Welcome to the Family

The sad truth is there are many things in our life that almost demand to be blogged about.  The even sadder truth is I have little time to capture many of them during some of the crazier times of life.  Within the last two weeks we visited Amsterdam, enjoyed a visit from some pilgrim friends, took yet another test in our Spanish class, and purchased a new car.  Today, I choose to blog about the car.  Stay tuned for details on the rest (or - if you can't wait, check out Faith's blog).  

I had hoped to get a goodbye picture and post a fitting obit for our first car here in Spain.  There was never a good time or place to get a picture of the poor old broken-down car.  It died for the last time almost a month ago on us.  In the end I think it's more fitting to post the picture above from happier times.  It was taken during our first week in Spain - we were learning how to drive stick, we had yet to put any of our numerous dings and scratches into it, its engine had not yet begun to decompose, and it was still under 300,000 kilometers.  I won't miss how it became unreliable, but I will miss how comfortable it had become to us.  It truly became 'ours' in the short time we had it, and I do miss it a little.  I will always have a soft spot in my memory for it.  

Having said that, we are definitely ready to move on to the next - and expectedly more reliable - chapter in our automobiling life.  We were excited to finally bring our new car home tonight, a mere two weeks after we signed the papers to buy it.  It is a 2008 Toyota Corolla Verso.  You can't tell by the picture below, but it actually has 7 seats inside.  It's not a sedan, but it's not quite a minivan.  Either way, we are glad to have a vehicle with the flexibility to add in a few extra passengers when needed. 

Faith and I are considering naming it Zwarte Piet - after the culturally awkward and uncomfortable Christmas helper of Sinterklaas in Holland.  Zwarte is the Dutch word for black, and you might guess how to translate Sinterklaas.  In Holland, Santa's helpers aren't little green elves, rather, he/they are black guys named Pete.  Only, in their holiday tradition, white folks put on black face paint and dress up in a manner that, at least where I come from, is so offensive that you might describe it as beyond offensive.  Yet somehow, being the Dutch, and being in Holland, it brings a smile to my face.  Does that make me a bad person?

Last week our family took a walk through central Amsterdam on the day that happened to be the day that Santa comes to Amsterdam.  There is a parade and everything.  I only saw one Sinterklaas, but downtown was swarming with Zwarte Petes.  Faith caught this Zwarte Pete on film as he was handing out candy and cookies to all the kids. 

Quick Visa Update

With the help of a neighbor Faith visited several offices to sift through what was needed to complete her Dad's visa. The process so far has been so typically 'Spanish' that I thought it would be good blog fodder.

Everything here requires a mountain of paperwork, and it's often not very clear why exactly any of it is necessary. You can guess, but are never sure. In this case, Faith and her friend visited the police office that the visa requirements specified, only to find out that that office was for Spaniards only. The office for foreigners (extranjeros) was the one that could help her with this particular letter. After arriving at the correct office, they discovered that in order to receive one simple letter of invitation from the government for her Dad to visit for 3 weeks she needed to provide the following:
1) photocopy of Faith's Spanish ID card
2) photocopy of her passport
3) photocopy of our rental contract
4) Certified copy of our registration with the local government
5) photocopy of Faith's birth certificate
6) photocopy of her dad's passport (since he is the one we are inviting)
7) 101 euros.

And the reward for jumping through all of these hoops? We would be awarded said requested letter of invitation from the police for Faith's dad in 1 month!! ("more or less")

Obviously Faith and our friend were sent into a panic at this. Which led to something else very Spanish - a way around all of this rediculousness...

In the original visa application, if you are visiting Spain as a tourist and staying at a hotel, all you need is a hotel reservation - no letter of invitation needed. It's only people who are visiting someone they know in Spain that need all the other stuff. So - instead of going through all that hassle for something that couldn't possibly be done in 8 days, we are just reserving a hotel, and that should be approved by the consulate, no problem.

Stay tuned :- ) And I know I said this would be short in the title - but like seemingly most everything else here in Spain, things just take longer to get done than you think they will :- )

Hasta Luego

So this is progress?

(this post was written late Tuesday nite, April 15 - HA! Tax day!!)

So, imagine that you went to the mechanic today because your only car died last Friday. Now - this mechanic doesn't speak your language, and you barely speak his. Yet, he shows you how totally jacked up your engine got when both of your belts broke. You understand the seriousness of the car's injury, and you understand his estimate that it will cost more than 1,000 euros to fix. Where would that fit into a ranking of things that happened to you today?

If your answer was "one of the best things," you might be living in a new culture. (or perhaps you really had an awfully crummy day.) For me, as I thought about this tonight, I think it is a sign of some progress that something like this would have been somewhat of a crisis several months ago, but was not the dominant issue of my day today.

My day started out with a complicated trip to my Spanish class. Complicated, you'll remember, because my car has all of it's important parts laid out on my mechanics workbench and was unavailable. We took a taxi to school which was far to expensive to take home. We walked part of the way home and took a bus the rest of the way - arriving home an hour and a half later than we do with the car. My reward for getting to class - a brutally difficult exam that made me feel both slow and dimwitted - despite the fact I knew exactly when the test would be, and what chapters of our textbook it covered.

After gathering the boys from their respective schools, making it through feeding time, and finally putting them down for their naps, I was looking forward to sitting on our couch, listening to some new CD's, and folding laundry. This moment of peace was interrupted by a call from my mechanic (who, to give him credit, did get out the english words "You... Come.... Now..." followed by whistling the our national anthem). So, after a confidence shattering encounter with the morning's exam, I boldly set forth to find out what exactly was wrong with my car, and how much it would cost to fix it. And as difficult as it was to communicate, I felt good in the end to discover I really had understood almost everything he was trying to communicate. Now, I did not understand even close to every word, nor could I even translate for you what he said - but I got all of the important parts non-the-less. Now, it was much harder for me to find words to communicate back to him - but I was able to call in the help of a friend to make sure we were all clear on the details.

The rest of my day included a cafe, a store named 'Bizaar Chino,' and a party for a newly minted 5-year old. On the whole these were also good things. We especially enjoy going to birthday parties - I may blog separately about that. By the time we returned home from an extremely full day, we were hungry, tired, and ready to make and eat dinner. This is when we learned that Faith's father had discovered that the Spanish Consulate in D.C. was asking for another letter before they would approve his visa.

This was a stress-raising problem for several reasons. First of all, we thought we had resolved all of the necessary details for the visa 5 weeks prior by taking the time, effort, and euros to create a notarized letter of invitation. Secondly, this new request from the consulate came 8 days before Faith's parents are scheduled to come visit. Additional pressure is added because one of the reason they are coming to visit is to watch the kids while Faith and I attend an International Teams leadership conference in Manila. So there are 4 round-trip international airline tickets hanging on this visa approval.

This would be an example of some of the frustrations of making this cross-cultural life change. Paperwork is a way of life here - we've experienced it from the beginning. On the whole, nothing is truly urgent, because there seems to always be time to get something fixed. This is our first experience with something that has a concrete deadline and significant negative impact if it is not completed. It will be interesting to see how the system works from here.

A slice of daily life

This is one of the local parks we visit often. There are three within a short walk from our home. This one is the most popular park of the neighborhood, I presume, because it gets full sun in the afternoon. It has been dubbed "the ria park" by our family because it is overlooking the scenic tidal river here. It is the park that we most often run into classmates of Brennan's, and a few local families we have met. Here Brennan can shyly start to play with those classmates as he feels more and more comfortable here. Here Ryan lives as large and as loud as he wants, and blends right in with the natives. And Kathryn gets to watch even more frenetic activity and hear even louder noises than she experiences at home. She also is a great tool to help us meet other parents. No one can resist her (see my last post for proof).

This is the view of the sunset over 'the ria.'

The above and below pictures are action photos from yesterday's visit.

Another boat photo. Still addicted to them.

"How are you?"

Or, here in Spain they ask it, "¿Que tal?," or "¿Como estás?". (Can you tell I'm enjoying using the upside down question mark?)

The answer is usually fairly easy. It is both convenient and conversationally correct to answer 'fine', or 'good.' That greases the speed of conversation and allows us to move on to more important matters, such as the weather, recent sports scores, or our children's latest bodily excretions. Even in Spanish the answer is fairly simple, even for those of us who are struggling to learn the language. A simple 'bien,' or more complicated 'estoy bien' will do. It's really great to follow that up with "¿y tú?" That then puts the conversational ball squarely back into the other person's court without having to explain yourself any further.

I've been thinking a bit more lately about how things really are, partly thanks to a book by Larry Crabb called "Inside Out". I may post more on that later, but one of the big themes that stuck with me from the book was his challenge to Christians to live honestly, and to seek that honesty to the point it thoroughly disrupts our complacency. It gave me the idea to blog about how things are really going for me, and for the Walter clan in La Coruña. I'll address a few common questions, give the standard safe answer, and then follow with a more transparent answer.

How are things in Spain? Good. Great. We love being here. We are as confident as ever that we are here solely because of God's leading in our lives. We have a great community in our local church, Vida Nueva, and have been enjoying discovering more about the people, place, and culture here.
Really? It has been a fun, but difficult (at times) transition. We feel we've come through the first stages of the transition pretty well, but it was quite a tough road at times. The kids seem to have adjusted pretty well by this point. Communication has been tough at times, obviously, as we did not speak Spanish when we arrived. We learned to drive stick shift and how to drive in a different country at the same time - with three kids 4 and under crammed in the back seat. We feel pressure to focus on our language studies as our number-one priority, but also feel pressure to figure out how to become more and more involved in our local supporting church. Plus we are learning to live in a completely different culture, and learning little by little to adopt to different ways of living. Our running joke here is that everything takes longer to get done here than you think it will. The way things are done hear are different enough to often leave us wondering why on earth they do things this way. All of this is in addition to the pressures of making sure we are caring for our kids in the best way possible, which is not always that easy, as I hope most parents can attest to. Plus, the real bummer about being here in Spain is that we missed the Super Bowl this year! On the whole, it's great to be here, we really do enjoy it. But we do miss some things from 'home', and are baffled by some things here.

How is language school going? It is good. I know more Spanish today than I did 5 months ago! But seriously, it is a challenge for me, but it's good to be able to communicate better, and I just keep on keepin' on to continue growing in my communication skills.
Really? It's hard for me. This is the thing I worry about more than anything here. Partly because it feels like so much of our success here relies on our ability to learn to communicate. Partly because I've had no success in my past at learning languages. Languages consistently were low spots in my academic career. But mostly, I go to class, and struggle to understand the teacher anytime she veers off of the textbook to explain things. It feels like I am learning at a glacial pace when I look around and see many others who learn quickly (classmates, family members, etc). I definitely feel like I'm learning stuff, but it does not seem to happen fast enough. I'm fairly certain I'm in the bottom of my class. I have no choice but to succeed in what might be the biggest challenge I've faced in my life.

How are the hostel plans? Things are going well. We still have a ways to go to get our plan off the ground. First things first, we have to learn the language! We are excited to have a great teammate, and have another couple who is interested in joining us that we are excited about.
Really? Things really are going pretty well. But I think we often feel as if other people's expectations are that we might already be running a hostel, or be doing it very soon. We have a pretty clear idea of where we think we are heading, but we are prepared for the journey to take some time. We want to do it right the first time, and set ourselves up to see the best possible chance of long-term success. The truth of the matter is that we are here because we feel a pretty clear leading from the Lord that He wants us here. We see that in order for this hostel to become a reality, God will continue to guide, and will have to 'show up' in such a way that any hostel and/or backpacker ministry that results will clearly be of his doing, and not our own. And we continue to hold 'our' plans loosely, aware that what we think is our direction will change if he guides us in another direction (for example, living now in La Coruña instead of Santiago). After I learn the language, opening a successful hostel and ministry might be the next "biggest challenge" I've had to face in my life. Despite all of our planning and dreaming, there are parts of me that have trouble imagining seeing that vision become a reality. But then, I also know it was not that long ago that parts of me that had trouble seeing us moving to Spain, and here we are!

How are the kids? They are great. The boys are adjusting to school. Both boys seem to like being in school. Kathryn is a great baby. Very quiet and well behaved. We had a lot of illness over the first several months here, but we seem to have come clear of that.
Really? Yeah - for the most part, this one is pretty accurate. What we generally don't talk about though are the temper tantrums and fits that each of the boys seem to have seemingly too often. They are happening with less frequency than when we first arrived, but still seemingly too often. We also don't talk too much about the times we are woken up at night--by all three of the kids, not just the baby. But mostly because any parent can talk about that too - there's not much sympathy to be found out there for something so common : - ) We also don't talk as often about our concerns for the kids - how their personalities will adjust to being here. How will Brennan's gentle and quiet spirit adjust in a place where he clearly is an outsider? How will all of the kids respond to growing up in a place where some of the general cultural values are not all that similar to our own?

So, in the end, there is truth in the simple, pat answers. But it is often a simple truth, unencumbered by the more difficult realities of daily life.

Curious Discoveries

Our education here is continual, and I feel like I see and hear new things every day. Here are just a handful of sights and experiences that might give you some insight to our daily doings.

Four-wheelers: You may know them as ATVs - Call them what you want. I am not very surprised to find them in Spain. I am getting used to seeing a few of them driving on the roads. I saw this once in the first couple of weeks, and assumed it was unique. Since then, I have had several sightings of guys driving their four-wheelers in and out of traffic. They wear helmets, and outfits that appear like that of a motorcycle rider. I guess the only difference is that their 'bike' has a few extra wheels.

Headlights: Our car has headlights that turn off when the car is turned off. Therefore, since we park in an underground garage, our headlights are on quite a lot - resulting commonly in us driving with our headlights on during daylight hours. This evidently is somewhat of a cultural anomaly, as we have now had quite a few locals tell us that our lights are on (even while driving). I think for the most part, they are telling us out of neighborly care, and really feel like they are doing us a favor. So for that, I am grateful. I am just amused that this action, being pretty common where I come from, is abnormal enough for a number of strangers to feel compelled to inform us of our error.

Regisration: It took me 3 days to register for my language course. Three!!
Day 1: I went to the school, purchased the application forms (that's 3.50 euros for the application, thank you), and was instructed to return the next day with the completed forms, and proof that I had paid for the course via a local bank. Complete forms, and go to a local bank and successfully pay for the course.
Day 2: Return to register. Informed that there is a new process, and I now need to get permission from the Ministry of Education to learn Spanish (since I am a foreigner). Also discover that the class I wanted to take was two hours earlier than I expected (my error).
Day 3: Drive around Coruña searching for the right office to get permission to learn Spanish. Find office, get a short letter with an official stamp from a nice lady. If you are following along at home, you can rest easy, because I am now cleared to learn Spanish. Return to the school to register, and discover the class I had been trying to register for all along was closed. So instead of completing Spanish one over one semester of 2-hour a-day classes, I will now complete it over the course of the entire year with 1-hour a day evening class.
Conclusion: So, it never looks like I expect it to look, and it never goes as planned. Nothing here seems to be as easy as I think it will be. The good news is I finally get some classroom time in my quest to learn Spanish. I start Monday. The other good news is that God has proven time and again to provide what we need in his perfect timing - regardless of what we thought might be coming. We can trust with confidence that, once again, his place for me is not exactly the same place I thought it might be. Hasta lunes!

Que tal?

This is one of the uber-basic Spanish phrases I have already picked up. I don't even know the literal translation, but it's essentially saying 'what's up' as a greeting. I've even toyed with delivering it 'wassaaaaaaap' style, complete with extended tongue.

Another word I hear a lot is claro. It is an indication that the listener understands. To me it seems that it is used most often when things are anything but 'clear.'

One of the things that I have observed in my first week here is that no business or system seems to be simple and clear. This is of course in relation to the veritable sea of bureaucracy and red tape that we have already navigated to find an apartment, open a bank account, register the kids for school, and register our residency. Maybe it's because I'm 'fresh off the boat', and each experience is brand new. Maybe it's because the Spaniards have had centuries to develop these intricate layers of bureaucracy.

It's actually not been that bad though. We have had LOADS of great help from a number of people here. Our red tape has certainly been confusing at times, but with help, both human and sovereign, it has gone much smoother than we expected. God is most definitely good.