After waking up at a more reasonable hour the same morning, Mama, Daddy, Olivia, and I went to the beach again. Similar to the day before, we skipped rocks and enjoyed the crisp combination of cold sea and hot sun-soaking. I began reading When I Found You, a beautiful novel that speaks of honest parenting and enduring love.
We later shifted to a bar/restaurant directly by the water and lounged on this super long and awesome couch-like thing with a table right in front for food and drink purposes. We ate olives and delicious patatas bravas, one of my favorite Spanish dishes of cubed, fried potatoes with a slightly spicy mayonnaise-tomato sauce for dipping. Olivia got a yummy virgin Piña Colada that I often stole sips from. After eating, I felt like I was roasting, so I went and took a dive into the cold sea.
Now, it was off to Terrassa! A lot of Mama's father's family lived there, so we went to visit. First, we hung out with Estafanía, her husband, and their cute kids, Eric and Claudia, at their house. After talking for a while, we all went with Fani (Estefanía's nickname) and her kids to the hospital. It took us between twenty and thirty minutes to walk there. This is Spain, where you walk to most locations and rely on your own body to get you from one place to another, not a car. The reason for our hospital visit was to visit Pepe Luis, Fani's father, who has a host of medical issues that I found difficult to follow completely, since I don't know a lot of medical vocabulary in Spanish. Before these medical problems arose, Pepe Luis was a health and exercise fanatic. He ran marathons in the mountains, ate very healthy, and went through a cleansing process of his digestive system every month. I suppose that I am wrong to say that he was a health fanatic, because I'm sure that he will continue his routines once out of the hospital. During our visit, he could not speak due to the tube in his throat, so he mouthed words and wrote when necessary. His wife, and my grandfather's sister, Marie Carmen, was at the hospital virtually all of the time with her husband. In a bed in the same hospital room was a man whose only kidney was failing. He was very kind and funny, smiled often and had long black hair in a matted ponytail. He loves soccer and wanted the the Barca team to win that nìght. Apparently, a lot of his friends often came to visit, and one guy came in near the end of our visit with Pepe Luis and talked to the man about soccer. He lit up, smiling and joking even more than before. The view outside of the hospital room was gorgeous, but the man said, understandably, that he'd rather not see it so much.
After saying goodbye to Pepe Luis, his roommate with his friend, and Marie Carmen, we went and got incredible churros with thick melted chocolate before speed-walking back to Fani's apartment. I say speed-walked because of an impending thunder storm whose black clouds sprinkled on us as we rushed to a restaurant near the apartment. We met with another one of my Abuelito's sisters, Amparo. She had her boyfriend with her, a caring man named Paco. (Funnily enough, Mama's mother and both of her aunts married men named Paco. Well, Abuelito's birth name was Francisco, but a nickname for that is "Paco.") They were very sweet together, always looking directly at each other while they were talking. Paco was relatively quiet, and I can honestly not think of another person who genuinely looked so kind. Amparo and Mama talked about all kinds of things: recipes (Amparo gave Mama traditional recipes that she knows by heart for churros and bread), casas blancas (certain towns in Spain are known for their pure white houses), the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Pompeii (Amparo and Paco visited this lava-frozen town during one of their trips), college, and much more. Mama told her about the gap year Olivia and I are taking, and Amparo talked about how she always wanted to be a surgeon. She explained that since she grew up in such poverty, she simply did not have the opportunities necessary to realize her dreams. She said that where you go in life all depends on where you live and what your situation is like, which reminded me of a similar conversation I had at Governor's School East in my philosophy class. Though Amparo was unable to become a surgeon, it sounded like she did amazing at her job as a caretaker at a retirement home. Even in retirement, I could tell how much she cared about her work.
Once we had finished visiting with family, we went to a bar to go to the restroom before our drive back to Pineda. We ended up staying for about 20 minutes, watching the very end of a soccer game between Barca and another team were playing. Although Barca was the clear favorite from the beginning (and it was the team that the man in Pepe Luis' room wanted to win), the other team won. It was great to be in a packed bar full with so much energy; with about two minutes to go, Barca came this close to scoring a goal that would tie it up. You should have heard the elated-turned-frustrated groans that arose from every person in the bar. Once the game was over, the bar began to clear out, and we began our journey home.
Though it should have taken a bit over an hour to get to Pineda del Mar, it ended up taking us over three. This is because of the struggle it is to drive in a foreign country with very limited service (meaning Google Maps does not often get the chance to save the day), with different street signs and using a map to try to get to where you need to go. Another problem is the exits off of the highway: unlike in the US, where if you take an exit, you can get straight back onto the highway, there is no telling how you can get back onto the Autopista once you get off of it. When we finally got home (my poor dad had to drive the entire way, since neither Olivia, Mama, nor I can drive a stick), we all collapsed into bed.
Lightning illuminating the night sky
The view from Pepe Luis's hospital room
CHURROS!!!
Beautiful old castle in the middle of Terrassa. You'll never find this in the U.S.
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