Dos Semanas

We arrived in Madrid two weeks ago, and my pile of dirty laundry is remarkably not too out of control, thanks only to my new Spanish bathtub washing routine.

The routine involves washing only underwear, socks, and t-shirts, and making the kids wear their pajamas 5 nights in a row.

Hey, desperate times call for desperate measures. And I have a moral opposition to paying 1.30 Euro to have one pair of undies washed.

The hopefully-knock-on-wood-keeping-fingers-crossed good news is that we might be in our own place one week from today! We are in negociations on a lease for our next home sweet home. The owner's of our first choice in pisos accepted our offer, yea!
The hard part is trying to iron out all the details, in Spanish.
Throw in the additional requirements of the embassy-- like a security inspection, lock-change requirements, alarm system installment, etc., and it gets more complicated. Then we needed to negociate a parking spot into the lease, so the Carolla Sport has a place to live when she arrives.

Oh, and anytime I use the word "we", you can assure yourself that I actually mean "Josh."

So two weeks later and we have an almost-lease, new cell phones, the kids are in school, we know our way around the city, we have our post office box set up, we're mostly inprocessed at the Embassy, our car insurance has been switched over to Spain, we've got a Skype number (thanks John!), all 4 of us have Metro passes, we have a Spanish bank account, and the list of things still-to-do might now be smaller than the list of things already accomplished.
Might.

So here are my thoughts on Madrid, now that I´m practically a native Madrileña.

ha. that was a joke.

-- The fur coat industry is alive and well among the older women of Spain.
-- The phrase "Hasta luega" flows out of people's mouths in a way that makes it practically unrecognizable. And I can't imitate it no matter how many times I try.
-- There are gorgeous buildings on every street, and the detail in all the architecture is incredible.
-- The food is mostly very good, and sometimes a little weird.
And lastly,

I really need to get out there with a camera!