Life in Spain: 10 Things That Surprised Our Family (so far)

We moved to Spain with kids just about 6 weeks ago, and during that time it has been hard to avoid comparing our expectations to reality. Please don’t take these as disappointments or so-called “issues” because we are finding that learning about the differences and how we adapt to them very interesting and fun!

1. How Easily We Fell Into The Late Dinner Routine

Many families who move abroad with kids especially point out that dinnertime in Spain happens very late – sometimes even past 10pm (we’ve also heard it’s not completely true). Our life in the states had us eating dinner on the opposite side of the spectrum – closer to 4:30/5pm. I am not sure if it’s our year abroad or if we are being influenced by the sun and the daily rhythms of the lives around us, but without even trying we find ourselves eating around 9pm most nights.

2. The Heat Doesn’t Stop Anyone

With temperatures over 100F, the heat can be oppressive and takes some getting used to, even with our experience living in Arizona. Those that live here don’t let it stop them from their usual activities (as it shouldn’t!). In fact, we saw lots of long pants being worn on the hottest of days. For us the biggest adjustment was the lack of air conditioning in our apartment (which has since been remedied thankfully!). We found ourselves seeking out the few open businesses in the afternoon (El Corte Ingles, we love you!) in order to properly cool off. I appreciate that the businesses that are air conditioned are not oppressively so. It’s cool enough to be refreshing but not so uncomfortable that I need to take a sweater everywhere with me in the summer like we did in Arizona.

3. We Prefer Buying Groceries More Frequently (and are wasting less)

Our food storage space is very limited and because of this we have been grocery shopping daily. As we build up a small pantry of basic ingredients, we will be buying even less. We don’t buy more fruit until what we have is nearly gone. We don’t have months worth of toilet paper or chicken stock like we have in the past simply because we don’t have the space! This has made us more aware of our purchasing habits and we are really enjoying our daily trips to buy what we need…and very little extra. On the flip side, not having that “safety net” of knowing we have backstock has left an underlying thought of “do we have enough ______” nearly every day for one thing or another.

4. The Garbage/Recycling System

We have lived in both bigger cities (Scottsdale, Phoenix) and small towns (Georgia, Vermont) and in that we have experienced the regularly scheduled “garbage day” where bins are required to be at the curb the night before and the trucks come by on schedule. In our last home, we had no trash service because our road was a single lane dead end – the trucks were not able (or willing) to drive up to our house to collect. We had to bring our waste & recycling to the dump. The system here is completely different. There are large color-coded bins on the streets where residents dispose of trash and recyclables. Trucks seem to come nightly (for ours it is just after midnight – though I’m still figuring out their specific schedules) to empty. There is no forgetting garbage day or rushing out at 3am when you realize you forgot to put the bin out. They compost here in Zaragoza which I appreciate a lot – Zach I’m looking at you – as it cuts down tremendously on our actual garbage. In addition to all of this there are also containers to dispose of used cooking oil and to donate clothes. Very convenient.

Grey/Dark Green: For general, non-recyclable household waste.
Yellow: For plastic packaging, metal cans, and drink cartons (Tetra Paks).
Blue: For paper and cardboard items like newspapers, magazines, and boxes.
Green: For glass bottles and jars (glass disposal is restricted to daytime hours due to noise).
Brown: For organic/biowaste (food scraps), which has been rolled out broadly to comply with national waste laws
Red: For clothing donations
White: For used vegetable oil (in sealed plastic containers)

5. Practicing Spanish Is Fun

As I’ve said in recent posts, we are all very new to the Spanish language. While I get nervous leading up to a conversation about something new (getting my nails done recently for example), the people I talk with are almost always very receptive to my trying and practicing. They smile instead of roll their eyes. They laugh with me as we try to figure out what I’m saying. One of my favorite attempts happened recently while out with Edward buying a bell and lights for his bike. While we communicated the lights easily, I couldn’t think of the word for “bell”…so I said en Espanol: “the thing for noise”. Not only did it get the point across but it also got a good laugh 🙂

6. Not Missing Having a Car

Even though I was happy to take a break from our life of 4+ hours of nightly driving for kids’ activities, I was worried that I’d miss having a car. So far that’s not the case. I love walking and being able to use public transportation to get us where we need to go. The only solutions we are currently working around where a car would be ideal is getting Harriet and Fiona to the stables on the outskirts of the city for riding lessons.

7. The Lack of Chocolate Chips

Not just chocolate chips, but also maple syrup (we’ve found a few places, but small bottles only), vanilla extract (available but tiny bottles), chili powder, Italian seasoning (available but red? not the same), salsa verde, black beans (found a couple stores that have them), kalamata olives (entire aisles of olives, but not kalamata), and more. I am 100% sure it’s a cultural thing and it will all make sense someday, but I imagine that residents here would make cookies and tacos sometimes…am I wrong? Until I find these things I’m leaning into Jay’s frequent trips to the states to “import” specific requests when able.

8. Sundays Really are for Rest

It didn’t take long for us to realize that you can’t bank on getting anything done on a Sunday. Not only are the expected banks and government offices closed, but also shopping malls and most stores, and some grocery stores (many have shortened hours). There was one Sunday I went through several things I thought I’d do that day but was faced with “closed” for each one. It was then that I realized that Sundays here really are for rest. No scheduled soccer games for the kids, no errands to run. We’ve embraced our slow Sundays as another way to get back to the basics of what enjoying life can mean. More time with family, hobbies, and rest.

9. Laundry

I am surprised laundromats aren’t more present with the tiny washing machines and lack of dryers (in many homes). For our family of 6, we do 1-2 small loads a day in order to keep up. Sheets and towels alone require much more time and space which is requiring me to rework the routine I was used to in Vermont. That being said, I’m considering finding a laundromat to visit once a week for the bigger items so that I can save the smaller loads for clothes.

10. Schooling

As many of you know, we’ve had quite the adventure in getting some of our kiddos into schools. We originally chose the all private route for ease, but once we moved here we quickly realized the benefits of having them in public/semi-private schools closer to home. But with that change came learning about how schooling is assigned here. Unlike in the states where your public school is assigned based on where you live, here you have to apply through the government portal. Before we moved here, I learned a lot from my now friend Ashley’s blog where she goes into great detail about it. In short, If you do this process during enrollment in the spring, you can put in requests for specific schools and then wait to get assigned. For us doing it after open enrollment was closed, we input our information online and got a drop down of schools with open space. You select the school (if you are lucky it will put them in order of closest to furthest away which is a great starting point on research), then get confirmation of the application. Then you wait. And wait some more. Finally you get assigned (hopefully), after which time you go to the school to fill out almost identical information that you filled out online before being officially enrolled. The most important thing I learned in this process other than patience is how to make simultaneous enrollments in order to keep siblings together. If we had done it right in the first place we’d have 4 kids in 2 schools. This year we will have 4 in 3 (almost 4 in 4 – yikes!). It’s part of the learning process and next year we will be better prepared!!

If you moved to another country, what things surprised you the most? What were your biggest adjustments?

P.S. If you’d like to read a favorite past post (by Fiona!) about differences in places we’ve visited check it out here. I’m hoping to get one of them to write a new update soon from their perspective – what do you think?

Sharing is Caring!