Greener Grass, Different Grass

While the days seem to still feel a lot like we are on vacation, we have somewhat settled into a routine.  Waking up at 8-8:30am is strange as it seems late when we wake, but at the same time, it seems like we should still be asleep as the sun is only starting to rise and the blue blacks of our tomb like bedroom feel like we should still be in deep REM sleep.  I will say the dreams we have both experienced in this morning snooze with the late sunrise are pretty wild, with minor characters from my past reemerging in a strange mishmash of landscapes from childhood, but buildings from my time in the Navy and people from many different times of my past, all together in a whacky mash up that somehow fits together, but never did in real life.  Is this a product of Spain, life changes, reduced stress, changes in diet?  Freud or a dream expert may have something to say about it, but I'll just take it as a weird walk through of my past with a new way of experiencing it all.  A recent dream featured myself trying to keep a bowl of tomato soup from spilling as I talked to one of my shipmates from gas turbine school, while riding on a tour of Denver and Aurora in a fire truck, only to end up in a suburban house with the floor falling out from under me, make of it what you will.  The late sunrise is a Spanish phenomenon as we should have the sun coming up at 7-7:30am like our neighbors that are 20 min across the river on the Portuguese side.  Our inquiries as to why we are an hour later here in Galicia have determined that the time zone differences were a result of the Spanish Fascist Dictator, Franco, who changed Spain's timezone.  Some locals have told us that the change was because Franco was from Galicia and when he assumed power and located in Madrid, he wanted all of Spain on the same time zone.  Others have told us that Franco changed the time zones of Spain to align with Nazi Germany back when he first assumed power and that the time zone has never been changed even after his death in the 70's.  Regardless of the why, it makes for a late sunrise and a late sunset and makes us feel like we are going through time portal when we cross the Miño river into Portugal for a quick shopping trip, as we gain an hour, only to then lose the hour again when we cross back over into España.  We understand the reason why, but it is odd to say the least! 

We have been in Spain for a little over 7 months now and I am proud to say we can get around our little town and the surrounding area with out using Google Maps and are settling into somewhat of a routine with the property, harvesting produce, food prep, etc.  Having a routine has made the day to day feel a lot more like we are settled in, but one of the great things about being retired here is how open we can be to throwing a wrench in said routine, whether it is because we get an inspiration to go check out the sites such as the Muños de Folon or Muños de Picon or one of our new expat amigos invites us out for lunch, glass of wine or a shopping trip.  Spain has a way of interrupting plans, but still having things work out just right, even if the restaurant doesn't have comida (food) before siesta or we may end up going the wrong way on the round-about and driving 20 minutes out of the way.  These diversions typically result in some of the coolest scenic routes we have seen and rousing chorus of "Isn't it crazy that we live here?"  At the end of the day, things seem to work out, or as the locals all seem to say, “No te preocupes” or "Don't Worry" in English.

Now that we have officially experienced winter here in Galicia, we are experiencing the rain, which as we have been told is the most this area has seen in twenty years.  It is a lot of rain, but neither of us seem to be truly bothered by it. Especially since we have had the dining room roof/gutter repaired! Ultimately it isn’t snow,  the temps have stayed in the mid 50’s on average and there are still a number of plants and trees that have not gone dormant and are very green. I have invested a lot of my time recently in growing vegetables from seed and am having a great time doing this indoors while we wait for the outdoor growing season to kick off.  I have been planning for mid to late March, but we had neighbors laying down manure in their yard before the new year, so we may have to accelerate the move to outside.  Currently the seed house has three types of tomatoes, kale, spinach, onion, butternut squash, basil, cilantro, catnip, white beans and more growing and thriving.  It has been great experimenting with light, nutrients, soil types, seed quantities, watering and humidity.  I suspect a new blog post specific to La Casa de Semilla.  Stay tuned for that. 

Have we had challenges in Spain?  Of course, nothing is going to be completely smooth sailing, is the grass greener over here?  Well, yes it literally is greener, with this much rain how could it not be, but figuratively it is not greener, it is just different.  We don’t have 100 motorcycles racing up and down Colfax Ave outside our house every night, but we also have zero food delivery options.  That is a trade off I’ll take any day of the week.  Shipping to and from Spain can be frustrating and a lesson in patience to say the least.  If, and I mean if as we have a couple of items that have just been lost in shipping, we do receive something shipped from family in the states it usually comes with an extra duty or tax that we have to pay when receiving the package and items always arrive later than anyone would like.  However, we are getting the hang of it, reset expectations, nothing is going to arrive immediately and knowing that there is always a risk of having a shipment get lost in transit.  Like our box of supplies that was shipped with a couple hundred dollars worth of stuff and lost to the USPS machine before it even made it to Spanish customs, other items such as a care package from the US, seem to sit in Spanish customs sometimes for over a month only to get returned.  We do have Amazon.es here though and it has made living in the country a lot easier when there are things we need for the house or the yard and haven't been able to find them locally.  It balances out and really it is all just a matter of perspective, comparing how things are in a small town where the language is different, customs are different and day to day life is different to what you may have known for many years from your home country isn't a fair comparison. 

But it is difficult to put oneself in that headspace of not trying to compare when the power goes out for the umpteenth time because we are trying to run the oven hotter than 160 degrees Celsius.  That should be an easy task; however, the power company sets your power potentcia when you first sign up with the company, which we did before anyone lived at the property so the power was set relatively low. We had no idea about the potencia setting, but quickly learned anytime we tried to use the oven and the power kept going out for the whole house. Our electrician friend came by to check things out and informed us how the potencia works. By keeping it lower, you can save money, but it also doesn't allow the higher powered items like an electric oven, to work. Needless to say, this made things very difficult, especially living in the country, where we now make most of our meals at home. We quickly made the request to update our potencia to the higher amount so that we could use all of our appliances at the same time. But, as we have learned time and time again, things are not as straightforward in bureaucratic Spain. There always seems to be one more hoop to jump through. With the potencia problem, we encountered the power reseller first. The reseller was very happy to take our request, even in my broken Spanish, we seemed to get the ball rolling for the change. However, we then had to make the same request to the power distributor, which we did via their handy online tool, we were able to pay for the change and schedule a tech to come out to update the meter at our property. Ok, good to go, this should be done pretty quickly, right? WRONG! About 2 weeks later, we received an urgent notice from the reseller, that we needed to make the request to the distributor or they were going to close our initial upgrade request. Many calls in both Spanish and English later led us to discover that the distributor had started the upgrade at the meter and even sent the tech, but they had not told the reseller that everything was complete because they did not have proof that we had paid the 45 euros for the upgrade. Queue the multitude of calls and online inquiries, where ultimately we found out, the distributor could see that we made the payment, but they wanted official confirmation from our Spanish bank that we had made the payment. (This is the red tape/bureaucracy I'm talking about). Ok, we can get confirmation of payment from the bank, no problem right? Welllllll, not quite. The online tool that the bank offers shows that we made a payment from our account and the amount of the payment, but not who the payment was made to. Sooooo, not kidding, we had to drive to the bank and go talk to a teller to get a print out on official bank letterhead that showed we made the payment to the distributor and then email a picture of this proof to the distributor. At times we really felt like we were on an episode of Punk'd or Candid Camera and someone was going to finally show up and tell us that they were just "messin with us", maybe that was just wishful thinking. I would love to tell you that it was solved after providing proof of payment, alas, this was not meant to be, for we ended up going through at least another month and a half of back and forth emails, phone calls and online requests with both the reseller and the distributor. All in it took almost 90 days, some burned and some undercooked meals, a lot of frustration and stumbling in the dark but we are now finally able to use multiple appliances at the same time. At least we think we can, the power hasn't gone out lately, but maybe we'll get the electrician back out to double check the breaker size, it seems like there is a lot of checking and rechecking that must be done. All part of the journey, living in a new country and adapting to local process, customs, etc. The weather is improving and the grass is already green in this part of the world. While yes literally greener, it is different already having to mow and tend to the gardens. Another reminder of how different things are here in Espana. Until next time, buen día!