American in Spain

You know how annoying it is when you take your modern digital point-and-shoot camera or mobile phone to take a photograph and the darn thing is in “video” mode? If you’re like me, you’ve taken countless one or two second videos when you thought you were taking a photograph. Well, it turns out that it’s also annoying when you are a two year old with your father’s mobile phone and you want to take a photograph of your father, the dinner he is preparing, and yourself.

I found the following video on my phone recently. I had no idea that she had shot it.
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Before her three week vacation of non-stop 24-hour grandparent attention, Nora was pretty good about going to daycare. After her lunch, she’d say, “And now we have to go to daycare!” and hop in her stroller for me to take her. After vacation, it’s been more of a struggle. The first two days, she cried for 90 minutes straight until her favorite daycare provider, Nela, arrived for her afternoon shift. The daycare boss, Adela, wisely commented that, “Well sure, it’s a struggle for all of us to go back to daily routines after a vacation, and the longer the vacation, the harder it is.” It was one thing back before she could talk, when she would cry when I dropped her off at daycare, but now that she can say, “Daddy, are you going to leave? Why are you leaving? Stay here with Nora! Take me with you!”, it’s somewhat more heartbreaking. (more…)

Nora continues to excel lingually in both English and Spanish. Oh, wait, she didn’t used to. Her English got a much needed boost on our fortnight (a flight attendant asked why we were going for only four nights) visit to the United States. When we arrived, she was speaking about 20% English, and when we left, she was using English about 90% of the time, even with her mother.

As parents often do, I had high expectations for her to not confuse the two languages upon returning to Spain. However, she did, in fact, speak a few sentences to her abuelos in English. I had to teach my mother-in-law that “me too” means “yo también” and what a “potty” is. She said, “Oh, I’ll remember that for sure, since my pharmacist is named Poti.”
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Over the past several weeks, as a project for his own personal blog, a colleague of mine, Cole Watts, has been interviewing me about my blogging over email. It was a fun experience, as I’ve never been interviewed as if I knew something about anything, well, almost never. I suspect many of my readers might be wondering these exact questions about me, but perhaps not. Here, reproduced with permission, in its entirety, is Cole Watts’ interview of Erik Rasmussen, blogging expert.

Most of us daydream about traveling but many of us will often not leave the United States. I’ve recently had the opportunity to be a coworker of Erik Rasmussen, who took the idea of traveling and ran with it. Erik currently resides in Spain and is known to some as an American in Spain.
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Recently, I mentioned that Nora now knows how to respond to “How are you?” with “I’m fine, thank you.” Yesterday, she looked so cute in her dress and pigtails that I decided to interview her on a few things to see how her conversational skills are developing. She did need a little coaching, even on questions she definitely knows the answer to. I can’t help but giggle every time she says “I’m fine. Thank you!”
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My parents are visiting this week. That means Nora is sleeping in our room for the first time in months. The first night they were here, Nora woke up at around midnight and cried and cried, demanding water, but then taking only a sip and pushing it away, and the immediately demanding more water when it was clear that I was going back to bed instead of giving her my undivided attention. After a half hour of trying various things, her mother mentioned that she needed to be quiet because Grandma and Grandpa were sleeping in the next room. Completely unexpectedly to us, Nora nodded and repeated “They’re sleeping. Don’t wake them,” lay down, and stopped crying. Two hours later when she started crying again, her mother said, “Be quiet. They’re sleeping,” and Nora obeyed, repeating the sentence to herself. It was really bizarre.
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