A Week of Primeros . . .

Some days I feel like everything is a "first" for us. But we had a few interesting "firsts" this week. (And in case you are wondering, the following pictures have absolutetly nothing to do with the text. I just thought I'd post some more pictures for your viewing pleasure.)

Renae's churro mustache.

The stroller finally rolled in some dog poo. Eww. We are thinking of getting a different stroller, possibly when I go back to get my visa. Our stroller doesn't fit through the metro gates so we always have to ask a worker to let us pass through the big gate. I guess Europe isn't ready for the stroller SUV.

Big beautiful park. Wish it was closer to us.

We had to deal with customer service in Spanish for the first time. We had bought some towels because of the great deal. Buy one get the second for free! So when we went to pay the lady said 60 euros. I didn't think that much of it until we were walking away and I through through the 10 things we bought. No, it didn't add up to 60 euros. A good part of me said, "Just don't worry about. Get on the metro and then bring it up with Jesse so you aren't able to be forced to go back and get the money back." But then a bigger part of me said, "Seriously? we were charged twice what we should have been. Buck up and go use your Spanish!" So we checked out our receipt and saw that the woman had indeed NOT given us the sale price for the towels. As we walked back I was running phrases and vocab through my mind trying to think of all the things the customer service agent might ask. It ended up working out fine, she understood me, I was right about the mistake and we got our money back. Whew!


Downtown quaint street.

We saw a man spit out of the metro door and then get big time scolded by an older man. We got off before we got to see anything interesting. Lesson learned. Don't spit or you will get chewed out by an old man.


Renae asleep on the metro. Again.

I helped Jesse go to the bank and pick up his ATM card today. You'd think it would be simple but because we are foreigners it took a bit longer than expected. The man was really nice and spoke mostly to me. I understood most of it (at least the general idea . . .) and what I didn't understand, he re-explained 5 different ways. It's so humbling to be on the other side of the cultural window. And on a random side note, to enter our bank, you pass through what looks (and feels) like a portal you see in space movies. You press a button, wait for the sliding curved glass door to open, step inside, let the door close then stand in the portal listening to elevator music until the other door slides open. Weird. But I have to admit, kind of cool. I might go to the bank more often just so I can pretend I'm being transported somewhere.

And a video of Renae! This is her right after we saw her REALLY crawl for the first time. She hasn't really done it since because of our wood floors. She would much rather climb up on things and stick her fingers in the electrical outlets. yeah, I need to get covers for those things! Luckily European outlets are a lot deeper than in the US so she'd really have to be digging deep to stick her little finger in one.