four-year-old daughter, Carmen, began playing with Nora. Immediately it was clear that Nora liked Carmen more than most children near her age. There was a certain je ne sais quoi chemistry between them as they giggled and chased after each other. So this year we decided to invite Carmen over for our household’s very American tradition of Halloween pumpkin carving.
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Several months ago, I was informed that we were to stop recycling plastic bottle caps of all kinds in our household because my mother-in-law was collecting them to give to a charity to help a sick boy. Immediately, I was skeptical and full of questions. I feel unsettled when I hear of a scheme like this and I can’t understand the motivations of all the parties involved. When beer or soda companies offer to support a local sports team if residents collect bottle caps of their products, that’s one thing; that makes sense to me. But this indiscriminate collecting? What could possibly be the motivation?
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One of the things that most irks me, as an expat, is when someone claims that an entire country full of people are rude or lacking in manners. I guarantee you that if you go to live for even a short period of time in another country, you will notice general cultural behaviors that are different from your own culture; some will seem odd, and others will seem rude. I can also guarantee you that for every odd cultural mannerism you notice, the natives around you will notice at least one or two about you. With the right attitude, these cultural differences can add to the adventure that is having foreign friends and traveling and living abroad.
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I am a member of the Laredo Club de Golf, the 2010 winner (I did not participate) of the Spanish Championship Between Clubs Without Courses. It’s tough, you see, to have a golf club without a course. We live in a little pocket in northern Spain where there are very, very few golf courses. In fact, the Laredo Club de Golf has more members than any courseless club in Spain. As a member of said club (membership dues are practically nothing without a course), I was invited to play in the 2011 Laredo Club de Golf Championship, played in LLanes, Asturias, nearly a 75 minute drive from Laredo. Due to my own timidity in my spousal “escape for 9 hours on a Saturday” permission submission, it was only two days before the event when I requested to participate. The captain of the club, Pedro, was quick to act and I was immediately entered. So it would come to be that I would get up at 7:45 in the morning on Saturday and drive 75 minutes west to the neighboring province of Asturias to participate in the 2011 championship.
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Earlier this week, my wife told me that, to celebrate a successful business meeting she was going to have with a client, she wanted to have pork chops and fried eggs for lunch. Then she said, “And save the big egg for me. Don’t use it for any other recipes.” I raised an eyebrow, “The big egg?” She smiled and said, “You’ll know it when you see it.”
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When I was sitting on the beach yesterday, I noticed something off in the distance out of the corner of my eye. In a split second, my unconscious pattern recognition neurons decided I’d seen a flock of birds. After several seconds of gazing at the phenomenon a kilometer down the beach, I’d determined that they were too big to be birds, and the flying was too orderly. They must be kites, my brain suggested, but…but…how?? They were flying in perfect formation, up, down, swooping, soaring, diving… What they really reminded me of was Boids, the artificial intelligence algorithm – one of my favorites! – that demonstrates how lifelike natural flocking behavior can be mimicked with very, very few lines of code.
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Today is a local holiday honoring the Virgin of the Good Apparition, a bit of pareidolia that occurred back in 1605 where some light reflecting off a nearby hermitage window reminded someone of the Virgin Mary. Three hundred years later, this particular virgin became the patron saint of the Santander Diocese, and it became a regional holiday. Quite a few people walk the 13 kilometers, mostly uphill, from Colindres to the Bien Aparecida church in Ampuero, and then there are picnics and music and a general festive atmosphere up there…or so I’m told. We’ll have to do the walk one year.
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Last weekend we went to the annual festival in Ampuero, a neighboring town of 4,000 residents. Every year, they hold a miniature version of the San Fermin festival in Pamplona, complete with all night partying in white clothes and red scarfs, a running of the bulls, and bullfighting. Of the six years we’ve lived here, we’ve gone several times. We knew from past experience that it’s nearly impossible to park in a small town that’s hosting three times its inhabitants in a festival, so we parked on the outskirts of town to save the time and stress of finding a closer spot.
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