Hello everyone, welcome back to my blog. I haven't updated things around here very much over the past few months, but that's probably because nothing much has happened since I last wrote a whole bunch. Remember, this blog is about my poor foot and its experiences on the soccer field, in the various medical posts, and of course during its recovery from surgery. Naturally, had anything related to that central matter happened over the course of the summer, I'd have been all over it. Since I have nothing but more of the same to report on that end of things, I'll have to make up some more interesting stuff to talk about. So here goes.
Alicia and I spent the early half of the summer (after her graduation and before her birthday) visiting friends and family in Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. You may well ask yourself how we could justify such frivolous travels, but I should point out that we were doing all this in preparation for a more extended trip overseas than we normally undertake over the summers. Thus, we were right to travel, as we don't expect to see much of our family or U.S. based friends over the next nine months. Back to the story: we were visiting friends and family over the first half of the summer, and of course had many wonderful experiences with loads of fishing and photography. After all that fun, we thought there could be no better way to decompress after our many travels in the car than to pack up all our belongings into various boxes and whatnots in order to jam them all into storage. I am sure you can imagine how much fun it was to pack everything we wouldn't need for the next 10 months into boxes, while at the same time setting aside whatever we would need (clothes, books, papers, etc.) for eventual packing into suitcases. So I won't describe that experience.
Finally, when it seemed that we could never enjoy a day of peace and tranquility, we discovered that it was Alicia's birthday, and we had spent most of the day moving our things into storage. Truly, it must have been the most unjust way to spend a birthday ever. Fortunately for everyone, we had also planned a double-party with many of our Cincinnati friends for that same evening, both in celebration of Alicia's auspicious day of aging, and (especially for everyone else) of our immanent departure into states and countries far distant from there. It was eventually an amazing and very enjoyable way to set a final period on our nearly six years in Cincinnati.
After the celebrations in Cincinnati, we departed northward to Wisconsin by way of Glen Ellyn, Illinois, and were able to enjoy almost two final weeks of relaxation and leisure in what would soon be the frigid north woods. Alicia wasn't able to bring in the big one this year, though some controversy remains as to whether this was my fault (apparently you're supposed to pull the anchors as soon as someone gets a big fish on the line) or hers, but stories as to the actual size of the beast differ greatly in their details (by some accounts, it was easily as long as "my arm," while others assert that it would barely have provided a mouthful after proper cleaning). We're hoping to try our luck in the same general area next summer, if we end up with any free time...
We left Wisconsin for Spain on the 1st of September, which if I remember correctly was Labor Day in the US. I have no interest in reconstructing the details of our flight from Minneapolis/St. Paul to Philadelphia to London to Lisbon, it was an uneventful series of flights and unremarkable in most ways. We were only able to spend a night in Portugal, in part because my parents are elsewhere and because we needed to get to Mérida as soon as we could to secure permanent lodging. Our bus ride to Mérida from Lisbon was as uninteresting as the flights, so on to Mérida. For the first time in our many visits, we opted to take a taxi from the bus station to our temporary lodgings--too many suitcases to justify bumping along across the bridges and around the crowded sidewalks in the middle of the afternoon. Our favorite hostal, Hostal Anas, was unbelievably booked solid, so we were forced to accept accommodations at the Hostal Bueno, which is nothing of the sort, though were it entitled "Hostal Barato" we'd be more than happy to agree.
The next two days are a blur of walking this way and that throughout all the streets of Mérida, writing down numbers and (eventually) calling them to get more details as to the nature of the apartment advertised. Our first stop was at a pair of message boards on the entrance to the Ayuntamiento, and we were able to gather a large number of numbers from that site. After I had called every number that had an even remotely interesting ad, and scheduled two or three apartment visits, we were forced to seek other means of bolstering our list to make sure we scored something before leaving town on the 8th. Much of this time was spent wandering the streets and trying to figure out which part of town we like the most, which was the most expensive, and which buildings were even worth considering. After all, in a city known for its Roman ruins, we weren't exactly excited about living in one...
The second day of our search was pretty miserable. We had called nearly every apartment we could (on one of these highly inefficient pre-pay cell phones) and by early afternoon were willing to consider stopping by agencies to see what they could show us. One in particular had some real "winners" to offer, complete with dirty dishes in the sink and cockroaches under the beds! We were sorely tempted to sign on one of those on the spot. That was also the agency that promised to show us places at 5:30, then at 6 or 6:30 (having assured us they could have us back to the place we were scheduled to see another apartment by 7:00). When we arrived, they said it would be more like 7, to which we replied we'd have to be leaving because of our prior engagement. Truly, a terrible agency. I won't name them, but the initials would be similar to those of a well known Italian fashion brand called "Dolce & Gabbana." Anyhow, we were able to squeeze in those nasty places I mentioned above before jogging back across town (it's a good thing it's such a small town) to meet the owners of one of the first places we had called.
As it turns out, we decided to move into the first apartment we had arranged to see--we just saw it on the second day because that's how the scheduling worked out. I had liked the place just from the ad--it claimed to be close to the Plaza de España, which is Mérida's central square, and had one of the lowest prices we saw for a furnished place near the city center. When I called to schedule a visit, I discovered that it was actually within about 150 yards of the city center, about 50 yards from the end of the Roman bridge, and right next to one of my favorite archaeological sites in the city. I told Alicia right away that that was the place for us, but naturally we were going to have to see it before we could sign the papers. I actually started referring to it as "our apartment" in discussing all the other places we had scheduled to visit, saying things like "after we talk to these people at the agency, we'll head over to look at our apartment" and "sure, this place is nice, but the location is nowhere near as good as our apartment's" and so on. When we finally made it to "our apartment," it was about 7:15 (fortunately, I had called to let them know we'd be late, which wasn't a problem because the owners live upstairs).
It's not a huge apartment, but it has two bedrooms (that was our minimum requirement) and two of these "light wells" that run through the whole 3-story building from top to bottom, allowing a lot of light into the rooms that don't face onto the street and providing a place for us to hang our laundry (they don't really go for the dryers in Iberia). When I told the landlords that we were from the U.S. they were a little surprised, as they had guessed from my accent that we were French or something like that. I didn't know whether to be proud that my Castellano doesn't have an obvious "American" accent, or to be deeply offended at being mistaken for a Frenchman. In the end, I decided to go with the former, because the landlords have lived in the U.S., Germany, and France, and he's Australian. This means that both of them speak very good English, and in fact they're both English teachers at the local public schools, which means we're all very comfortable talking with one another.
After seeing the place and talking with the landlords, Alicia and I were both ready to have a look at the lease terms, so we took a copy of that over to the Plaza de España and looked it over. Since there was nothing interesting to see there, we decided to call back and see when we could come by and sign the paperwork, and it was no later than 9:30 when we had the papers signed, the keys in our pockets, and a new home in Spain. I think my favorite thing about all this was that we could move out of the Hostal Bueno the next morning!
We're pretty well moved into the place now, but we signed on it on the 4th of September and moved in on the 5th, so we've had some time to get things in order. However, during the past 10 days we also had a 5-day trip to Madrid, where my Fulbright orientation took place, and where we met some really cool people that we're hoping to be able to visit in different parts of Spain while we're living here (and we've insisted that they all visit us in Mérida as well, what with the extra room and all). Madrid is a pretty amazing city, and we're fortunate to have a good friend in Madrid/Cincinnati who was able to show us around some and feed us at his home on the north side of the city. I can't go into all the Madrid excitement here, I'll do that some other time, but I strongly encourage anyone to visit there sometime, it's a great place to visit for any length of time, as near as I can tell. There, my foot's still fine after all this typing and all the apartment searching, so I can't really say much more about it.
