Sheep Guarding Llama

It was so late when we finally got to sleep last night that it was actually afternoon when I got up today.  Luciana sneaked into our room and got into bed at nine thirty this morning but Liesl was fast asleep.  I slept until about one thirty which I really needed as I am fighting bronchitis and do not feel all that good.   I sound pretty horrible.  Although getting a long night of sleep tonight seems to have helped a lot.

I felt slightly better this morning when I woke up than I felt all day yesterday.  And it seemed to improve throughout the day.  I have been drinking hot tea all day long and that makes a difference.

Today is cold and rainy up here in Cáñar.  Right after I got up we had some really heavy rain but most of the day we were just getting a light sprinkle while we were in the clouds.  Very low visibility today.  So foggy that we could only see a few houses up the street!  Even just looking across the plaza visibility dropped quite a bit.

Dominica and I both played a bit more Tropico 4 today.  She has now passed me in the set of twenty challenges that are set up in the game.  We are both about halfway through the list but she is now one ahead.  Everyone completely has the theme music stuck in their heads all of the time.

Dominica is starting to feel under the weather too.  So we had a down day today.  Some games and work.

After work was done, Shawn, Rachel and I went to the Meson for some quick drinks.  We closed them down.  The few people that were in the place were all watching “El Voz” which is the Spanish version of “The Voice.”  That was particularly entertaining.  There was really no one there that we knew so it was really just the three of us hanging out for a little bit.

I was seriously tired this morning and ended up staying in bed until almost noon.  I would have been up sooner but the girls came down and jump on me in bed and hung out for a while.

Dominica set up in the kitchen with me and spent her day playing Tropico 4 with me.  It is only a single player game but we are working our way through the campaigns in parallel.  I am about one campaign ahead of her at this point.  Everyone in the house has the theme song completely stuck in their heads by now.

The girls’ friends came by again today again which is so cute.  It is awesome hearing them calling “Ciana…. Liesl….” through the streets.  Today, though, probably because she was still upset about yesterday, Liesl decided not to go out and play with them but we felt that Ciana could not be punished for Liesl not wanting to go out and play so we let Ciana go out on her own.  There was a new girl there today whose mother I have met and who is British and so there is extra communications so that Ciana can express herself to someone that will understand her in case of an emergency.

The new ice cream freezer was operational at the market today and the girls saw their friends out in the street with ice cream and so we made a family trip over to get some.  We have been waiting for this.  Very sad that this only just arrived now that we are nearing the end of our time here.  That would have been awesome.

So we took a family outing to go and get some ice cream.  This is going to be dangerous.

I ended up having a very busy evening at work and was not able to go out to the Meson with Shawn and Rachel.  I had to work until quite late and they were back from the Meson before I was done working.  They had shut it down but it was not a very busy evening.  They got to see everyone that we had hung out with last night and they said that I was asked about.

Had a pretty stressful evening dealing with problems with the house in Texas.  We’ve decided that we really have no choice but to sell it off and be done with it.  In many ways we are very sad because we really liked that house and it is the house that we lived together in the most and the first house for Luciana and likely the first place that at least Liesl will remember a little when she is older.  We really liked living there and had planned to keep the house for a long time.  We did so much work on the house.  At least we managed to live in it for several years.  It was in the Carrollton house where we spent six months planning for our grand tour of Europe too.  We have tons of fond memories there.

We talked a bit about what our options might be for moving back into the house and using it as our base of operations but the more that we thought about it the more we felt like the right decision was to be done with the house.  Owning houses is stressful and a lot of work and just makes our lives so much harder and as much as the idea of owning property feels like it might be a good investment, it never really is.  It is one thing to live in a house that you own and find better value than renting a place.  But being landlords is a huge mental and financial drain that we just don’t need.

So we already reached out to a real estate agent tonight to get the ball rolling.  Zillow lists the house as having gained a bit in value so we are hopeful that the market is good and that we will have a good chance of getting out of this house.  We would so love to be done with the New York house but the chances of that happening in the next five to ten years is pretty much zero.

So it was about four in the morning when we finally got into bed.  It was at least another hour before we managed to get to sleep.  A very stressful day.  But at least we have a plan of action.  And we feel good about the idea of being done with the house and not having the ties any longer.  Thankfully it has been long enough since we lived in the house that we really don’t feel the emotional attachment to it like we used to a year ago.

I had a hard time sleeping last night after both Luciana and Liesl sneaked down and got into bed with us about an hour after going to bed.  They came down sometime between one thirty and two in the morning.  By a little before six I gave up on getting any additional sleep and just got up and went up to the kitchen and did some work for a few hours in the morning.  Then around ten or so I switched to Tropico 4 and played for a few hours, which was nice and relaxing.  I made really good progress today on my campaigns.

I had a tough day with there being some major construction work going on in the plaza.  There is heavy equipment out there ripping up the plaza.  Looks like they are going to be doing something really fancy there but it is unlikely that there will be anything but construction until we have long since left here given the scale of what they are doing.  It started yesterday or the day before but today it really took off and was so loud.

The girls’ friends came by today.  We heard them calling out in the street.  “Ciana.  Liesl.  Can you come out?”  It was so cute.  We are really excited that the girls have made friends and are able to go out and do things.  This is really something.

The girls started by going out to the plaza to see the construction that is going on.  Then they told us that they were going to the playground.  So we let them go.  It is going to take a lot of getting used to having them just out and about on their own.

At one point I went to check on them but could not find them.  So I did some wandering around town but eventually found them coming back up to the playground.  They said that they had gone to someone’s house for a bit.

A while later Ciana was brought back to the house by an adult!  This was surprising.  Dominica went with her to see what was going on.  It turns out that the group of kids had gone to the “Casa de Pueblo” which is roughly the community center.  It is near the playground and in the same “complex” so I am sure that the kids that they were with thought nothing of going there but we were not familiar with this place and would not have known where to look for them kids.  Dominica found Liesl in English and computing classes that the other kids were taking.  Liesl was a bit upset because she did not want to go there but hadn’t known what to do and she did not know that Ciana had asked to go home and what had happened to her.

So it was quite an adventure for our girls today and a big learning experience.  This all started so quickly that we have not had much time to work with them as to what to do and what to say and how to handle themselves.

Rachel and Shawn walked down to Órgiva today which is quite a long walk.  It is many miles but, more importantly, it is a massive change in altitude.  Going down is not so bad but returning is rather a crazy walk.

After they returned and I was done with work we went to the Meson for drinks.  We got there early enough that we were able to get tapas since the kitchen was still open.  The guys that we have gotten to know from around town were there – the same group that Ryan and I met on our first night at the Meson several weeks ago.

We ended up buying a round of drinks for the guys.  Then they bought a few rounds for us.  One of them ended up joining us at the table to discuss English rock and roll.  Everyone in La Alpujarra just assumes that we are British as there are absolutely no Americans here whatsoever.  I do not believe that we have met or heard of another American visiting the area yet since we have been here.  Even in Granada we really did not see Americans.

After the bar closed down the guys invited us back to one of their houses to show us the awesome view.  Everyone kept raving about how nice the view was from his house.  So we checked out his one house, which had an amazing terrace.  Then they all took us down to a lower house where he actually lives and showed us that one.

We ended up hanging out there until about four in the morning.  Had a good time getting to know the local crowd.  We are much more a part of the village than we were before.

This is our relaxing Sunday.  Lots of sleeping in and just hanging out at the house.  Dominica and I both played a bit of Tropico 4 today and enjoyed the quiet day.  No travel, nothing needing our attention.  Just a day to relax.

Dominica and the kids stayed home tonight.  Shawn, Rachel and I went out to the meson again to hang out this evening.  A very quiet night there.

We are coming up on the end of our time in Spain.  This is one of our last weekends.  This is the last free weekend that we will have with Rachel and Shawn.  With so much going on recently we decided that this weekend would be a stay at home and relax weekend.  Time to just kick back and enjoy living in Cáñar.  Lots of resting up, lots of video games, lots of just hanging out.  Dominica especially enjoys having Rachel and Shawn here because I have people to go out and do things with without requiring her to go anywhere with me as she prefers to stay in most of the time and I prefer to go out.  So I manage to get a lot of my “going out” done when people are visiting and spare Dominica from me constantly wanting to go out and do things.

Today Dominica and I played a lot of Tropico together.  Rachel did a bunch of reading.  Shawn playing Knights of the Old Republic.

It was a really nice day.  We had a good time.

This evening Rachel, Shawn and I went to the meson in town.  There was pretty much no one there.  We got some delicious tapas with our drinks tonight.  I really loved that we got one that was a slice of tortilla (which I really like at our local meson in general) along with a tomato and onion salad.  Delicious.

A quiet night out for beers.  I still love the draught Alhambra.  Rachel and Shawn tend to get Voll Damm by the bottle.