Life: Idiotropic

Began my day watching synchronized swimming with the girls on TV. Spain won. Luci thinks she can do that. I don't doubt it. The US and Japan weren't there this year because of the "crisis." Crisis is a word that I'm hearing a lot here in random conversations. It's at the forefront of people's minds here and the scapegoat for anything going wrong.

I need new makeup, but all the foundation and press powder colors at the Mercadona are a lot darker than me. Either I tan significantly, or I will be ordering my "makeup for pale people" color translucent, online.

Other than the quick grocery run with Luci, we stayed home and played. I lounged in and out of the sun with a book, we watched the tremendous downpours of rain broken intermittently by shining sun, and the girls pretended that they were fish. Convincing little things. I think they are about to sprout gills. Elise went so deeply under water that the top of her snorkel was at least 1" below the surface, so she came up sputtering. I told her that if she took off the snorkel and just took a deep breath, she could swim without it. The rest of the day she swam all by herself in the deep part of the pool, following Tiara all over the pool. She's tireless and determined. Fun to watch.

All three little girls spent half the day playing with the large group of British youth here as a part of a church camp. They're learning to speak with a certain non-American inflection that is kind of funny to hear. And those long foam floatie things we Americans call noodles in the pool - in Brit speak, they are woggles. Elise likes the purple woggles best.

Tiara played ping pong and "hung out" with the French kids today. They speak very little English and she is too shy to try out her French, but they smiled and were polite together. A quiet group. The guitar player with his Beatles haircut told her he was going to sing in English. "Just the two of us. We can make it if we try. Just the two of us. You and I..." "Did you understand it?," he asks after? "Oui," she says and he beams with pride that he was able to sing in English. I wonder if he even understands the words. We don't know their names, so we talk about them mostly, according to the shirts that they seem to never change. Purple, the twin brother keeps staring at Tiara and watching her, but he's the quietest one. Dark hair and bright pale blue eyes. She's watching him too, but they mostly just smile at each other. Green is guitar boy - longer hair. Twenty is the older friend who speaks more English and made the mix up thinking that Tiara was in college. And "sister" is 12 and shy. Tiara smiled at her one day and "sister" just ran the other way.

Oh this Spanish schedule... at midnight walking through the gardens you can hear the clinking of silverware on plates and the quiet conversations. Coffee as my hydrant makes 0130 feel like 10. Sleeping until 10am, up until 2am. The lazy days of summer are liquid in Spain.