Hide and seek, cat version

Today is one of the days the cleaning lady comes to the house, and she usually leaves the door open. Since she comes when we are already at work, I never get to tell her why I leave the door closed: to keep the cat out. As you may remember, I like to keep the cat out because he may or may not chew everything in sight as well as get fur everywhere. And then he hides under the bed and makes it impossible to get him to leave.

I got home from work around 6:30 and went straight into my room to drop my bags and coat. I see the door is open and assume Gin is under the bed. I check and he isn't. And I also weirdly find that nothing is knocked off the dresser nor the bedstand.
He had to have been somewhere else in the house, so I shut my door.

So I am sitting on my bed, firing up my computer when I hear a "mew...MEOW." I am confused and somewhat panicked because Gin is nowhere to be found, and as you may remember, I have pretty minimal furniture for him to hide under. I hear it again and I call Gin's name.

I realize it's coming from the nightstand, and I open each drawer until I find him trapped inside the bottom drawer. He leaps out at the sight of daylight and bolts out of the room with a "REOWR!"


I look inside the drawer to find my cell phone package/box all chewed up, the string (hanging from the 2nd drawer) of my backpack gnawed on, and, of course, loads of loose cat hair.

I assume Mara (the cleaning lady) left my door open and possibly the drawer slightly open, and Gin found his way inside. The drawer shut from the momentum of him leaping inside, and stayed that way. I also assume the loads of cat hair were shed by trying to scratch his way out, or by pure stress.

Since Pichon's mom (who was babysitting the kids starting at 4pm) said she hadn't seen Gin the whole time she was over, we assume Gin had been in the drawer since Mara left. Which was about noon.

Gin was trapped inside a drawer today for six hours.

Children are our future!

Today was World Peace Day, and Lucia's school had a special concert.

They began the event with a handful of kids from each grade (1 through 6) and had them recite some writings they did in class, related to peace.
Grades 1 and 2: A sentence of "What is peaceful to me" (in English)
Grades 3 and 4: A brief idea or suggestion to make the world more peaceful (in English)
Grades 5 and 6: A poem recited by memory about peace (in Spanish)

The first kid in the youngest group said, "I feel peecefool when I am weeth my pah-reents." *cue awwws from audience*
The second kid says "I feel peecefool when I am een my house weeth my fah-mee-lee ahnd my brah-there." *cue awws from audience*
The third kid goes up and takes the mic, "I feel peecefool when I am watching TV awn thee couch." *cue roaring laughter from all children and parents*
Then the parents calmed down, but of course the little children are laughing and laughing and laughing until the Australian teacher takes the mic and says "We are WAITING..." in a stern voice until they calmed down.

Then the kids in grades 3 and 4 go up and say things that would make the world more peaceful. "There should be no war." "Eet ees bad that there are poor pee-oh-pole. I weesh that there are no more poor pe-oh-pull."

Then the kids in grades 5 and 6 recited some acrostic and rhyming poems in Spanish.


Then, the whole group of students, grades 1 through 6 (about 200 kids) sang "We Are the World."

Yes, that Michael Jackson (and friends) one.

The kids put their hands on each others' shoulders and swayed, while some threw their hands up and waved them to the music, and towards the end, they all clapped to the beat.

It was super cute and I of course wish I had my video camera. It was great because they'd all be mumbling most of the lyrics until the chorus when they would all clearly shout "WEE ARE THEE WOHRLD! WEE ARE THEE CHEELDREN!"

After that rousing performance, five children stood up, each holding giant 3-foot-diameter white balloons by a string. Next to each of them was another child, with a highly decorated poster with one of the continents written on it.
The kids went outside, and after a big "ONE TWO THREE!" They let go of the balloons to be symbolic of peace (or maybe of war, since they were getting rid of them?).
Let's stop there. Notice how I said five children? I'll get to that in a minute.

That was pretty much the end. The teachers got on the mic and thanked the parents for coming, and the kids waited for the parents to go outside. The parents congregated while the kids went to their classes and got their bags.

One of the moms, Marta, who we know from Lucia's basketball class (her daughter also is in the class), saw my purple sunglasses I was wearing outside and got all excited and started complimenting me like "Y Melissa! Me encantan las gafas! Super fashion! Very fashion!" As she grinned and did this hand wave head bob thing. She is one of my favorite friends of Cristina's.

My impression of Marta's reaction, wearing the so-called "high fashion" glasses:


Gif maker

While outside with the parents, I asked Cristina, "So don't you think it's weird that they had only five continents? There are seven, right?"
I began to doubt myself because no one in the audience seemed to blink when the Australian said the five continents were represented by balloons. During that time, I was thinking "So, which five? Are we only picking favorites?" At that point I also noticed one of the posters (all were in English) that said "AUSTRALIASIA," and wondered if that was a typo or some invented combo of continents. But there was also an "ASIA" poster, which confused me even more.

So, as I was saying...Cristina thought for a moment, and was like "No, there are five." And Monica, her sister was there, as well as a couple other parents of kids in Lucia's class. We opened it up to discussion and they were like "Nope, there are only five. Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia, America." And I was like "Oh, in the US we learn that there's North America and South America." And one of the moms was like "Yeah, even though they are not attached, we still consider it one giant continent." (Which I find funny, since my whole life I've thought that Europe and Asia were too connected to be considered two different continents)

Then I was like, "Um, what about Antarctica?"

"We don't count that one."

"But why? It's a huge land mass!"

"I dunno." Then, jokingly, Monica was like "No one lives down there, so we might as well ignore it."

This was all news to me.

Then the moms called over Floren, Cloe (Lucia's friend)'s dad and Marta's husband, who is French (her mom is Spanish). He came over and they asked him what he learned in school back in France. And he also said five. I explained how we learned there were seven and he was just like "Oh you crazy Yankees (spelled, in Spanish, "Yanquis")!"

So that was that.

The difference is pretty simple.

If I haven't mentioned it before, there are some major differences between Lucas and his cousin Dani.

Mainly, Lucas is very crabby and always has "una cara de mala leche," whereas Dani is bubbly and giggly and, well, enjoyable to be around.

Don't get me wrong, Lucas has his cute moments. He just isn't the kind of kid who laughs very much. Or hugs. Or smiles.

The two videos below pretty much demonstrate the key differences between the two.

These videos were taken during the boys' Christmas concerts at school. As you can see, they were suuuuper adorable. Lucas' class dressed up as presents, and Dani's class dressed in jeans and "rock and roll(?)" clothes. Which explains the random leather jacket kid with the super cool attitude in Dani's class.

I think you'll figure out who is the focus of each video, but if not, Lucas is the sourpuss, and Dani is the bubbly one in a blue tie.

Lucas:








Dani

Oh hey, remember that?

Remember back when I mentioned the enormous hassle I had to go through to get my residence card?

And then after that, I mentioned how I had to wait 30 days for my card?

Well, exactly on the 30th day, I was there knocking at the police station. 

And guess what?

Yeah, I am a resident. And resident gif-maker.

Did that really just happen?

Last week, Pichón told us this happened:

Lucas: Qué es esto? Pica! (What is this? It stings!)

 Lucas was holding a bottle of hand sanitizer that he had opened and taken a sip of.

How big?

I took this photo a while back, but I somehow forgot to put it up on my blog.

It is a photo of a 5-foot long sausage, sitting on the kitchen counter. Yeah, that happened.

Catchy!

I hear this song all the time on the radio. It's really catchy! It's called "Depende de ti" by the band El Sueño de Morfeo.