The life and times of Oscar Marcos Perez-Cytron. Born Thanksgiving Day 11/22/01.
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If you want to add something to Oscar's baby-blog, send an email to megan@alpha60.com and we can set it up so you can post...
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Tuesday, December 21, 2004
5:01 PM posted by Oscar
Hmm, I think a few of my posts disappeared.... destined for the ashbin of history, I guess (or until my long-term memory of these moments kicks in and I remember these lost weeks).
Today at Oscar's school, the kids put on a little performance. The three year olds "sang" two songs. One in Spanish that I didn't recognize and "we wish you a merry christmas," which I almost didn't recognize through the thick accent of his English teacher. It was very cute. We had to make Oscar a little elf costume.
Oscar got his "grades" this week and he is making great strides--I'll have to scan them and post them--though not in his English class, which is clearly doing more harm than good in his case. Thankfully it is only an hour a week.
Tomorrow the three kings are going to come to Oscar's school on horseback. I can only imagine that these city kids are going to go crazy.
On Sunday, we took the train out to the mountains. It was a beautiful sunny day in Madrid. The closer we got to the mountains, the cloudier and mistier it got. We took the train to Cercedilla and then changed to the "nature train," which went straight up the mountain. We took it to Cotos at the end, got off, felt the cold, wet wind and decided to get right back on after playing in a dirty drift of snow for ten minutes or so. We went back to Navacerrada on the other side of the mountain (which is a ski town a bit later in the year). We climbed around a little, picked up pine cones, sticks and moss (for our belen) and then ate a huge meal of judiones (huge white beans that are a specialty of Segovia), bacalao filled peppers and wild mushroom omelet. Oscar loved the train ride and it was nice to get out of the city. It's amazing how quickly the terrain changes from arid and barren to mountainous and green. We are going to try to take more little day trips.
Christmas in Madrid.
So much to tell, I'll just have to work on it all week. Chestnuts, sweet potatoes, and corn roasting in the streets. An unbelievable bounty of sweet treats like marzipan, turron (Spanish halva?), mantecadas (enlarded ones), polvorones, roscones, etc., etc. Lights all over downtown. The biblioteca nacional (national library) was in charge of coming up with words to put up in lights over Paseo de la Castellana (a main street) and it's quite surreal. The crowds are legendary. Like Times Square on New Years Eve for weeks.
Cortylandia
Ah, Cortylandia. El Corte Ingles is the huge department store in Spain. In Preciados (near Puerta del Sol--ground zero for shopping), they have taken over four buildings. On the back of the flagship store they mount a huge spectacle called "Cortylandia." This year, it is a mouse village and on the hour and half hour the music blares, the mice move around in a relatively limited way (we're not talking about sophisticated animatronics here) and the kids go nuts. The furry animal beggars are there. The balloon guys are there. There's a theme song that gets lodged so deeply in your consciousness that you wonder if you'll ever stop singing it: Cortylandia, Cortylandia, vamos todos a cantar... Of course Oscar loves it. He's laughed, he's cried (learning about the transitory nature of balloon animals). Photos to come.
Belenes
There's also a quite extensive belen on the back of El Corte Ingles. A belen is a nativity scene, but not as we Americans know them. People here divert all of the creative energy that Americans devote to decorating with lights and Christmas trees to their nativity scenes. It is truly over the top. First off, you have to go to Plaza Mayor to buy a big piece of bark from a cork tree. Then you buy some huge chunks of moss. Then you assemble a surreal group of characters who are not necessarily restricted to those from the Christmas story (in fact, there's one guy--the caganer--who is traditionally hidden amongs the hordes relieving himself). You may need to get some battery-operated little flickering lights to make campfires, wood-burning ovens, lanterns, etc. You need to make little bundles of sticks. Adobe islamic looking buildings. It just goes on and on.
Plaza Mayor and Dia de los Innocentes
The other thing going on in Plaza Mayor is the sale of items related to the "day of the innocents." This is the day when Herod killed all the babies. But, of course, that's gotten all mixed up and here in Spain it is celebrated as something like April Fool's Day meets Halloween. People play tricks on each other and generally act crazy. So in Plaza Mayor, you can buy whoopee cushions, fake dog poop, and fluorescently colored wigs. Why the wigs, you might ask. No one knows. Every year it's something slightly different, I think.I started noticing people wearing the wigs about a month ago. I honestly didn't think about it too much, because it happened gradually. Now if you go out in the streets at night, about one in every ten people is wearing one.
Three Kings
Santa doesn't have much cred here. It's all about the kings. Kids get their presents on January 6th. There's a big parade and the three kings march through the city. The kids put their shoes outside their bedroom doors and when they come back there are presents.
I'll have to finish this post a bit later...more to tell and Christian and I are going out tonight to do some shopping...
Thursday, December 09, 2004
4:35 PM posted by Oscar
We are back from vacation...that is, if you can call traveling with a three-year-old a "vacation". Zamora was cold, really, really cold (un frio de carajo, as they say here).
We were so happy to come back to Madrid that we all practically kissed the sidewalk in front of our apartment. It really feels like home here now.
Zamora was beautiful with dozens of 800 year old churches, one 1300 year old church, a very nice bridge over the River Duero, and lots of good wine from the nearby town of Toro. The drive there took forever, because of traffic jams related to the ETA terrorist attacks (they blew up gas station bathrooms to punish vacationers from Madrid). On the way back, everything was obscured in a thick fog, except for when we crossed the mountain to come into Madrid and we were above it all for a split second. Along the roads were signs telling us how many people had died on the roads the previous year during the same holiday and also "volver es lo importante" (returning is most important). Morbid folks, the Spanish. We did see a horrendous crash that gave us pause.
We drove around a lot, because it was warm in the car and we're not used to having one. We saw miles and miles (I mean kilometers and kilometers) of nothing but tiny farms, strange stone fences that seemed to have no purpose, sheep, cows, grapevines, etc. This is certainly a complex country. It was good to get another piece of the puzzle. We drove to Arribes del Duero--a canyon between Spain and Portugal. We were in Portugal for a maximum of three minutes when I turned the car around, because none of us really felt like being in Portugal. We also drove up to the lakes of Sanabria, which were totally and hilariously obscured by fog. So we had lunch and drove back to Zamora through more obscurity and fogginess. The best part was seeing all of the stars in the country when the air cleared. It has been ages (years?) since I have seen so many stars. I almost forgot it was possible. Oscar stopped complaining for a bit and appreciated it (he is suffering from yet another cold and cough). We picked out some constellations and made up a few imaginary ones.
The highlight of the trip for me was the visit to San Pedro de la Nave--a tiny little church outside of Zamora that dates back to the 700s. The church was originally located 30 km away, but they had to move it in the 1930s, because the government was building a dam and flooding the valley. There are lots of hydroelectrical plants all over Spain and probably many underwater treasures like roman bridges, aqueducts, churches, etc.
As is typical, the church was locked. You have to go ask around in the village to find out who has the key and will open it up. Conchi (con el capuchin morado) came and told us all about the history and significance.
It is a Christian church that was built by the romanized Visigoths during their brief reign, just prior to the arrival of the Muslims in Spain. The architecture is interesting--influenced by muslim and jewish churches, with horseshoe arches, and also nordic pagan temples. But the most impressive part were the carvings on the capitals of the pillars. Strange, crude and emotive little depictions of stories from the bible. Very primitive, especially compared to the beautiful and harmonic art and architecture that the Muslims brought with them right around the same time. But also very interesting to see what Christianity looked like in Spain before the Roman Catholic church had a strong foothold.
The other two architectural highlights of our trip were the colorful portal at the very intact 11th century romanesque cathedral in Toro and the romanesque church of Mary Magdelene in Zamora.
We had studied these places in my art history class, which is why I wanted to go to Zamora in the first place...
The day after we got back, I promised Oscar that we would go to the park and have some fun, because he was really cooped up over the long weekend, since it was too cold to do much outside. We went to the little park behind San Francisco El Grande--a beautiful church in our neighborhood. It was a very warm and sunny day. Oscar played and played with the kids in the park. He has gotten very good about sharing his toys and is still really outgoing. We gossiped with the other parents in the park while the kids played.
We heard a woman speaking English and then another and another. It's the first time we've met any English speakers in our neighborhood and we found out that they get together at the park from time to time on the weekends. One woman is an ex-pat American who has lived in Madrid for 15 years and is married to a Spaniard and has two girls. The other woman was Scottish. Not sure about the third. We went to have drinks with the American woman and her husband and daughters afterwards. They live just down the street from us were very interesting. We're going to try to get together with them sometime, it would be nice for Oscar to have some bilingual playmates.
Last week, Christian met his English teacher at school. I think they have English class once or twice a week. She said that Oscar doesn't speak any English at all in class! I think he is confused as to which language she is speaking, because she has a very thick accent. He is speaking English very well now, using the past tense, future, and expressing lots of complicated ideas (like the concept of "not yet"). I think his Spanish is equally good, though I don't speak it with him a whole lot now. He has taught me some new words (mofletes) and even a few songs (hace, hace, plom). He's even learning some songs in Portuguese from Ludmila.
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