An early end

As we write this we are all lounging in the confines of our house in State College - having returned two weeks earlier than expected on Friday the 13th (yes, we traveled that day). The decision to come home early was due to a perfect storm of bad events over the past month or so - Dan was diagnosed with pneumonia and is continuing to suffer strange side effects, both girls were sick with colds and/or ear infections, Audrey contracted head lice (they grow 'em BIG in San Sebastian) and we were getting bad vibes as Spanish regional elections approached at the end of this month (our neighborhood is a Basque separatist area and, while we never feared for our safety, the concern about what the girls MIGHT see was increasing). The long and the short of it was that we felt someone was telling us it was time - it took us a while to listen but we finally got the message. The last month in SS basically consisted of what is shown in the pic.

Leaving early takes nothing away from the wonderful time that we had in Spain - we enjoyed great adventures, met many wonderful people that we are sure will be friends for life and realized that we are truly blessed, not only with each other but with our incredible families and friends. This trip was something that we may never repeat but we feel we are better people because of it and, if we had to do it all over again, we would not change a thing.

We hope you enjoyed all of the mindless dribble that was posted here during the past 6 months or so and, maybe, someday we'll resurrect this blog to report on a new adventure.

As always, we hope that wherever you are you are happy and healthy.

The Linzell's are signing off.

San Sebastianings

We mentioned that our central Spain trip to start ’09 would be the last trip prior to coming home, however, that doesn’t mean we’ve been sitting in our apartment contemplating our navels (we limit that to once a week). For the last couple of weeks we’ve been slowly sliding back into our routine, seeing some of the sights that we’ve missed so far and experiencing San Sebastian’s BIG FESTIVAL known as Tamborrada.

The girls have returned to school, Dan to work (kinda) and Cindy to doing just about everything else. Kelsey and Audrey were glad to see their Spanish chica-friends again (they are already starting to lament leaving their friends here a little) and to have homework to do (YES THEY MISSED HOMEWORK). Dan had to give the final exam for the course he taught and assign grades (the system is a 10-pt scale here with MANY subtleties complicating things) and he is initiating initial research work with one of the PhD students at Tecnun - non-contact health-monitoring of truss structures using Laser Doppler Vibrometry for those of you taking notes. Cindy was able to restart her weekly conversation partner meetings and, just this week, she began taking a Basque cooking class that meets weekly until we leave. So, it appears that we are back in the “family saddle” again.

A little over a week ago Cindy and Dan went to visit the Eduardo Chillida museum (info at http://www.eduardo-chillida.com/index.php?id=1&L=3). As we mentioned in one of our first

posts, Chillida is the artist who did the steel sculptures that we often visit at the entrance to the San Sebastian bay and, from what we have seen, he appears to be the most celebrated Basque artist (he has works all around the world, including the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh). The Chillida-Leku museum is located where he lived and worked “outside of town” (which means about 15 mins by bus with multiple stops – a long way in Europe) and is largely outdoors due to the size of most of his works, although there is a wonderful Basque barn within which some of his smaller items are housed. We both thought it was amazing – probably of one of the best museums we have seen and, during the past year or so, we’ve been fortunate enough to be in MANY great museums. Chillida worked in steel, iron, rock, felt and paper and his abstract shapes were inventive but seemed to have central circular theme (we read that the circle is an important image to Basques) that makes them easily recognizable. Photos of some of his works (notice Danny “White Shoes” standing by his favorite –BIG and made of STEEL) and the interior of the barn are shown here. We have noticed that the kids are reproducing Chillida’s style, though with much more utilitarian materials (as evidenced in the pic showing one of Audrey's recent works, note Nutella on side of mouth - A TRUE REVOLUTIONARY IN THE ART WORLD).

Earlier this week was THE BIG DAY in San Sebastian – Tamborrada, always held on January 20^th (a big day in the U.S. for another reason) and a major, major event (a short summary is at http://www.spanish-fiestas.com/san-sebastian/festivals.htm). As indicated on the web page, Tamborrada is all about MAKING NOISE using bands with MANY, MANY DRUMS – Basque’s come back to San Sebastian from all over the world for just this day. The festival starts at midnight and ends at midnight and, as shown in the first pic, the road outside our apartment was one of the main imbibing and band parade routes so, like it or not, we enjoyed the music nonstop for 24 hrs (not surprisingly Dan slept 1 hr, the rest 6+ which was not bad – Dan was waiting to hear the band that totally killed the Ramones at 4am using a trumpet, sax, trombone, tuba and base drum). Most songs were traditional marches and folk songs of the area and, to be quite honest, the playlist was a bit short (those tunes will be knocking around in our heads forever).

The highlight of the whole festival for us was the kid’s parade that started at noon in the center

of the old portion of town. Most schools in SS have a band that marches in the parade andEskibel was no exception – they marched with their companion boy’s school, Erain. We were very fortunate that Kelsey was old enough to participate and was asked to do so (unfortunately Audrey was too young – she got into it though). We felt that this would be an incredible experience for her and it certainly was – truly amazing. Kelsey wore the school’s traditional band uniform as shown in the first couple of pics (she’s in the middle right above the gap in the 2^nd pic) and drummed to the official march of San Sebastian (music was piped in along the entire parade route – all schools repeatedly played the same tune in unison). After watching the opening ceremony, which is overseen by the “king and queen” of the kids parade (who were, ironically, from Eskibel and Erain – real lucky given there are over 50 schools that march and thousands of kids – pic of Audrey with her official SS Tamborrada and one of her chica-friends watching the ceremony), the rest of us walked the route and waited for Kelsey’s troupe to arrive. Look at the uniforms of the members of the band – they all either represent soldiers, cooks, lumberjacks (we think) and women carrying flowers and water. Each of these costumes directly relates to the history of the festival and is reproduced by every band that marches. After taking some pics we then tailed Kelsey the rest of the route, totally cramping her style. Everything worked out great - the rain held off and we found Kelsey at the completion of the parade (last pic). We believe this is something Kelsey will remember forever – she could very well have been the ONLY American that marched in Tamborrada this year. Pretty cool, we think.

Regarding the other, minor, event that happened on the 20^th – we were fortunate to watch the inauguration streaming on CNN after Kelsey’s parade and felt that we witnessed history. We have been asked how the Spanish have reacted to the change in leadership in the U.S. and while, like most of Europe, they were happy for the change it has been a reserved happiness. Spaniards appear to, justifiably, take a “wait and see” attitude with their leaders and this same attitude is being applied to Obama (who they view as moderate, if not slightly right, when compared to their liberal leaders). We have all been learning a lot about Spanish and Basque politics since arriving and, while fascinating, it is complicated, to say the least when compared to the U.S. system. Makes you appreciate what we have.

AND FOR THE FINAL BIG ANNOUNCEMENT – AUDREY LOST ANOTHER TOOTH YESTERDAY!!!!! She will be coming back to the U.S. next month with plenty off bling. Her front tooth gap is now approximately 3 meters wide.

That’s it for our latest report – the next one will probably come within a few weeks and could possibly be our last from here. We shall see – the end is coming soon.

We hope you are all healthy and happy and enjoying 2009 so far. We miss you one and all.

Central Spain to Start '09

As we alluded to in our last lengthy post, we made a trip to central Spain from San Sebastian to start the New Year. The trip had both planned and unplanned stops but, thankfully, no catastrophes (such as…batteries dying in rented vehicles in a parking garage in the middle of Paris, just as an example…).

We left on the 3^rd, ready to take our rented Seat Ibiza (translates into “typical European 4-door hatchback”) to Madrid. Unfortunately, the rental agency screwed up and did not have the right size car seat for Audrey (a problem in Spain since it’s against the law for someone her size and age to travel without one). The best solution was to stop in Burgos on the way to

Madrid, a town that we had considered seeing (since only the BEST are named Burgos – right Bill, Karen??) but were not sure we could fit in on this trip. This unplanned diversion ended up great, however, and not just because it broke up the trip. Burgos is home to a famous cathedral, located on one of the pilgrimage routes to Santiago de Compostella, and it is really a great place to see (see Cathedral pics). In addition, the historic center of the city is great and the girls loved walking through the tunnel of trees along the creek near the cathedral. We were also able

to eat a great lunch at a restaurant just off the cathedral plaza, the first of many great meals we’d have during our travels.

We arrived in Madrid the evening of the 3^rd and decided to see the holiday decorations that we had heard about during our time in San Sebastian. As we discussed in previous posts, Reyes Magos is the

BIG DAY for kids in Spain and, as a result, all of the decorations were

still going strong during our time in Madrid. They were amazing to see at night – with many streets in the center of the city having series of lights strung across them and each street having a different color or theme. Walking from block to block with all the shoppers and lights really got us into the holiday spirit, if only a week or so late.

We spent the next two days visiting museums and other sights and busing/training/walking the

city. The museums included the Prado to see some of the great resident collection and a BONUS Rembrandt exhibit (girls pic out front), and the Reina Sofia to see Picasso’s Guernica and th e other great modern art there (TRAVELER’S NOTE – if you have to wait in line to get into a museum and see some kids between 5 and 10 milling around, BORROW THEM BECAUSE IT WILL GET YOU INTO THE MUSEUM QUICKER – we were pulled from long queues in both Paris and

Madrid and taken to the front of the line because we had the girls). We crossed through the Puerta del Sol many times (Madrid’s equivalent to Times Square – see the Tio Pepe sign), went to the Plaza Mayor (yep – that’s Yoda in the Plaza in the 2nd plaza pic – he’s A LOT bigger in person) and attempted to visit the Palace (see the sign – royals think they can do WHATEVER THEY WANT).

One night we went to dinner and a flamenco show (yes, that’s AJ McLean ofBackstreet Boys fame, or at least his twin, Jorge, in the 2^nd pic) and on

Reyes Magos-Eve we attended the parade (Spain’s equivalent to the Macy’s Day parade) with 1,000,000 of our closest friends. We are not sure if all holiday parades start with large bugs and involve small children on REALLY tall stepladders jockeying for viewing position or continual floats throwing candy, but this one does. Our entire time in Madrid was great.

On our trip out of Madrid, we planned a stop in Segovia to see the huge Roman aqueduct which still stands in the center of the city. This is one stop that was high on maxo-geeko-gearhead Dan’s list (it’s listed as one of the greatest engineering structures in the world) and, since he was driving, well… The girls were not so sure about this diversion or the way to our one night in a “castle” (see below) but it ended up working out fine since we (a) had tapas for lunch and (b) they went ice-skating.

Our last stop on our adventure was in Lerma to stay at the “castle”, actually called a parador (www.parador.es). A parador is a government owned and run hotel (NOT the type of government run hotels that you are thinking of, U.S.-wise - they are VERY NICE), which is usually in a former castle, palace, or other structure that probably has a history and/or view. This one is located in the former palace of the Duke of Lerma – built in the 16^th century in his hometown (a small hill town - he located his palace at the top of the hill, not surprisingly) using money he fleeced from the country via his buddy, the king. So, while it does not necessarily have a completely honorable past, the place was great and we enjoyed our one night there. The former courtyard was enclosed and now houses a huge lobby, into which new age music was piped and coffee, hot chocolate and snacks were served. Needless to say WE HUNG

OUT THERE FOR A WHILE. After that, we did dinner in a big way in their dining room having traditional dishes from the area (for certain members of the family pasta counts as traditional and from the area). The girls’ meals were presented in really cool fashion as shown in the pic – main course in the center and the supporting cast around the periphery. We then slept well in our nice room and the next morning we toured the town QUICKLY

(freezing cold temps! - photo looking through a church at the surrounding

countryside) and headed back to SS.

The trip was everything we had hoped for – much fun and good food and drink – and we arrived back to our apartment safe but wiped. This was probably our last trip during our time here and we could not have asked for a better swan song.

We hope you returned from your holiday travels happy and safe, as well. We miss you one and all.

Oh, the irony

We hear winter is coming to the Midwest this weekend - this past week it came to Spain as well (see http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/01/09/madrid.snow.airport/index.html for what it did to travel in Madrid yesterday). As a result we witnessed some ironic things on the way back from our holiday trip Tues/Wed (blog post in the works...) and after we got back to San Sebastian on Thurs. Thought we'd post a couple of short clips to show you what we mean.







One video we did not get was of people walking through the snow, barefoot, in their Euro-mini suits to swim in the bay after the storm Friday morning - air temp 28 deg F, brisk wind, water temp MAYBE 50 deg F (muy loco, si???).

BIG DAY Build-Up, Action and Aftermath

It is interesting that in Spain, in similar fashion to the U.S., there have been a multitude of things for us to do in the days that preceded Christmas and, once Santa has come and gone, there is the usual Christmas to New Years activity void and subsequent stir-crazy-sibling cage matches. We’ll summarize the activities and leave the cage-matches to your imagination.

It started with Audrey’s 7^th birthday on the 18^th – a school day. It’s interesting that, in Spain, those having the birthday are expected to bring gifts and/or buy rounds/munchies for others. So, in addition to Audrey bringing the usual bags of sugar-laced fun for her class chica-mates, she also was expected to bring treats for her teachers (all SIX of them – chocolates were the choice – not a bad perk, we think). On the home front, we celebrated with present opening in the morning (Audrey got a mac-daddy pencil case – a MUST have at Eskibel) and dinner with a serious cake in the evening (when all the candles were lit they produced the heat of 1000 suns). She said it was a good day.

Following her birthday was the Feria de Santo Tomas on the 21^st – a fair that keeps alive the traditional trip that farmers made into San Sebastian to sells their wares on Saint Thomas Day. On this day those with Basque blood (and we think more than a few of those without) put on traditional clothing and head to the old portion of the city where farmers set up booths selling crafts and food

(1st pic shows a family dressed up and being interviewed - berets-a-plenty). We’ve read that all Basques yearn to be “down on the farm” so, from what we can gather, this is an important day. There are animal displays and traditional music and dancing performances but, from what we gathered, the focal points of the day are DRINKING AND EATING. Drinking = traditional Basque cider

(HARD cider) and eating = chistora (Basque sausage) in a corn tortilla (see people grilling tortillas in a booth in the 2nd pic). Cindy read the next day that over 9000 kilos (go ahead, do the conversion – IT’S A LOT OF MEAT) of chistora was consumed (last pic shows how crowded one of the main plazas was - and this was EARLY). The number of liters of cider consumed was not reported (go figure). The gameplan basically consisted of staking out a piece of pavement, sending someone to buy chistora and cider (the catholic school booths were typically hopping with cider purchasers – ironic), determining the best route to the john, and STAYING THERE ALL DAY (tailgating without the SUV). It was fun to experience.

On the 23^rd Tecnun had a Reyes Magos (Magi or 3 Wise Men) celebration for the employee’s children. January 6^th, the Epiphany, is the big gift exchange day in Spain (kinda makes sense) so, while many of the children know about Santa

they are more keyed into what the wise men will bring them 12 days later. Since Tecnun is not back in session on the 6^th they celebrate a bit early and, believe it or not, the Wise Men DID show up!!! Kelsey and Audrey both received some nice games, with Kelsey getting a Simpsons 3-D Chess Set (SWEEEEET) and Audrey getting a Disney Mountain Climbing game of some sort (still trying to figure it out – we lost the instructions).

The gift exchange was followed by a reception and the girls were able to run around with their best Eskibel-buds (K with Maria and A with Ana) since their parents also work at Tecnun. It was a nice night.

Finally, THE BIG DAY CAME (that’s, uh, the 25^th). Believe it or not, Santa did find our apartment and did leave gifts and, best of all, HE WAS AWARE OF THE SIZE AND WEIGHT RESTRICTIONS IMPOSED BY THE AIRLINES!!!

We were up early, opened gifts (everyone got multiple things that they appreciated – girls are shown looking at their Teeniest, Tiniest, Microscopic, Molecular-Level Pet Shop gifts) and suited up to go to southern France for the night. We went to a home in the town of Salies de Bearn, located in the Pyrenees foothills, owned by the family of the Susan that we mentioned in an earlier post.

Susan and her husband graciously invited us to spend some of the holiday with them and their 3 boys and we truly enjoyed it. The home was very nice (traditional French-Basque architecture from what we were told) and quite modern, with all the requisite toys, movies and videogames; we had the entire top floor; the food was excellent (note the tray of petit fours that one French guest brought – they did not last long) and the drinks tasty. We had a little gift exchange and we all received some great gifts (Cindy and the girls are sitting with Susan and holding the Pomme-pidou dolls that they received – dolls that are a must-have for French girls). We met some of their friends and had a great time.

It was our first and only American-Spanish-Basque-Irish-French Christmas and we felt really lucky to have the experience.

So now, we are in the midst of the post-Christmas doldrums. Fortunately, we have some more fun planned before the girls go back to school on January 8^th – visits to some local sites and a trip to Madrid/Segovia/Toledo. We’ll post our next report when we return.

We hope you had a joyous Holiday and we wish you a Happy New Year.

Feliz Navidad!!!!

We decided to post a video message to all of you from all (well, most) of us from San Sebastian:




Dan, Kelsey and Audrey are standing on the "blow holes" located adjacent to the Chillida sculptures at the entrance to the bay - when the tide is coming in every wave brings a pulse of COLD air (why Cindy smartly decided to be the paparazzi here - she's NOT just another pretty face...). In the 50's and sunny today (sorry, had to bring that up).

We hope you and yours are having a wonderful Christmas.

Bunch of Butterflies

Of the social variety, that is.

As alluded to in our earlier post, our social calendars, while not yet filled to capacity, are starting to take on a little bit of weight. We thought we’d summarize some of our recent activities.

We’ll start with our first European professional sport experience. When you think European sports, you think of the history, the pure technical skills and subtle aspects of the game that are so appreciated by the fans, and of course you can’t help but think of those fans and their loyalty to a club that goes back for generations. So that we could experience some of this history and atmosphere we went to a… basketball game (thanks Dr. Naismith and sorry to anyone that expected more from us – remember they play basketball INDOORS which is a major plus). We were able to go watch the Bruesa-Guipuzcoa Fightin’ Frogs (1st 2 words are REAL, 2nd 2 we made up, see mascot/chicas pic - Kermit on HGH) of the Spanish ACB League (the top league in Spain, unfortunately the F-Fs are NOT one of the top teams in the league) a week ago. One of Dan’s weekly basketball buds offered him 3 tickets , we purchased a 4th, followed the rules of self-improvement that are often applied at sparsely attended sporting events and sat together in reasonably decent seats. Below is a list of SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES WE NOTICED BETWEEN EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN BBALL GAMES:

• Arenas are multiuse (SIMLIARITY) but multiuse in Spain means basketball and bullfighting (DIFFERENCE - see the red bullring around the court in the pic above).
  
• Crowds are loud (SIMILARITY) but in Spain loud is CONSTANT AND LOUD (we’re talking “11, 11, 11 all the way across the board…” the whole game, freethrows, timeouts, you name it) involving a "pep" band that never stops playing (they even busted out the Looney Toons theme song), techno (Dan busted out the robot), horns and, when the team is playing badly or a ref blows a call, the requisite Euro-whistles (DIFFERENCE).
  
  
  
  
• Dance teams fill in the gaps during timeouts (SIMILARITY) but the requirements that you have rhythm, not be a nicotine fiend and that your torso stops moving when the music (which ranges from the aforementioned techno to classical) stops are definitely NOT in effect (DIFFERENCE - again, see pic).
  
  

• Showing support for your team by sporting some of their paraphernalia is popular (SIMILARITY) and, even when indoors and watching a game invented in Massachusetts, the best article to do this with is a scarf emblazed with the team name and colors (DIFFERENCE - see chicas in pic - scarves were supplied by the gracious host that Dan is chatting up in the background).

OK, OK – enough of the list. It was a good game, with each team holding and losing a lead (B-G was playing a team from Menorca led by Pooh Jeter, you know Pooh, formally of the University of Portland??). Unfortunately, both B-G bigs fouled out and their leading scorer (Andy Panko – formally of Bishop McDevitt in Harrisburg and Lebanon Valley College – he is a legitimate player in a league that includes some college names of reasonable renown - Shammond Williams/Bracey Wright/Luke Recker to name a few) was on the bench at the end nursing an injury and they lost by a point.

We’ll now move onto recent social activities taken by the leaders, nay, the ICONS of the Linzell family – the proud parents. The ‘rents actually had TWO, count ‘em, TWO semi-dates during the past few weeks. One involved eating Pintxos (pronounced PINCH-os) during an afternoon while the girls were in school and the second involved attending a Txoko (pronounced CHOKE-o) another evening while a sitter “recruited” from Dan’s class watched the chicas (don’t worry, we were told its common to use students to watch your kids, she was well paid and she and the girls really enjoyed each other). Pintxos are the Basque equivalent of Tapas (sorry but we have to go to the “Wiki well” for a definition and some pics - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pincho) and just about every bar in San Sebastian offers them to customers between about 11 and 3 each day. We had tried to do Pintxos with the kids but had a bad experience (rude bartender – we found out later that they are all rude and it wasn’t just due to Dan’s cologne, Jai Karate) so this was our second official attempt since we’ve been here. We were accompanied by two friends of Dan’s from Tecnun – Jose and Susan. Jose is a younger faculty member from Venezuela that Dan also plays bball with and who, believe it or not, received his undergrad degree from Penn State. Susan is an Irish woman and friend of Jose's that teaches English to faculty and consults to the University (she is married to a Spanish Basque but their family lives in France). They are both wonderful people and Jose walked us through the whole Pintxos thing at his favorite bar – after a lot of rich food and some good wine Cindy went grocery shopping and Dan went back to work (any idea how successful those tasks were???).

A Txoko is also another eating-centered event but it typically occurs in the evening at one of the many gastronomic societies located in San Sebastian (Txoko means "cozy place" in Basque) . They act as private clubs (members pay fees + expenses), complete with kitchen, stocked bar, and dining facilities. Txoko members sign out the club for a given event and host their invitees for a meal that they or they + their guests help prepare. The emphasis is on socialization – this + Pintxos appear to be the main sources of socialization for the family-centered Basques – so we mingled with many nice people, many from Tecnun, and then had IRISH food (the aforementioned Susan held the Txoko – she wanted us to experience one - and she stayed true to her heritage). Once again, it was a great time and, as you can see from the kitchen and table photos, much food/drink was prepared and consumed and the place (actually located on the Tecnun campus) was very nice.

Enough with the folks, the MOST important social event during the past few weeks occurred last nite and focused on the chicas. They participated in Eskibel’s “La Fiesta de Navidad." Each year the school puts together a show that all students 3 or over participate in – it involves singing, dancing and acting in Spanish, Basque and English with everything focusing on the meaning of Christmas (see pic for their outfits). Kelsey was is part of a story focused on the 3 Wise Men - she was one of a group of “astronomers” looking for the Star of David and sang a song in Spanish (Kelsey is standing in next to her good friend Maria - in light blue - in the 2nd pic - sorry about the heads). Audrey, meanwhile, dressed in traditional Basque clothes (that were nicely loaned to us by another mom) and danced and sang a traditional Basque, yep Basque, holiday song (she proudly displayed her central PA "riddim" - 3rd pic). We were very proud of both of them and the entire show was great (the older students even belted out Lennon’s “Happy Christmas” - we welled up). We think their participating in this show will be one of the memories of our time here that they carry with them forever – it really was cool.

That’s it for now – we will have many things to report on over the next few weeks (including a certain blonde-girls B-day, Xmas in the Pyrenees, and some travels). We hope you all also have great holiday adventures and, as always, we miss you one and all.