Earlier this week I attended my company’s annual employee party. The party was held at the Hello Kitty Land Amusement Park and about 500 people attended. Due to some transportation issues I was about half an hour late and by the time I arrived the party was in full swing.

Several men from the accounting department, bedecked in sequin-covered jackets were dancing the samba on a platform overlooking the banquet room. Naturally, being Hello Kitty Land, the décor was primarily pink and several life-sized characters from the Hello Kitty pantheon were cavorting with various company members. Several male employees were dressed in drag including one who was wearing a nurse’s uniform and carrying a pair of handcuffs.

At this point let me remind you of something. These people are NOT party animal types. They come to the office every day wearing perfectly pressed suits and they never never smile. If you smile at them, they turn red and crawl under their desks. I quickly began to deduce however, that the Hello Kitty party was obviously a place where it was acceptable to let your hair down and get loose.

As the night progressed, a lively game of bingo was started. Unfortunately I couldn’t understand what all the prizes were but I did find out that one person won rice, another lucky employee walked away with a box of crabs from the North of Japan and perhaps the most surprised bingo player of all won some milk. My friend Matt won a vacuum cleaner. It was very exciting as you can imagine.

At one point I found myself sitting next to one of the company heads. He was slumped forward in his chair, completely passed out and snoring loudly. According to my friend DD, he had been smoking under the table prior to passing out. Of course in Japanese companies, this sort of behavior in drinking settings is considered to be completely normal and therefore, no one gave him a second glance. I really wanted to take a picture but I was afraid that due to his precarious position, the flash might wake him up and perhaps cause him tfall off his chair.

For the evening’s finale, “Shatcho” (which in Japanese means “The Big Boss”) played Rock Paper Scissors with the entire company and the winner got a trip to Singapore! This isn’t as strange as it might seem. Rock Paper Scissors is an extremely popular game here in Japan amongst both children and adults. One time I even saw an entire field of people who looked as though they were having some sort of Rock Paper Scissors tournament. That was really something! Still, as I stood amongst 500 other people with our fists raised in the air in preparation for Rock Paper Scissor, (all facing our leader who was positioned on a dais underneath a giant Hello Kitty symbol), I couldn’t help but reflect that this really did look disturbingly like some sort of Hitler youth rally. People had tears streaming down their faces from the excitement and I really do think that at that point, had Shatcho ordered us all to ransack the entire Hello Kitty Palace, leaving no survivors, we would have all complied without a second thought.

I love watching my kids be kids. I love watching them have pillow fights and pet worms. I love watching them make trains out of the dining room chairs and tents out of bunk beds and tables. Now that Nico is a little older, I love watching him venture into the forest with his friends. They explore, search for special rocks and build forts. Luckily we live in a place where it’s possible for him to play outside without having a parent constantly leaning over his shoulder. It reminds me of my own childhood although I must admit that Nico’s games are usually a bit more exciting than mine were (for some bizarre reason, I spent a great deal of my outdoor time as a child, pretending to own and operate a butter factory).

Yesterday Nico spent about two hours after school building a “cabin” in the woods. When he finally finished, he hurried over to ask me to come and see it. As he proudly pointed inside, he exclaimed “And look! It has everything I need!” I peered inside to see only a large nearly empty bottle of Scotch and a broken Hello Kitty thermos, both carefully propped up against one of the cabin “walls.”

“Oh… Great!” I exclaimed, as he went on to explain to me that now if something happened to our family, he’d be okay since he could just come live in his well-supplied cabin. Well, that’s a relief.

I know from personal experience that bi-cultural marriages have their challenging moments. Like for example when an American friend of mine who is married to a Spanish guy, horrified her husband when she came home from the supermarket with an enormous jar of Hellmann’s mayonnaise (it was for macaroni and cheese, naturally). They then had a conversation which could only take place between an American wife and her European husband (and please keep in mind that this guy is not even someone who spends much time in the kitchen):

-European Husband: I don’t understand why you bought this!

-American Wife: I needed mayonnaise.

-European Husband: But if you needed mayonnaise, I could have just made some for you!

Later when I told my friend that I was going to write about this on my blog, she reminded me to be sure and include her response to her husband’s offer which was: “I don’t want your bland-ass mayonnaise!”

The other day the boys and I had some time to kill so we headed to Ikea. I love going to Ikea! All over the world they are exactly the same from the big boxy beflagged building to the meatballs in the cafeteria. The only regional difference I have EVER found is that the Ikea in Switzerland has over-the-door hanging coat racks that have been especially adapted for the abnormally thin tops of Swiss doors. Other than that they are all just the same and this is exactly how I like it.

It may seem odd that I am saying this since for many years now. I have purposely chosen to live a very multicultural life. I love seeing how varying cultures experience the world differently and in general, I lament the process of globalization. The one glaring blue and yellow exception is Ikea and this is for purely personal and selfish reasons.

Basically it is just really nice to have one place to go where I know exactly what to expect. Nobody will come up and ask me questions I don’t understand (because an Ikea salesperson would be more likely to duck inside the nearest modular particle board closet than to come up and ask if you need anything), nobody will offer me food I don’t recognize, and the only surprises I get will be of the small pleasant variety rather than the large exciting but disconcerting kind. Perhaps a new line of vegetable peelers or an innovative way to store scarves. I’m not saying I’d want to hang out there every day but every so often (excluding Saturdays because that is truly a Swedish nightmare), I find it a relaxing escape from daily life in Spain.

One problem I do have with a trip to Ikea is that because we don’t have a car, it is a pain in the ass to get there. To top it off, invariably when I go, immediately afterwards I find out that someone I know with a car had just gone the day before or is planning to go the following day. This last trip was the worst though. As we headed out the door of our building, a mother from Luca’s nursery gave me a jaunty wave as she drove by in her car. Two trains, a funicular ride and a bus later (approximately 1.5 hrs), we walked into Ikea and guess who the first person we saw was? Just guess? I am thinking of getting myself a series of t-shirts printed to wear for pre, during and post-Ikea trips. One will say “I want to go to Ikea!”, The next will say “On my way to Ikea!” and the last will say “If you just went to Ikea, don’t tell me about it.”

Despite the transportational challenges, we managed to have a fun day although I was horrified to see that in about five more minutes, Nico is going to be too tall to enter the free childcare play center. This hardly seems fair since Luca is going to be old enough to enter in just a few more months. Why did no one mention this to me when I was planning the age spacing of my children? Nico enjoyed his lunch and declared that he was used to the food since he had once lived in Sweden. I’m sure the Swiss will be happy to hear that their country left such an impression.

The only thing I am not at all pleased with about the day was that Luca found an attachment object which he now insists on taking everywhere with him. Up until now, his two main sources of comfort have been his fingers (for sucking) and his hair (for patting and stroking while sucking). This meant that unless I shaved his head or signed him up for a toddler’s carpentry course, there would be no chance of any tragic losses. Now, however, we have “Daton” (Luca’s version of raton which means mouse in Spanish), a tiny brown mouse that has already been lost (over the course of about 72 hours) no less than 36 times. It’s gotten to the point where I think that hopping back on that funicular, two trains and a bus might just be worth it, if only to buy some more datones for insurance. So if ANYONE IS PLANNING A TRIP TO IKEA IN THE NEAR FUTURE, PLEASE LET ME KNOW!

Last week Nico and I had a long talk about what happens when you die. I told him that when I die, I want to be cremated and we talked about how people often want their ashes to be scattered someplace that means something special to them. Yesterday morning we had the following exchange:

Me: Oh there’s nothing I love more than waking up, getting a cup of coffee and then snuggling on the couch under a blanket with a good book!!

Nico: So when you die would you like us to put your ashes under the couch?

You know you’re living in Barcelona when literally a third of the people in your phone contact list are named either Jordi, Marta or Mireia. When another third are named Sonia or Ana, then you’re in trouble. Inappropriate text messages may be sent. Just an observation I made to myself this morning.

Anyway, because we’ve lived abroad for so long, we’re fairly sporadic in celebrating Thanksgiving. However, this year my two American friends and I are making the real deal including TWO turkeys (not because we have so many people but because ovens in Spain are too small to fit a regular American-sized bird), two different kind of stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, pie, etc.! Since most of the invitees are from here, this means we’ve got a lot of pumpkin pie virgins to contend with. We have considered making them dress up as Indians (we’d be the pilgrims of course, or would it be the other way around?), but we decided they’re going to have enough trouble just wrapping their heads around an entire holiday meal that doesn’t include anything made with olive oil, squid ink or codfish.

Do you remember how I told you about my Halloween party at which all the children in Nico’s class devoured the olives stuffed with anchovies but refused to touch the candy corn? Enough said. Besides, I have a nice case of conjunctivitis so the disease-spreading portion of the festivities is already taken care of.

Lately I’ve been trying to talk to Nico and Luca about how grateful we should be for all the good things we have in our lives. One reason for this is that Thanksgiving is coming up and I’m trying to highlight the concept.

Another reason is that I’m totally sick of listening to whining. “Why did you give me socks that are inside out?”, “What are these small green things I see on my chicken?”, “Why do we always have to treat Luca like he’s the king of the universe and I’m just a piece of dirty dirt?”, “Why did I know how to count to 900 yesterday and now I can’t? Why Mommy, WHHHHHHYYYYYYYY!?!?!?!”

My co-Thanksgiving dinner producers (their names are Danielle and Matthew) called me crazy but it turns out that the Catalans really love canned cranberry jelly. Who knew? (ME that’s who!). I insisted on buying three cans and although no one thought we’d even get through one, we polished off two. Ha!

Sadly, the pumpkin pie was greeted with much more suspicion and was left largely untouched. However, we predicted this would happen and because of this, I also made a pumpkin cheesecake which was decidedly more popular. All our guests needed to hear was the word “cheesecake” and they dug right in, more or less oblivious to the fact that we’d just tricked them into eating pumpkin in a dessert. I like to think of that cheesecake as a gateway drug of sorts. Every year we’ll put a bit more pumpkin and a bit less cream cheese and who knows, maybe by 2018, the people of Spain will be gobbling pumpkin pie with the best of us!

As a child I absolutely adored Sesame Street but I never managed to interest Nico much in the show. Perhaps this was because we lived in Switzerland during his prime SS viewing time and in the French version of the show, Elmo always sounds incredibly depressed. Or maybe he was just exposed to too much Pixar too early on. I even ordered the “Sesame Street Old School” DVDs so that he could watch the exact same episodes that I watched as a child. All to no avail- he had no interest in vicariously visiting any 1970s doctors offices, construction sites or Chinese noodle factories.  He was bored by the ongoing drama of whether or not Big Bird’s friend Snuffy was real or imaginary, and when the disco dancing typewriter showed up, he was utterly perplexed.

So I’m trying again with Luca and so far meeting with a mild degree of success. The other day I decided to branch out and put on an episode of The Muppet Show (another of my childhood favorites) during Luca’s daily pre-nap TV time. However, when I walked into the room and saw him staring at a skit of the actress Sandy Duncan dancing around in a leotard and binge drinking in a bar filled with large hairy muppets,  singing a song called “What’s a Girl Like Me Doing in a Place Like This?”, I realized that perhaps I hadn’t quite understood The Muppet Show as well as I thought I had when I was a child. Which is probably for the best. This reminded me of another muppet that I really liked as a kid, the potty-mouthed “Madame”  on the fabulous show “Solid Gold.”

“Madame” would say things like “I’ve been closer to rock stars than a spandex jumpsuit” and “I lived with Ted Nugent for 6 months, we swung on his vine every night.”

I think television really lost something when it abandoned the subversive muppet concept. Now our children love watching subversive sea sponges instead and although this has its virtues, it’s really not the same.

A few days ago something really disturbing occurred while I was cleaning fish. One of the things I’ve been most proud of learning in culinary school is how to scale, clean and filet a fish.  Our final exam is coming up next month and I’ve decided to prepare a dish using rape (monkfish). As I’ve written in the past, this is a very ugly fish with rows of tiny sharp teeth and eyeballs the size of marbles. It is not pleasant to clean but for various philosophical and conceptual reasons (which I will explain in a later post), it is necessary that I use this fish in my final exam.

I spent several days in the past couple of weeks attempting to concoct sauces using fumet (similar to stock) made from monkfish. In order to do this, you must clean out their heads which entails slicing out the eyeballs and peeling off the skin. I’ve got all that down though, no problem. However, I discovered the other day that as brave as I may think I’ve become, my nerves are not quite strong enough to bear any unforseen events while performing these tasks.

So here’s the scenario. I’m in the kitchen, cleaning out fish heads and feeling smug in my rubber gloves. A radio documentary about the Swedish royal family is playing in the background (did you know that the future king of Sweden is a personal trainer?) and I’ve already removed the giant eyeballs and dumped them unceremoniously in the trash. And then I see it. ANOTHER eyeball peering out at me from within the depths of the dismembered fish head. My first thought is that I’ve chanced upon some sort of monstrous three-eyed freak of the sea.  Shuddering, I look more closely and then see that nestled within the fish head, is yet another smaller fish. I scream and leap away. “Parasitic twin!” my mind screams in horror. But then I come to my senses and remember that fish do eat other fish and that perhaps it isn’t so unheard of for one to catch a fish, only to find another fish inside. But still, BLECHH!

I couldn’t erase the image for the rest of the day. Perhaps it didn’t help that when I threw away the smaller fish, I put it in the very top of the garbage pail where I could still run over and horrify myself by looking at it whenever I wanted. Then when Nico got home and I told him what had happened, he made me get the fish back OUT of the garbage and begged me to let him cut open the smaller fish to see if yet another even smaller fish would be inside. Not thinking that my heart would be strong enough to confront a matroyshka fish situation, I refused. He then insisted on bringing the small fish to school to show his class which I agreed to. So the little fish spent the weekend in a plastic bag in our freezer before being brought to school on Monday in an insulated lunch bag covered with illustrations of astronauts. “Nico has a dead fish in his backpack!” I cackled to his wide-eyed classmates as we waited for the school gate to open. (Ah the joys of being the odd foreign mommy! You can say whatever you want and no one is ever quite sure what to make of you. It might be a language issue or it could be that you really are just very weird, and if so, maybe all the people in your country are also weird so it isn’t even really your fault). When we got to his class, I very clearly told his teacher that she could (which I felt clearly implied should) flush the fish down the toilet after show-and-tell.

Some 48 hours later, I noticed an unpleasant smell coming from Nico’s backpack. Need I say more? This is a boy who won’t take snacks to school in the mornings like the other kids because he doesn’t like it when his backpack “smells like old cookies.” I’m wondering how he’ll deal with it when he discovers that instead, it reeks of rotten fish.

By the way, when I told the story to the chef at culinary school, one of the other students asked if it would be okay to cook the smaller fish as well in a situation like that. The chef compared doing this to performing an autopsy on someone, finding a recently swallowed burger and french fries in the stomach, and then deciding that the afternoon’s planned trip to McDonald’s was no longer necessary. In other words, no that would not be a good idea.

Last week we took our first family vacation since Luca was born (not counting trips back to New York City and Utah). We decided to go to Marrakesh, Morocco which is only two hours away from Barcelona by plane, but a bazillion eons away in terms of culture and atmosphere.

This trip will be marked in my memory by my decision to carry all my money and credit cards in a giant pot mitt. “How did this happen?” you may ask. Well, I’ll tell you. Just as we were heading out the door to the airport, I decided to change bags, however, I noticed that the new bag didn’t have any small pockets in which I could carry my money. Wildly casting about the room, my gaze alit on a black pot mitt which was for some reason, sitting on a chair in my bedroom. It occurred to me that no one would think that there was anything of worth inside a pot mitt so it was the perfect thing to carry my valuables in. Unfortunately, it did not occur to me that I would have to remove my money from time to time, and that pulling an enormous quilted pot mitt out of your backpack every time you need to pay for something is not, perhaps, the most subtle way to avoid drawing attention to yourself and your belongings. After the first day, I just gave my money to Alex to hold in his more conventional money belt.

We stayed at the Hotel du Tresor where there was wonderful staff yummy cake for breakfast on a beautiful roof-top terrace and, as you can see, atmospheric decor.

We tried to take turns picking things to do. I would generally choose something involving food or attractive footwear (those Moroccans really know how to make a good slipper)  and Nico would choose jewelry shopping. Needless to say, this wasn’t exactly expected, especially since Nico has never shown any interest in jewelry before. Unfortunately, Nico struck up a conversation with a woman wearing numerous golden bangles on the airplane. Somewhere along the way she mentioned to him that in Morocco, even children wear jewelry.  Thus, as soon as we got to Marrakesh, Nico became obsessed with jewelry and he begged to be allowed to buy a ring. Not to wear, mind you. But rather as “treasure.” There are a lot of jewelry stores in Marrakesh (say, every five feet) which means we spent a lot of time gazing in fancy display cases and fending off aggressive salespeople who didn’t seem to notice that their mark was only five-years old and most likely, not carrying much in the way of cash.