Settling in a bit

The food here is different - Mediterranean diet - not remotely related to Mexican food. We're going to have to get used to eating green olives just as a snack. Lots of fish and pork. Not much chicken. Dinner is usually from 9:30 PM to midnight. Trying to find a place to eat at 6 PM is impossible. Lunch times are also strange and certain restaurants are open only for certain times. Tappas are the "snacks" and places are dedicated to them specifically. Bars are not bars, they're family establishments. Children are welcomed anywhere and at any time.

We rented an incredibly small car. If you've ever seen movies with the microscopic cars, that's what we have. Barely fits all of us. The trunk/hatchback fits our coats, and a 5 bags of groceries, and that's about it. Our Montero just arrived this week. That was a big suprise as we didn't expect it for another month. Ultimately we'll need another vehicle but we'll probably return our rental car soon.
We're pretty close to the beach which is incredible. Summers here
are reportedly insane, because people come from all over Europe to hang out at the beaches. Should be interesting. Spain is not cheap. For some reason I thought it would be.

It will be interesting to live off-base and integrate into the Spanish community. People don't speak English as much as we were led to believe, but so far we've done alright. Travis has learned a ton of Spanish in just a few weeks. The rest of us are catching on but we seem to rely on his language skills most of the time. Necessity breeds motivation. We are settling into our house now. We moved in almost two weeks. Our express shipment was delivered a few days ago. It was nice to see familiar things that we own. Now all of our beds have a homemade Grandma quilt on them. Each one of the kids have thier new ones and I have our heavy levi quilt on my bed. New heaters were finally installed this week too. So now it's much warmer in our house. We bought a couple of area rugs for the living room and the hallway so that is making it a bit more cozy also.
The base opened up a new shopping center this week. It's been about 50 years since they've had new store buildings so everyone here was really exicted about the modern shopping center. It's very nice! They even have a Subway Sandwich shop and Starbucks! The grand opening was just three days ago and it seemed to be a huge success. Travis got off work early because there were no patients - everyone was shopping! We are headed to the new grocery store, called the Commisary, after we finish here at the library. We desperatley need groceries so it will probably take us awhile.