Tuesday, July 10, 2007

on raising boys in Spain

two weeks ago I caught Malachai, excited about the upcoming summer barracas (fairgrounds), in a corner, quietly practicing his rolled R - - it evolved quite a bit like this:
"badacas . . . . baracas . . . barracas" (he did it! he rolled his R!) . . . "barrrrrrrracas! "
So now, two weeks later, his rolled R perfected, he is managing to put a rolled R into pretty much any word imaginable - - English or Spanish - - single R or double R, words that have R's and words that don't have R's . . . .

we went up to Pamplona early this morning to watch to watch "those who run with the bulls" run into the bull stadium. When I told Malachai about our plans he asked oh-so-casually - - "will I be running with the bulls too?". it's funny now; it won't be as funny when he asks the same thing ten years from now (and really means it)!

after the bull stadium we paraded along the city streets with the gigantes and cabezudos (pretty much my absolute favorite part of the festival in Pamplona)
here are Joshua and Josu being chased down by one of the kilikis - - look closely and you can see the his sponge ball peeking out behind his back - - being wound up to hit them. These guys are masters at what they do with their sponge balls; they always hit their target - - viciously whacking the taunting preteen boys and gently tapping the toddlers (and getting in some pretty good playful whacks at innocent bystanders too)Josu lucked out and got picked up by this zaldiko and was trained in the fine art of whacking. (poor aunt Rachel!)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

That looks like so much fun. What a great bundle of memories and fun culture those boys have as they grow up.

Unknown said...

That looks like much more fun than the crazy pictures we see on the news of the running of the bulls. And I see just a bit of Aunt Rachel peeking into one of those pics as well!

Megan @ SimplyThrifty said...

How fun and cultural!

Desiree said...

Oh how I miss the cabezudos!! My grandparents would take me when I was little to see them.