Little America

Sometimes I think about how (relatively) easy our transition to living in a foreign country has been. Of course, every move has challenges, and moving overseas can be a huge endeavor. But my experience was a bit different...

Unlike true expats, there were no visas to apply for, no jobs to search for, no red tape to cut through. Graham received orders (that we actually wanted!) and within a few months one of our cars was shipped and our household goods were packed, all at no cost to us. Upon arriving, we received assistance in getting our driver's licenses, other identification, and with getting the car registered and renting a house.

The movers delivering all of our worldly possessions at our first casa.

The Mini in España and complete with (obscured) Euro-plates.

Hola Holidays!

from Meghann:

It's beginning to look a lot little like Christmas around our casa. Each year we wait until December to do any decorating or Christmas activities, so that Thanksgiving has its own time and we get a chance to relax between holidays. Also, the Christmas season in España seems to start a little later, probably because they continue to celebrate until Three Kings Day on January 6.

The holiday festivities on base are officially kicked off by the Tree Lighting Ceremony, which includes Santa flying in by helicopter. We missed this last year, but figured we should go this year since it's a Rota tradition and there are elves fast-roping out of a helicopter. 

The next day we visited our local viveros (what we would call a "nursery" in the States, which when you think of it, is a weird word for a place to buy plants) to get our tree. Our favorite way to get a tree is to cut our own, but we were just excited to get a real tree and the viveros had a decent selection.

Internet = phone calls and zombies

 from Meghann:

When we moved from our first Spanish casa to the nuevo one, we figured getting our internet switched over would be easy. Ha! We must have forgotten that we are living in southern España (no offense, we love you Andalucia, but you are the land of mañana). So, to make a very long story (filled with lots of crappy Spanglish speaking and Google translating, yes, that's a verb when you live overseas) short, after 2 months without it, we finally have high-speed internet access again. And it is glorious!

Since we use Magic Jack (phone connected by internet) to call the States, this means we can catch up with our familias and amigos. 

Our crazy collection of phones, including our Euro-stylish orange one for the Magic Jack.

More importantly (just kidding!) we can catch up with current shows on bootleg television. Which led to this recent conversation:

Me: I think Spanish houses are better for the zombiepocalypse. 

Graham: Yeah, with the security bars.

Me: And the high walls. I think we would be better off here than in the States.

Graham: Definitely.

Not that we're saying it's actually going to happen, but if it did...

Can you tell which show we've become obsessed with? Any other fans of The Walking Dead? Are you also wondering how impossible it's going to be without another episode until February?! At least we still have Homeland.

New casa tour

Hola! It's Meghann again. Or maybe I should say "hi" instead because I'm stuck in the States, trying to get a Space A flight back to Rota. It's been kind of stressful (Sandy certainly wasn't any help) and I'm just ready to get home to Graham, our sweet perritas Chloe and Cora, and our casa. 

Which made me realize - we never shared nuevo house pics with you all! Well, at least not the pictures of the casa before it turned into a heaping pile of crazy. So here they are, courtesy of all the free tiempo and Wifi (have to pronounce it "WeeFee") I have in the Dover air terminal.

Front door

There is so much lovely tile, starting with the front steps.

Side yard

We absolutely love the garden - the landscaping is gorgeous and shows how much love the homeowners have put into it. Check out our pequeño olivo tree! 

Entry

Scenes from a move...

Maybe you feel like your house is a little cluttered, that you really need to get organized, or that instead of watching football all weekend you should have cleaned up your place. Allow us to make you feel better about that. Behold, our new casa, in all of its freshly moved-into glory:

On the move!

Taking a little break from posting about Marrakech...

Almost titled this post "big news!" but when you're married and 30, you have to be careful about when you break out that phrase (especially with exclamation points). But we're excited (exclamation points included) because we're on the move. Not out of Spain, just to a new neighborhood and a new house! And it has a pool!

Now, some people might think we have lost our minds, because we are voluntarily moving, which will be the second time in a little over a year, and we just said how settled we were feeling. But we couldn't pass up this house. Our current place was rented by Graham (Meghann was still in the States working and putting the finishing touches on the wedding) and he only had a short amount of time to find a place for us both to move into after the wedding (no pressure). It's been a good house but we definitely feel like the new casa is an upgrade, even though we're actually downsizing. Overall, it's just more our style and a better fit for how we live - less square footage, fewer bedrooms and bathrooms, but a more open floor plan on 2 floors instead of 3. The pool definitely made the decision easier, too. And to be honest, we're just used to moving. In the last 7 years of living together (yeah, we know you can do the math, we've only been married a year - sinners), we've lived in 7 different houses - for us, a house is a temporary thing.

Luckily this move is a little less intense than our Virginia-to-Spain adventure last year and we're doing much of it ourselves (some friends were kind enough to trade their SUV for the Mini for a few days). So, we spent most of the weekend moving as much as we could carry over to the new place, with a couple breaks to lounge by the pool and cool off, of course. 

 For all of you enjoying the start of fall and cooler temperatures and posting about it non-stop on the internet (looking at you, East Coasters) - we might not need to break out scarves and don't have pumpkin flavored everything, but we went swimming. Outside. In late September.

We'll be working on the move for the next 2 weeks and will keep you updated along the way. We promise we'll post more pictures, but here are a couple of snaps for now.

So, what do you think? Are we crazy or crazy-like-a-fox (we know there is some amount of crazy involved)? 

Casa update

Since we have been officially living in our Spanish casa for a year, we figured it was time to give you all another tour. Our first guests came to visit in May and then we had family here in June, so it really pushed us to finish some of the projects that we had put off because we were busy going to the beach golfing traveling going out drinking wine. And rather than just show you all the nuevo-and-improved after photos, we decided to include everything. From the days of the (still gives us the creeps to think about) loaner furniture to unpacking to the weird in-between stage where all of our wall art was propped against the walls to what our casa currently looks like - it's all here in one post for your viewing pleasure. It's a work in progress, but we feel like we've come pretty far in the last year (and to keep ourselves motivated, we try not to think of the inevitable move).

Our front door

We added some plants (then changed those out when the originals died went to the big garden in the sky), put out a mat, and hung a traditional tile sign of our monogram.

Entry

El Segundo Delivery

Yesterday we told you about an exciting delivery that happened on our first day in Bruges - the arrival of our niece.  We hinted at a second delivery that was made the day after we got back, but we wanted Abbi to have a post all to herself.  She made us a tio and tia, so she deserves it.  Our other big arrival (literally big) was this:

Hola! and excuses...

We owe you all a grande apology for disappearing.  Lo siento!  But we have a bueno excuse, actually a few.  The biggest one is that our household goods were delivered (hooray!) and our casa became chaotic (boo).  It really is crazy to see everything you own packed into wooden crates that you won't see for dos months.  Here are our worldly possessions leaving our townhouse in Norfolk, before their transatlantic journey:

And here are the crates being unloaded in Spain, looking pretty much the same.  Luckily, so did almost everything in them (with just a few minor exceptions - not bad for a Navy move.)

After the crates were emptied and the boxes sorted by room, this is what we were left with.  

Graham vs. Agua

This post isn't historical, cultural, or geographical.  But it is comical.  

Ahh, the joys of home rentership.  When you don't know where the water shut-off is, or if there even is one.  Happy Thursday, everyone.  You're welcome.

p.s.  We did get the water stopped.  And "we" means Graham, but Meghann was there for moral support and the very important job of filming, of course.

Cute casa, Feo furniture

When we arrived in Puerto in Julio we already had a house, thanks to Graham signing a lease before coming back to the States for our wedding.  While it was great to have a home to move into right away, the fact that it was nearly empty made us anxious for the delivery of our household goods.  We say "nearly empty" because the Navy was kind enough to provide us with some loaner furniture, some of which can be seen in our posts on Chloe or Tinto.  Now that our stuff has been delivered, and our backs have recovered from sitting on a wood and vinyl couch, we think we're physically and emotionally ready to give you the full tour of our casa in all its original, pre-decorated, loaner furniture glory.  This is how we lived for our first seis weeks in Spain.  Warning:  the furniture seen in this post may cause college dorm room flashbacks.

The entrance to our townhouse.

Hola!  Bienvenido to our house.
This picture reminds Meghann of The Continental.