A whole year?

Too efficient

A package ago, Chloe was efficient and wrapped up a couple of things in a big Spanish flag she'd bought (not a real one, unless they've recently added España in giant letters across the top of it), thereby protecting the items in the package - which meant not paying for the weight of extra packing material - and sending excess stuff home. Today she asked me to send it back because Anna Rae had a great idea: have everyone sign it before she leaves for home. It is a good idea, so I'll be sending it back. Please, Anna Rae, no more good ideas unless they pertain to getting stuff home and leaving it here.

This too will be over before you know it

Before you leave on an exchange, you might want to think about your departure details, an event that seems light-years away when you haven't even left home yet.

What if your school is over for the summer but, for whatever reason, you can't get a seat home until a couple of months later? Will you have a place to stay? Will the sponsoring organization be responsible for you? Will they make you formally absolve them of that responsibility? And what if you won't? They can't send you home because there are no seats home, remember? Will you be living in a culture where houseguests are too foreign a concept to get past, or the homes so small that there won't be room for you once their children return from their exchanges? Will your home organization take up your cause if the host organization refuses to? Or will you be stuck making your own living arrangements and depending upon the kindness of acquaintances? Don't forget; you cannot legally work.

Chloe's late departure date is okay only because we'll be traveling and she's coming home with me. If not for that, she would have been there nearly a month after school got out, and who knows if she would have had a place to stay - officially - in the meantime. If she didn't, it would not be the first time an exchange student was left in that position.

Is it too much to expect two-ply?

I am now going to tease a relative who will be visiting Chloe soon. I tease her because if you plant potatoes, you're more likely than not to get potatoes, and this is the kind of question we all tease her about but I'm secretly glad that she asks so I don't have to and risk someone teasing me. She asked Chloe about the toilet paper situation in Spain, as in is it generally available within reaching distance of the toilets?

This might seem like a silly question to ask of an industrialized nation, but if you read enough guidebooks, you soon learn to take nothing for granted. Who would think that toilet paper would be a cultural issue rather than one of practicality? Concerning this matter in one guidebook that I read, the author said, "Suffice it to say that no one in Asia eats with their left hand." I don't know if that's true, but it drove the point home. For example, I can assure you that in the Scottish Highlands in the early spring of 1999, antiperspirant did not exist. Deodorant, yes, but not with the added ingredient that keeps you dry. Shortly before we left in May, I found NEW! Dove Antiperspirant and Deodorant. Lesson learned to remember that I'm going somewhere else and have no right to expect all of my particular comforts of home.

Chloe assured her that she needn't worry about this (t)issue, but if you were a betting person, you'd do well to bet on a roll of toilet paper in her suitcase.

Postal prohibitions

Here's some valuable information I just discovered on the US Postal Service Web site: it is illegal to send playing cards, food with saccharine, human remains, or arms (the weapons kind, in addition to the body-part kind) to Spain. And used clothing must be accompanied by a certificate of disinfection. Chloe will have to do without the Fresca and the body parts clothed in hand-me-downs that she requested.

Departure logistics

Chloe said that Rotary forbids exchange students from staying in Pamplona during San Fermin (running of the bulls, every July 6-14). They must not want to be in any way responsible for them during this time of Bacchanalian debauchery. I can't wait to see what it's actually like. Although I won't be debauching, I'm not above a little Bacchus-like revelry.

So they can't be there for San Fermin, but if you read Chloe's post today, the high school - the private Catholic high school - sells dance tickets that include a coupon for two free drinks, and I get the impression that they're not talking Pepsi or Mountain Dew. I'm guessing that with San Fermin, though, all bets are off and that it's impossible to supervise anyone.

That's all very interesting because I got a call from a travel agent saying that he'd booked Chloe's return flight - without contacting me first - for July 19. I didn't talk to him long because I told him I'd already made the arrangements ("How'd you do that?"), but I'm guessing that's the soonest he could get her a seat home. If that's the case, if I hadn't been coming over, she would have been in Pamplona for more than three weeks after school is out, and for all eight and a half days of San Fermin.

Which brings up another point. The travel agency requested return dates for our kids before Christmas, but said we had until the middle of March to get them in. When I called the travel agent in March, only to find out that she was no longer with the agency, the message from the guy taking her cases saying he was going to be gone for almost a month (he left before the middle-of-March deadline) said to not panic, because he'd extended the deadline until near the end of April. But these bulk tickets are very restricted, and there tends to be a lot of travel between Europe and the US in the summer, as well as sports events that fill up planes with European fans. If you have one of these open-ended bulk tickets and you know when you want your kid home, it would be a good idea to make the reservations sooner rather than later, otherwise you may be waiting for weeks before a seat opens up.

More on phone cards

The cost of phone calls is very boring business until the exchange student wants to call friends at home. For Christmas we gave Chloe a phone card that she could use just to call her friends, with the understanding that when it was used up, that was it because I wouldn't recharge it (calling on special occasions is in another category). The better a shopper I am, the longer she has to talk to her friends.

Don't take anything for granted. For example, it would be reasonable to assume that if one company offered both an international calling card and a domestic calling card, the international card would be the best thing to use when calling internationally. Reasonable, yes, but that assumption will cost you money. Today was Chloe's friend's birthday so she called her at home. She wasn't home, so Chloe called her cell phone. Bad move, I thought, because calling a cell phone costs lots and lots more than calling a land line.

Or so the phone-card people have told me. After spending way too much time in endless-loop customer-service hell I managed to get to a person and get another opinion ("Press the star key and then press 1." Okay. "I'm sorry, that is an invalid selection." The bargain that is cheap phone calls is somewhat negated if you bash the phone to bits after trying in vain for fifteen minutes to get through to customer service).

With the MCI cards from Costco there is no per-call connection fee or monthly maintenance fee, which for us makes these calls cheaper than going with a service that charges those fees but has a slightly lower per-minute rate. Here's the latest Costco/MCI phone card score (Spain is one of the more expensive European countries to call from the US: France is .03/minute rather than .06):

• International cards
  from the US to Spain:
  calls to landlines = good (.06/minute)
  calls to cell phones = bad (.35/minute)
  from Spain to the US:
  calls to land lines = bad (.69/minute)
  calls to cell phones = bad (.69/minute)
• Domestic cards
  from the US to Spain:
  calls to landlines = bad (.13/minute)
  calls to cell phones = good (.13/minute)
  from Spain to the US:
  calls to land lines = good (.54/minute)
  calls to cell phones = good (.54/minute)

If you think that was confusing, in some countries your cost per minute varies depending on the phone number you are calling, and some area codes are blocked entirely.

Getting it home

How to get mountains of stuff home for less than all the stuff is worth? It's not uncommon for family or friends to visit an exchange student. One way is to have them fill in the empty spots (ha!) of their luggage with some of your kid's treasures. Or, if they don't bring their allotted luggage allowance, they can bring one of your kid's suitcases home. That's what we're hoping will happen with Chloe. My mom and her friend will be visiting in May and will be leaving Pamplona for Madrid and their return flight home. Because they'll be at the end of their trip, Chloe's suitcases won't be too much trouble (I wouldn't ask them to schlep her suitcases around Spain and Portugal).

One idea now is that Chloe would accompany them back to Madrid, where they'd spend a few days and she'd be able to act as translator and amateur tour guide and help carry her luggage to the airport. She'd take a bus home to Pamplona after they left. Even if they do end up bringing their allowed two suitcases over with them, having them bring home Chloe's suitcases and paying the extra-baggage fee is cheaper than shipping or mailing the same amount home. We can't bring them with us because we won't be returing to Pamplona before we leave for home. One thing to consider when planning to use discount airlines (EasyJet, Ryan Air, etc.) is that they have much stricter luggage allowances. Ryan Air, for example, limits you to one 15-kilo bag (33 pounds) and one carry-on. Chloe's hair care products alone weigh half that.

I told Chloe about the plan and she said:

Remember that I can't miss too much school so it would have to be on a weekend.

It wouldn't be on a weekend because they fly home on a Wednesday.

Oh. Okay. I'll just miss school then.

Glad to know that she can be so easily swayed from her academic focus.

Nineteen point five percent, plus

I just checked Chloe's bank balance, as I occasionally do to see if she's in need of a small deposit. It shows that she made a cash withdrawal at an ATM. She doesn't do that too often because she knows that she's getting charged the same fee for withdrawing twenty euros as she is for one hundred euros. So, don't withdraw small amounts of money multiple times, but figure out how much you might need for a week or a month and withdraw it at one time.

Now I know to tell her to shop around for ATMs, too. The most she's been charged for an ATM withdrawal is nine euros, which is outrageous - it's more often six euros, which is bad enough (no charge for debit-card transactions). That's in addition to the $3 our bank charges to use an overseas cash machine (I've heard that some credit unions don't charge their customers to use ATMs no matter where they are in the world). Chloe's last withdrawal cost her an $18 fee for $92. I don't so much mind the $3 fee from our bank because, although it probably costs the bank next to nothing to process the transaction, that seems a reasonable price to pay for the convenience of having 24-hour access to my American cash dispensed in a foreign currency from almost anywhere in the world. But $18? That would be close to usury, except it's charged on money we already have, not borrowed. I'm guessing it wasn't a bank ATM, but one of those that people buy to place in convenience stores, fast food places, and tourists spots. The kind that are advertised on infomercials as an easy way to make a million bucks a month with only three hours of work, most of which involves tallying your bank deposits.

Reality bites

Chloe is not very happy. She called from a pay phone at a bus station en route to Pamplona and doesn't want to go back. From that, I've inferred that the trip was a success. The problem? Too much fun on the trip. School, homework, tests, school uniform (didn't take long for the novelty of that to wear off), cold weather, no beaches, and reality have lost their appeal. The problem with vacations is that they end.

Originally they were told that anyone who didn't live near Madrid would have to spend an extra night there at the end of the trip, but that that was included in the cost of the trip. That's how she read the information, and for us Alicia translated the itinerary thus: "The trip and the nights in Madrid cost yada yada euros. The students living out of Madrid will have to pay for the trip from their houses to Madrid, and from Madrid to their houses." And they did. Some took a train, some took a bus, and I'm guessing the students living in the Canary Islands employed a different mode of transportation to Madrid.

Chloe mentioned briefly that they ended up staying in a hostel in Madrid last night because, contrary to what the itinerary says, the trip officially ended that day and did not include another night's stay. A Rotary guy told them they should stay somewhere better but she said it was fine, even though they were left to fend for themselves and pay for their last night in Madrid on their own. They were told that they'd been e-mailed a message explaining the situation, but they didn't receive it. Just like they didn't receive information that there was going to be a trip in the first place.

These kinds of life experiences are great if everything turns out okay, as it did. Now they have an idea of how to not spend the night in a bus station in a major international city, and I think that Chloe wouldn't have been so nonchalant about fending for themselves if this had happened at the beginning of her stay. That's a good thing to have learned, but that's not what they signed up for. If they'd known they were going to be on their own the last night in Madrid, they would have made arrangements. Part of Rotary's appeal is that we know we can trust Rotary to take care of our kids. Some Rotary districts are wonderful and provide the students they are hosting with many unbelievable opportunities. Some are terrible and petty and won't allow the students any degree of individual responsibility. As with most organizations, the people on the front lines are more important than the lofty ideals of the organization as a whole. Where Chloe is the club and district seem to be indifferent, but at least that way the exchange familes don't have any expectations one way or the other. It would be nice, however, to be able to rely on what little information the students are given.

Postal success

Yippee - Chloe got the second envelope today. Don't know if it was at the post office or how she got it, but she's happy with the powdered sugar, colored sugar sprinkles, Kraft macaroni and cheese, and Sesame Street bandages. And I'm happy that I won't be paying international postage on it three times. Yes, I know that it cost more to send the stuff than it's worth, but the value of the merchandise is worth far more than its retail cost.

She has a thing for bandages (she puts them on anything that hurts, even if there's no cut or scrape or sucking chest wound - my mom tells me I was the same way) and I'm always telling her that she'll lose her Band-aid privileges if she doesn't back off. If someone needs a bandage and, while tightening the tourniquet just above the fresh chainsaw gash on his knee, finds the box empty, the first thing heard is "Chloeeee!" and then Chloe's hiding the bandage covering the mosquito bite on her arm. Now she has a whole box to use up all by herself.

By the way, to send the bandages and the macaroni and cheese and get them to fit in the envelope, I emptied the boxes, opened them flat and vacuum-sealed them with their contents. Worked great and there were no suspicious noises made while shaking the package. Although, had the envelope been opened by customs officials, the one pound of vacuum-sealed powdered sugar would have been open to interpretation.

More search strings used to get to our blogs:

Chloe's

• car-sick 2005 took photos
• Rotary Boyfriends okay

Mine

• kitchenaid mixer transformer experience
• smockin
• British extreme mother daughter spain
• In Spain, what is the minimum age for entering the jail?
• glittery and shiny and bright prom dresses for 2005 [several hits like this: apparently, understated and elegant are out for the 2005 high school dance season]
• spain sucks
• Rotary Boyfriends okay
• "kicked out" medical school cheat
• dealers of glass cups in france in 2005
• 2005 email address of Guest Book farmers in spain