Strike!

 When we first took the bus with our neighbor and fellow parent at the school, she told us that last year the bus drivers went on strike.  I asked how they go to school and she said that the buses were random, it wasn't consistent, and sometimes they would walk.  The walk is about an hour, so not an awesome option.  I hoped that there wouldn't be a strike.  But within a week of school starting, the strike has started again.  I am not exactly clear on what the workers are striking for, something is lost in the translation for me, but whether that involves better pay, working conditions, or something else, I am not certain.  If you read this article, along with the comments, you can see that I am not the only one not clear on what the workers are asking for: https://www.lavozdegalicia.es/noticia/vigo/2023/09/19/nuevos-paros-horas-punta-transporte-urbano-vigo/00031695145456939393481.htm They have been striking on and off without resolution for the past 2 years and it seems that they are intensifying their strike. The way it works is that there are scheduled strikes throughout the day and scheduled 24 hour strikes.  So on weekdays you can expect that the buses will stop running from 7:30-9:30am, 12:30-3:30pm, and 7:30-9:30pm.  That means if you want to get to school by 8:50am, you have to catch the L17 bus by about 7:15 or wait until 9:30 for the next bus. 

We didn't know the strike was back on yesterday.  D and G were a few minutes later than usual walking out the door (L was still recovering from her cold), but they tend to give themselves a pretty good cushion to catch the bus they so should have still caught it.  But they didn't so they went to catch a taxi.  There weren't any taxis either.  Someone waiting at the taxi stop told Darrell that everyone takes taxis when it rains, which it was, so they came back to the house and waited for the next bus and went in late.  I got a message from our neighbor friend later that the bus strike was back on.  

So D and the kids got up at 6 to get ready to catch the bus this morning, with the promise of a cafe visit before school.  The bus schedule said the following; notice the 129 minutes until the next 17 bus? That is part of the 2 hour morning strike. The previous page read 5 minutes until the 17, and they were already at the bus stop, so all was okay.  

Unfortunately they decided to get onto one of the 12 busses (there is a 12A and a 12B).  One does go by the school, so it one they can take, but I think they took the other one because they ended up at a huge hospital further out from town.  When they go off and looked it up, they found it was a 40 minute walk from school.  Far from the promised cafe.  With no taxis in sight.  Luckily a few minutes later a taxi brought someone to the hospital and they were able to catch it to the cafe near the school.  And they had time to get their tea and pastry.  And they ran into a student in L's class who she likes, see her in the background of this picture with Larkin looking at her, and D got her phone number so we can connect outside of class, so silver linings in it all. 

The only concern I have about all of this is how I am going to get them to their fiddle classes at ETrad in time.  They start at 4pm and the strike lifts at 3:30.  It is going to be pretty tight, but hopefully we will make it.  Adventures abound!

Por Fin!

The idea of coming to Vigo rather than another Spanish-speaking place was born years ago at Sierra Fiddle Camp, before covid.  In 2019, we met a woman there named Teresa.  She is a pianist and a music teacher from Galicia.  We hit it off and talked about how it would be fun to be able to live in Galicia with the kids going to the school where she teaches.  A dream, but not a reality.  We spent some more time with Teresa after the camp in Monterey and San Francisco, and we stayed in touch after she returned to Spain.  Then the pandemic hit and tabled our thoughts of going to Spain.  

During the pandemic, there were a lot of creative people figuring out how to use technology to keep playing music together.  One group, FiddleQuest, created a daily musical meet up where an instructor from somewhere in the world would show up for an hour and teach a tune or two to a group of people who logged on.  Our kids loved this and joined every day; in fact they still join the group that is still going on Saturday mornings.  One teacher who showed up was Alfonso Franco, a Galician fiddler.  It turns out that Teresa took lessons from him when she was younger and the kids also enjoyed learning from him. Alfonso taught on FiddleQuest several times and G practiced a few of his tunes. A month later Sierra Fiddle Camp came up with their own online camp.  Just as at the in-person camps, there was a time for people to perform tunes for the other participants and G decided to play one of the tunes he had learned from Alfonso.  And who happened to be watching...Alfonso.  Take a look at this sweet video of G playing the tune and Alfonso's reaction:

Long before we arrived, I was trying to decipher the website for ETrad, an organization for teaching traditional Galician music, where Alfonso teaches. I was trying to figure out how to sign the kids up for classes, which classes they would take, all the details.  It was about as clear as mud to me.  Teresa generously tried calling them and asking questions and telling me what she found out, and I was still confused about how it all worked.  So after we arrived, I started going to the building that houses ETrad regularly to see if it was open, but, of course, everything is closed in August in Spain.  So as soon as September hit, I headed over to ETrad to inquire.  And I understood enough of what he said to know that we would need to alter school schedules, get on a waitlist, and hope they got in.  Oh, and have that NIE number and empadronmiento I have mentioned that we don't have yet.  The registrar allowed us to get on the waitlist for the intermediate fiddle class and the weekly group jam session without the empadronmiento (luckily we had just gotten the NIE numbers), and we waited to hear.  Last week we got an email that the children needed to come in for a try-out.  So today we headed down to ETrad and they got to play for Alfonso.

  It was sweet to meet him in person.  And look what happened:

Finally, por fin, playing together in person!

Afterward we went out to celebrate with a warm drink since it has been rainy off and on, Colacao for the kids and espresso for D.  Colacao is a packet of hot chocolate served with a cup of steamed milk.  You add the Colacao to the steamed milk yourself and mix it, a bit of a ritual.  It is less sweet than packets of hot chocolate in the US, and the steamed milk makes it extra yummy. 

Sailing Through Vigo

Real Club Náutico, where the kids swim, is offering some free sailing classes for kids, and G and some of his new friends from school wanted to join. They get to go 5 times, and because it was explained to me in Spanish, I am not exactly clear on what they will be doing during the 4 hour sessions.  But they went out this Saturday and Sunday mornings and had a great time on the bay. The conditions were windy and rainy, so the first day they sailed in the harbor and G got to use the skills he learned in his sailing courses in Monterey to help sail the boat.  Today it was more windy and rainy, so they went out in inflatable boats that had outboard motors.  It sounds like they got going pretty fast, which always makes for a great time. D went for a 10 mile walk with a new friend, while L and I spent the weekend snuggled up and fighting off a mild cold.  

Vigo Reflections 2

 A few favorite little views from Vigo this past week, including from a little history walk D and I did around town. And a few accomplishments:

-We have all had our TIE (kind of like a social security card) appointments and were fingerprinted, and we are waiting the 30 days to pick the cards up.

-We have our empadronmiento appointment to register with the City Hall in the beginning of October.

-D and the kids have ordered their VigoPasses which provide city bus fare at a third of the cost (right now it is 1.49€ per person per ride, which adds up very quickly).  I have to wait for the empadonmiento for mine since I am not a student. 

So much bureaucracy to wade through, but we are doing it. 

Loving all murals and public art throughout the city.

La Farola (The Streetlight) is a popular central meeting point at the beginning of the major pedestrian street, Rua de Principe.  It has nice little benches to sit and watch people as they stream by.

This is the Jules Verne Monument, made and installed on the centennial of his death.  In 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Verne devoted a chapter to "The Bay of Vigo," fueling the legend of the Rande treasure with Captain Nemo's explorations with his Nautilus.

School!

 School! The kids are going to a British Montessori school this year.  This means that the teachers are either English speaking or bilingual and they use a Montessori approach, but for the older students they are preparing to take the British GCSE school exit exams.  

G is in KS4, a year before they typically take the exams, but he wants to try taking a few elective exams at the end of this year, possibly music and history.  There are only 2 other children in KS4, but they are combined with KS2 and KS3, so he has plenty of kids near his age and several he already gets along with well. Luckily one of the families lives just 2 buildings down, so we can share bus accompanying duties and the kids can get together often. They started he and the other new students on a half-day last week, so he has had a bit of time to adjust. The school is relatively new, so their Secondary School program is growing and developing.  There will likely be some bumps along the way, but overall I think it will be a great place for him. And so far he is happy with it. 

 L is in the second of three years of upper primary.  She had her first day today.  The students who were there last year started last week to get the classroom ready and get to know the routines so they could be in the swing of things to help the 7 new students along.  The entire upper primary has 25 children, so this is a good chunk of the children.  She loves her teachers and she said the children were nice and friendly. Many of the students have known each other for several years, so I expect it will take a little bit before they figure out how to incorporate the new students, but hopefully it will happen sooner than later. She said she also got to make a science experiment journal, do some geography, and read a Harry Potter book, all of which she enjoyed. She didn't enjoy the watermelon soup but she did enjoy the spaghetti she had for lunch. Overall a good start to her school year. 

On the way to school, the city bus driver played AC/DC's "Highway to Hell."  I almost died laughing. Definitely broke the nervous tension of the first day.

Bus stop near school.

Not a bad view from school grounds.

Headed up to class with their buddies.

Vigo Reflections I

 One of my favorite things about living in downtown Vigo so far is how walkable it is. Yes, there are a lot of hills, and some of them quite steep, but there are sidewalks everywhere, and a lot of people walking.  The drivers know to watch for pedestrians and they are generally pretty good at it. 

A few years ago, grappling with their aging population needing to get around, Vigo began adding escalators up some of the hills.  They are little oases in the midst of the city, enclosed in glass with lots of plants and even music that sounds like it is from the Monterey Bay Aquarium...I feel a bit like I should be seeing jellyfish when passing through. They are relaxed little microenvironments in the midst of the bustling city.

There are also lots of parks and pedestrian-only thoroughfares.  This means that you can avoid quite a few streets with cars when walking through the city.  The kids can walk almost half the way to their swim team through parks and pedestrian-only streets. And there is a lot of art, sculptures, murals, and graffiti. This last one brings up an interesting point.  Vigo prides itself in being a very clean city, and it shows. They have a brigade of people out cleaning the city daily, picking up trash, sweeping the sidewalks, and trying to clean off the graffiti.  And I have also seen people mopping the sidewalk outside their own doorsteps.  This helps keep the city pleasant and walkable.  In fact, people are out walking at all hours of the day.  On Saturday morning at 4am, I heard the voices of about 20 people walking in the street happily singing (haha)!

The citizens of Vigo consider themselves among the happiest with the highest qualities of life in the world.  You can take a read about why here, just click next to the web site address and click on the translate option to read it in English. https://www.elespanol.com/treintayseis/articulos/vivir/por-que-vigo-no-esta-entre-las-ciudades-mas-felices-del-mundo-y-deberia?fbclid=IwAR14m4xKK2PErbxsgggd_fQQL6CpUp82wvwCzcaTuxgbhWXEoWuL9VwJRVc

So far, I agree with the article. 

Lots of surfaces to traverse!

This is the alley right next to our apartment, one of the most steep in the city.  It leads to the closest market so we walk it often.

The swimmer sculpture...lots of maritime and nautical themes.

Going up one of the escalators up the hill.

One of the major pedestrian thoroughfares.

One of our favorite buskers along the pedestrian walkway. He plays a mandolin, harmonica, drum, and makes the 3 little dolls dance all at the same time. Enchanting!

The beautiful waterfront it just a 15 minute walk downhill from our apartment.

 

Check out the name of this boat!

Swing and Jump!

 Last weekend we took a bus west to the town of Nigrán.  As far as I can tell, it is a town influenced by surf culture with a few beaches with breaks that people like to surf.  But we went for a different reason.  L has been asking to go to a trampoline park for some time, but with her concussion before we left and her post-concussive symptoms, we couldn't make it work.  And so we made a trek to go to the trampoline park.  They allow people in for 1 hour increments, so I searched for something else to enjoy in the area.  Clicking around on Google Maps in the area around the trampoline park, I came across something that looked pretty interesting, a homemade park of sorts in a forested area with swings over the water.  I only needed to show the pictures to the kids to get their immediate approval.  And it did not disappoint.  Getting off the bus, we found a trail to walk along a creek that took us about halfway.  Then we walked along a small road, that, it turns out, is part of the Camino de Santiago, past an odiferous water treatment plant, and to the swing area.  The kids ran and tried out the various swings, having a great time.  Definitely a hit!

We wandered back through the forest along the creek to Diver Jump Trampoline Park. They had more than just trampolines, with climbing, boxing, ninja course, crazy slides, an upside-down bike contraption, and more.  We had a blast!

Marikiná

When we first arrived, we were casting about for activities to help ease some of the homesickness that had settled in.  One of the things we did was up with another expat family here and went to the Marikiná ropes course just outside of Vigo.  It is in a beautiful forested setting and was both challenging and a lot of fun.  Notice how nervous they were at the beginning and in just a short time they learned to trust the ropes and relax into the fun of it. 

Getting oriented.

Learning the ropes.

First section and feeling nervous

Hang on!

A few sections later and feeling relaxed moving between trees.

G in his element