Weekend Trip: Nerja

First, I forgot to mention some exciting news in my last post: on Friday Lindsay got invited to a birthday party!! And then tonight at dinner time the phone rang, and it was the mother of Lindsay's favorite friend at school Sofia, and they invited her over for a play date tomorrow after school. This was so exciting for me, and particularly good timing for Lindsay, who had her first wave of homesickness today and cried for quite awhile tonight that she doesn't want to be here any more.  She has been so positive and energetic this whole time, it's natural that at some point she would hit a wall. I remember from my time in Chile that it's absolutely exhausting to listen to and speak Spanish every day, in addition to all the emotional processing it takes to navigate a new school with new friends and teachers in a new country. My heart aches for her - she doesn't cry hard very often and she did tonight. But anyway... it's a blessing that the 6th grade girls are so nice to her and I'm so grateful for those invitations.

On a side note while I'm thinking about it, before I move onto our weekend trip to Nerja: I keep thinking how important it is as a parent to be a good listener. I read Parent Effectiveness Training two years ago and it was hugely important for me - I often find myself literally biting my lips closed to keep from talking when my kids are telling me about difficulties, and I try to just give cues to show I'm listening like "oh wow, tell me more about that" rather than making any sort of judgement. And often it yields such a better result than the times that I jump in with my opinion or advice. For example last week, Sophie was all out of sorts, and through active listening I discovered that the older boys at the school are not cognizant of the younger kids and often play too rough - Sophie had been hit in the head by a ball really hard and had been quite hurt. But when I picked her up from school she hadn't mentioned it. I was so glad that it came out later - it helped me understand why her tears came more easily and I was suddenly full of compassion for sweet little her (and also proud of Lindsay to hear that she ran to Sophie's aid and held her at recess). Also, active listening really helped me with Lindsay tonight - when she was crying I was so tempted to tell her about times from my life when I had struggled but how glad I was that I pushed through, etc.... and I certainly will share those at another time. But thanks to P.E.T. I just bit my tongue and encouraged her to talk, and I just sat there with her and hugged her while she told me all about it. I just hugged and hugged and said "that is hard, Lindsay. I love you so much." She declined my offer of help with her homework but she brought it into the bathroom where I was washing Sophie and Stone's hair and then followed me wherever I went to do her homework by me, and kept reaching out and patting my arm or giving me little kisses. I think all she needed to know is that I was on her team, pulling for her and available to help if she needed me - and I think she also sensed that because I hadn't tried to solve her problem for her, I trusted her to get through it on her own. Earlier she had been saying emphatically "I DO NOT WANT TO GO TO SCHOOL TOMORROW" and how much she wanted to go home, and I just said "oh, you are really dreading it" etc... I literally said nothing to "solve" the problem, and by the end of the evening she had perked up and was laying school clothes out and as I said, so affectionate with me. I was amazed and so grateful I read that book!! Thank you Abby, for mentioning it so many times until I finally read it.

Ok, on to our weekend trip! At the last minute on Friday night we decided to get out of town and visit the coast, where we had considered moving when we visited last Spring. Rick Steves recommended Nerja as his favorite, so we rented a car (turned out to be cheaper than 6 train tickets) and packed our back packs for a weekend away! 

Highlights:

Car ride through Southern Spain. There was a road-side sign with icons for Gas, Food, Rest Stop and... Castle. You can see the castle tower really tiny on the top hill. I wish I could have snapped a picture of the sign as we passed it.

The surprise of the trip: The Nerja Caves. We were expecting some small caves with neat stalactites and stalagmites... we were stunned when we entered an underground world of the most incredible, otherworldly formations we had ever seen. Erik and I agreed it was on our top 5 list of most amazing things we've ever seen in our lives. AND not only did it have the Guiness Book of World Records largest stalagmite column, it also held 25,000 year old remains of human cave dwellers - skeletons, pottery, a bone necklace, and paintings on the walls.

Erik teaches the kids how to skip rocks on the Mediterranean Sea.

Today as we drove home Stone said his favorite part of the trip was the hotel buffet because he got churros con chocolate. 

Trip Advisor's #1 Nerja activity was the Donkey Sanctuary. Here a British man houses and cares for abandoned and abused animals. The kids had fun feeding the animals vegetables but Lucy was unnerved by the huge wandering pigs who poked their snouts at our legs, and Erik and I were grossed out and saddened by the swarms of flies and general grossness of the place. We stayed like 20 minutes, left a donation and cursed Trip Advisor. ;)

The town of Nerja has two parts: the ancient, whitewashed village (existing since Medeival Moorish times) and the touristy coastal resort town. Both were beautiful!

We ate the best gelato EVER while gazing at this view 

This area was used as a lookout point for hundreds of years - pirates would often raid this coast, and this cannon is from the 1800's, when Spanish coast guards had to defend the land from Napoleon's ships.

King Alfonso XII came here after a huge earthquake in 1885 and mobilized the people to re-build the city. He commented that this rock jutting out over the sea was "The Balcony of Europe," and the name stuck. 

Walking down to the beach from Europe's balcony, this is the town of Nerja.

One of the 5 boys who found the Caves of Nerja in 1959 now runs a top-rated paella restaurant on the beach (that's a sand floor under our feet). The kids had been so excited to meet him and ask him what it was like to find the caves, but to their great disappointment he wasn't there.

We loved the paella but couldn't bring ourselves to eat the prawns with their legs, antennae and faces still attached. We removed them immediately but whenever Stone would see a dark herb in his food he would say "An eyeball!! You left in an eyeball!!"

They cooked the paella in these massive iron skillets over an open flame

We cooled down with a swim in the hotel pool before hopping in the car for the drive home.

One thing I didn't get a photo of: Many Spanish women of all shapes and sizes and ages wear one-piece bathing suits. As in, only the bottom piece of a bikini. We were shocked the first day but by the second day we were (kind of) used to it. Lindsay asked me if there would ever be any circumstance in which I would go topless on a beach, which was interesting to think about. I said "only if I were alone, but even then I probably wouldn't." She then asked if I thought any of my friends ever would. And so now I am so curious! What are the circumstances under which any of my friends would go topless? The question made me laugh.

Praying for a happy day at school for my sweet little lovies tomorrow...