Counting Down from 10

Saturday, December 6

Ack! I knew it was getting close, but I just realized it's only 10 days until we board that plane for the long haul home. Part way home at least, we'll be spending the holidays with Kevin's family in the Carolinas. It will be good to have some adjustment time to ease the reverse culture shock.

We arrived back in Granada last night after our Mediterranean cruise and visit to Seville, Spain. I only have 4 or 5 loads of laundry to go, really wish I had a dryer. Maybe I'll try to find a laundromat, but I've never seen one here. If fact, if I ever had to open a business here, I think that would be it.

We had a great time on the cruise, and I still haven't downloaded my pictures. Hopefully I will get the web albums done soon. The ship part of the cruise felt a little like being back in the states - familiar food and everyone speaking English. The girls loved it, in fact we only convinced them to get off the boat for 2 out of 5 ports of call. You see there was this place called Adventure Ocean, which we just called the kids club, that had free activities for kids ages 3-11 for 9 hours/day. Then they had a "Late Night Party", which was a little extra from 10pm-2am. Well, it took Kyla a couple days to realize that she couldn't stay away enough hours in the day to attend all the fun act ivies. Although she begged to go the the night time party, she never got to go, however they did get to stay until 10pm a few nights. It's easy to sleep in when you have an inside cabin at the very back of the ship - very dark and quiet.

One of the best parts of cruising with kids besides the fact that we got to do some quality sightseeing without whining was that you never had to worry about food. There is always something, well usually too much to eat from the time you wake up until about 10pm. Even on the days at port, if you manage your time will and pack yourself some snacks, you can skip trying to find lunch in some country like Tunisia, where you don't really want to try the food for fear of getting some stomach bug. In Lisbon and Seville we also enjoyed breakfast buffets at our hotels. This is our first day without some kind of buffet and it is not good.

I think I have mentioned before how you have to plan ahead for weekends and holidays in Spain as many of the shops, most importantly grocery stores are closed. So Kevin went out this morning to gather food for the weekend only to discover all the stores are closed. Hmmmm, there must be a holiday, well that would explain why the traffic was so bad last night and the bus ride took an extra hour. So we're back after two weeks and all we have is milk, cereal, bread and peanut butter. It could be worse. We're definitely going out for lunch tomorrow and maybe Monday too. Luckily, the rent collector, Barry told us about a grocery store that's open 24 hours and not too far away. I just googled Spanish holidays and discovered that Dec. 6th is Constitution day and Dec. 8th they celebrate the Immaculate Conception. I'm sure if we had been around we would have know about these days. The girls are actually disappointed that they don't get to go to school Monday, go figure!