American in Spain

On Kings Day, my family woke up excited to see what presents the Magi had brought us. We looked out our sixth story window and saw fog. But there was something strange about the fog; it was moving very quickly and…billowing. Smoke! One of the old houses that our bedroom window overlooks was billowing white smoke, and a fireman was perched on a cherry picker spraying water down into the interior of the house. It’s three hours later as I write this and they are still spraying even more water and more smoke is billowing out. I took some photos.
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Today Nora’s daycare had a special Christmas party in which one of the activities is dressing like shepherds and making the 200 meter trek from daycare to the town church where they have an amazing nativity scene set up, called a belén, which also means Bethlehem and is the name of my sister-in-law. I finally understand the enormous banner they put outside the church every Christmas saying “¡Tu belén está aquí!” (Your Bethlehem is here!). It was amazing!
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The church in Colindres is really not very attractive on the outside. It’s a simple red brick structure that, if you didn’t notice the iron cross at the top of the bell tower or the big banner of El Papa hanging on the front, you wouldn’t know it was a church. In fact, just the other day, as I was walking by it, a car pulled up to the curb and the driver said, “¿Dónde está la iglesia?” Giving possibly the best driving instructions ever, I reached out and touched the building to identify its location.
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The following is a document written by my father, Paul Rasmussen, about his trip to visit us in Spain for Thanksgiving 2011.

Getting There

As booked months in advance through Orbitz, we would fly from Charlotte to Philadelphia on Friday afternoon and from Philly to Brussels Friday night. We would arrive in Brussels at 8:00 am their time, and, after a 3 hour lay-over in the airport, we would continue on to Bilbao, Spain, where our son would meet us. Two weeks before our trip, however, Orbitz notified me that Brussels Airline had cancelled the flight that would be completing our long day of travel. We were, they said, now booked on a flight leaving the following day. Our 3-hour layover in Brussels had turned into a 27-hour layover.
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In October and November, it’s very typical here to get strong winds coming from the south blowing warm African air over the Iberian peninsula. The Spaniards call it viento sur (south wind), and there is a mythology similar to that of full moons where the wind from the south makes odd people just a little more crazy. I have a love/hate relationship with viento sur.
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When I took that glorious evening walk last week, my photographic attentions were drawn particularly to the street lights that had just come on, and how their artificial light contrasted with the natural light still in the sky. So I set aside the photographs of street lights for this separate post. The whole experience of that night has taught me that I need to do more night photography, actually lugging my tripod out with me into the cool evening air. The play of street lights against buildings and sidewalks and the rest of the urban landscape is a particular itch that I hope to scratch at the earliest opportunity.
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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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My photography walk last Saturday that first went by the fishing harbor then turned inland. My camera and I admired autumn’s fanfare and the sunset’s long shadows. Some may search for the exotic with expensive holidays to Sharm el Sheikh, but with the right eye and attitude, a simple walk around the place where you live can be an exotic adventure.
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For more months than I’d like to admit, my DSLR’s CCD sensor has been dirty. There were just a few specks of dust, but I had to digitally retouch almost every single photo to remove the digital noise they caused. A couple weeks ago, I decided enough was enough, so I took my lens cloth that came with my sunglasses, flipped up the mirror (the R in DSLR) and wiped off the sensor. Of course this didn’t work at all. Every time I tried to wipe it, I added more debris than I wiped clean. I had to break down and order a sensor cleaning kit, which consists of some Q-tip-looking things the size of the sensor and some sensor cleaning liquid, which smells like it may be entirely made up of rubbing alcohol. I’m guessing that cleaning off the sensor is just something DSLR owners have to do every couple years, like replacing the tires on a car.
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This morning when I was walking Nora back from the town’s Friday market, a man was wandering around asking people if they knew when the race was coming through. What race? The human race? As I went about my daily errands, I gradually learned, through eavesdropping on people, that the Vuelta a España would be passing through town. This is huge!! It’s one of the biggest international cycling races, sort of Spain’s version of the Tour de France (vuelta = tour or lap). Then I remembered that I had heard that they were finishing one stage in the nearby town of Noja. Apparently the parties thrown at the end of each stage are absolutely amazing, and worth going to even if you don’t care about the sport at all, so if you’re a heavy partier looking for cheap holidays abroad… I learned that they were leaving Noja at 1:45 PM and that they were expected to go through Laredo at 2:10 PM, which would put them smack in Colindres at around 2:05 PM.
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