By popular demand: Lindsay in Concert!

Olé!!

 And here are some things we've seen during the past 24 hours:

Sophie and Stone and I sometimes go on evening walks around the block after dinner

And they try to climb in the house like SpiderMan (and Woman)

The school Bethlehem exhibit is getting close to completion! I love the little garden with carrots and cauliflower

Today when I picked them up from school I took them to "Casa de los Pilatos" - a house of a wealthy 15th-Century aristocrat who went to Israel and loved Pilate's palace and wanted to build himself one of equal splendor and similar style, so he had original Roman and Italian Renaissance sculptures delivered from Italy, mixed with Islamic and Spanish styles. 

His courtyard

The girls listening to dismally boring audio guides. I mean, pull-you-hair-out boring. Who writes those things??? A good teacher can make any subject exciting; that audio guide took a subject that had a million interesting details and stories begging to be told... and made it monotonous and dry as a stale Saltine. Such a shame! I may re-think my plans in Literacy, Women's Issues and clean water for Africa, and dedicate my life to a Museum Audio Guide Revolution. 

This was Lindsay's favorite part. She loves Minerva (Athena).

Take a good look at that painting. I told the girls I was ordering a print for our new family room and they just loved that. I told them it will help us make new friends in our new neighborhood - everyone wants interesting friends, right?
(That's a bearded lady. A real person in Italy in the 1500's, and that's her suckling baby, and her husband, whose name was Felippi Vesippi. Some people just can't catch a break!)

The arms and heads are the first thing to go

We loved this garden, though it was freezing!!!

Lucy noticed a hidden door - these were sometimes used as quick escapes to secret hideouts in times of danger

Every single square inch decorated so ornately - this  means Spain to me

Churches we see on our way home

Almost every street name is religious - this is Saint Mary the White (meaning pure). I am trying to find a store to sell me tiles like that - I love them.

This shows how narrow the streets are

I LOVE Flamenco dresses

Our favorite pizza place across from the Cathedral

Tomorrow we go to Cordoba!! We have read the children's book The Most Magnificent Mosque over and over and are so excited to see the majestic mosque that was beloved by Muslim, Christian and Jew alike and spared by the conquering Catholics. There is also a synagogue still standing - I have been excited to see this city since we arrived in Spain.

"It's been awesome. It's been wild. It's been awful. It's been great."

That was the quote from Erik this morning as he summed up how we would describe this trip when we get home. He was laughing as I let my frustrations fly, just having returned from the morning bike-ride to school (he was up until 4 am for the second night in a row, so he slept in and I took them by myself. Most days he comes too).

Amy: "I am SO DONE with this!!! I am done biking over cobblestone streets with cars and motorcycles flying by, not watching - yesterday a motorcycle came THIS CLOSE to crashing into Lucy right in front of me as we rode across a CROSSWALK with a GREEN LIGHT. Daily I have to scream "STOP!!!!" at the top of my lungs so my children don't get hit. And "Careful!!!" of the dog messes (I was pretty ticked off so I actually said "dog crap" but I know my dad reads my blog so I edited) and the cigarette butts and trash. I am tired of being freezing cold in our unheated house and lighting my stove with a match - ok no, actually I still really love lighting our stove with a match - but my brain is tired of always speaking Spanish and the grumpy people and the dead rabbits and birds hanging in the market. I want to go home."

Erik: Wordless, doubled-over laughter.

We wondered together if we would be feeling this way at this point in the trip because 3.5 months is a hump you have to get over, or if it's that when you're on the last couple of miles of a run, you know you're on the home stretch and you get antsy to be done whether it's 5 miles or 25. I don't know! But after I got it all out (and laughed at myself too) I immediately got planning so that we can fit in all the churches and mosques and synagogues and Roman ruins and museums we haven't seen yet. We leave Spain three weeks from today, and there is still a TON to see, even just in Seville!! I am still discovering gems every day, one of the most beautiful of which was this morning:

I remember learning in my Jewish Civilization class in Jerusalem about the Jewish Diaspora when they left Israel - one big group migrated to Germany and Russia and became known as Ashkenazi Jews, and one who migrated to Spain and Portugal and became Sephardi Jews. I had always been very interested in Jewish Civ (part of the reason I chose to do my Semester Abroad in Jerusalem), and I was fascinated to learn about the groups living in long-term exile from their holy land in different parts of Europe. One part of their History that I remember very vividly was learning how  Jews had lived in Spain since the Roman era, and under tolerant Muslim rule in 700 AD they became very affluent and respected members of society, especially in Seville. I remember our professor Rabbi Rosen speaking with such pain about the Medieval massacres and expulsion of the Jews of Seville - it was one of the cruelest anti-Semitic acts in all of Jewish history, and of all the thousands of things I learned in all my classes as a 19-year-old, that image of synagogues being burned to the ground and thousands of innocent people being massacred or at best, driven out of their homes in Spain never left me.

Ever since we arrived in Spain I have been looking for synagogue ruins, and I thought for sure that since our kids go to school in Seville's old Jewish Quarter I would find some sign of their life there. But their destruction was so complete, the only thing that remains are the actual streets, and probably some unseen foundation stones under churches where Catholic chapels were built on top of the demolished synagogues. So... after reading a ton about Spanish history and living here for 3.5 months, biking and walking through the Jewish Quarter multiple times every single day, I discovered a short paragraph in a guide book identifying the site of the main Seville synagogue - it's the plaza we walk/bike through on our way to school. It was burned to the ground in 1366 and a chapel was built on top, and then when the famous painter Murillo died in the 1600's he was buried there, so his fame eclipsed the Jewish history of the spot. Later in the 1800's Napoleon's army burned down the church, and now no one knows exactly where Murillo's bones lay. All that is there now is a small garden with a wrought iron cage-shaped monument inside where cats like to hide (so Stone likes it a lot), and the French consulate is there, which reminds one of Napoleon's part in the history of the place. Anyway, I got chills when I read the information last night, and this morning after I dropped the kids off at school I took a moment on my bike to pause and reflect on the people who lived and died there. I shed a few tears. And then went home and told Erik all about how I can't stand parts of being here but then cried again as I told him all about how I found the synagogue and I was so grateful to be here having these moments that tie me to all Humanity. I love this place and will be so sad to go home in three weeks.

Last night I took Lindsay and Sophie out for paella, Arab tile shopping, and to buy me (yes, Me!) a Flamenco dress. It's brown with white polka dots and was on a super crazy awesome sale.

And we finally found Rayas Gelato! 

The churches look dreamy and candy-like all lit up .

That is one skinny sidewalk. A car mirror clipped our friends' little boy Isaac one time (he was ok, thank goodness). The car/bike/motorcycle/pedestrian mashup really stresses me out.

This is the site of the synagogue we pass several times each day, without knowing its significance until this morning.

This is the view from the other side, where you can see the flag of the French Consulate, and the title of the square, so proudly and un-Jewishly named "Plaza de Santa Cruz", or "Plaza of the Holy Cross." The suffering caused by that misguidedness saddens me so much. The house of the painter Murillo is visible from this square as well (and he's buried somewhere underfoot).

Today after siesta I wanted to start checking more churches off my list, and Sophie was the only one I could convince to come with me. This was a tiny chapel inside a local hospital - it was was chock full of Murillo and Velasquez originals. You could spend a year seeing and reading stuff every day in this city and not mine out all the gems. 

My buddy and I at the hospital. Wow, I am looking older. I don't mind - I am proud of the experiences and great big facial expressions that created those wrinkles - but it's just so weird! 

A lovely little plaza so close to the school, and yet we'd never seen it before! The oranges are starting to get ripe - they're so pretty on the trees. Seville oranges taste terrible but they're planted all over because their blossoms are the most fragrant.

And this is what we came home to after our Hospital Art outing. Oh, how I love my boys!

What we see and hear on a typical day

On Thursday, Friday and Saturday I decided to snap pictures and short videos of the sights and sounds we experience every day. We are so accustomed to them now, they feel like home.

Things we pass every day on our walk to school

A crumbling coat of arms on a castle wall

A castle tower adjacent to a jungle-like park

An old convent, still in use

Walls supported by ancient millstones (used to crush olives into oil, then cleaned off and used to construct buildings for their support and as a bumper so animal carts could bump into buildings without bashing the stucco

Ubiquitous incredible doors

Tiled street names on aged walls. This is the school's street - it means "the big table of the Moor." These are streets dating from the Middle Ages, so I wonder who this Moor was who had a big table - maybe he had a restaurant here? So intriguing to me.

We eat tapas here after school sometimes

The building on the right (yellow and then brick-red) is the school

What we do after school

Sometimes we go straight home, but on Thursday we went out for lunch near the cathedral. We had recently learned that the stones at the bottom of the bell tower were ancient Roman - the Moors used already-cut Roman stones that were sitting around to build their minaret in the 1100's. Once we knew that, it was easy to see which ones are Roman - there's a clear line between Roman stone and Muslim brick. And one of the stones is carved with Latin!

Close-up view

Near the cathedral there is a huge market of artisan crèches for Christmas time, where Christie and I bought ours last week. I took the kids to see them all - we loved this one because it's Joseph who is holding Baby Jesus. We love the posture of both parents adoring that Baby

And this one too.

This one looks so classically Spanish

And this one is huge!!

This is what we pass walking home from the Creche market

This is what I do while the kids are in school

 I dropped them off and then sat at a sidewalk café table in sight of their school to do some Christmas planning. As I wrote, the cathedral bells were ringing and it was so misty, I stopped writing and took a video of the scene.

Then I went to the post office for the first time. It was a different system than at home, and quite a different building than my local post office by Safeway.

 As I walked back to the school past the cathedral, I noticed music coming from inside, and the doors were open! Admission to the cathedral usually costs about 8 Euros so I wandered inside, curious about why they'd opened the doors. It was some sort of important mass the organ was being played, followed by all-male Chant.  I stopped to watch a procession of priests in red robes and white robes, followed by blue-uniformed police officers.

The police wear more modern uniforms on the street - this must have been some sort of ceremony for them, because it was followed by a Mass.

When I showed up to pick up Stone, I saw that the school is building their own creche in the courtyard. It's in process, with scissors and papers and bottles of glue. Every year each student contributes a figure or a detail to the scene. My kids said all the kids have been talking about it, but they get the assignment in Religion class, which my kids opt out of (it's Catholic Catechism).

 This is Stoney and I running back to the school to pick the girls up at 2:00 on Friday

A Saturday at home

A work colleague flew in from Moscow to have meetings with Erik - that's him on the left and Erik on the right. We went out to lunch with them on Saturday, walking there and back. 

Then I decided to take the kids to a museum we haven't seen yet - it's a short bike ride away in Maria Luisa Park  (very near our house). All the kids got in for free, and my admission was 1.50 Euros! I love that about Europe. There is a sense of wanting History and Art to be accessible to everyone.

Stone (of course) loved the swords and helmets from the 1500's

Sophie loved the scales and measurements from ancient Rome

And the baby baptism dresses from the 1800's

I wore them out and they made an exhausted dog-pile, begging to go home

The Archeological Museum across the street

We rode home through our park

And stopped to feed the swans. I happened to have Digestible crackers (British cookies they sell here) in my purse

Stone wanted to run through the park. Eventually we bribed him back into the bike trailer and headed home.