Welcome Otoño!

Our second Fall in the US is starting, and it is awesome! Mama Monkey has always loved it, although she didn't know how much until we moved to Oregon. The reason? You might ask. Madrid does not have a real Otoño. Yes, leaves change their color and eventually they fall, and it is beautiful. But, for some reason, it feels way shorter than here. That being said, Madrileños love fall and like going for walks in 'El Retiro' or one of the other nice parks during this time of year. Weather wise, the most common thing is to go from the mid 90s to the mid 50s in one week. Abuelita likes saying: "We go from wearing a bikini to wearing a coat" and locals say -we write it in Spanish, so you note the rhythm-: "En Madrid hay nueve meses de invierno y tres de infierno" (in Madrid there are nine months of winter and three of hell).

Here in Oregon, fall is an actual season. Leaves start turning yellow, orange and even bright, bright red around mid September and it goes on until way passed Thanksgiving. The temperatures slowly cool down. And it rains. Oh boy, does it rain! This is the not-so-awesome part of this season. But when you are a Portlander you -kind of have to- love and embrace the rain. Mama Monkey is still working on that...

40 Dishes From Around The World That You Should Try (if you haven't yet)

We, the Monkeys, are foodies. We love eating out, but also cooking all kind of dishes. We, obviously, eat many dishes from the Pacific Northwest, from Spain and from the Middle East, but we also eat dishes from many other cuisines on a regular basis.

We have tried many of these dishes while visiting the country or region they come from. What an excellent way of getting to know a culture, Food! From creating the list, we realized:

• African food is still in our bucket list
• We really like raw fish
• We really like sandwiches
• A list of 40 dishes is not enough!

Tricultural Monkeys

We started this blog to talk about bilingualism, but we wanted to tell you that we are not a bicultural, but tricultural family. In the 'About us' section of the blog we explain that Papa Monkey is American (which is accurate, since he was born in Oregon) but the truth is that he is half Middle Eastern. And this is such an important part of the Monkeys' culture that we needed to write about it.

We'd love being able to call this blog 'Spanglisharabic' Monkey, but it's not the case. The two little Monkeys are exposed to Arabic on weekly bases, but it is complicated. The exposure is probably not enough for them to acquire trilingualism. Papa Monkey himself is receptive bilingual (he understands everything, but he is not fluent when he talks) in Arabic. That being said, we encourage all the members of that big, big part of the family to talk to the kiddos in Arabic as much as possible. They may be not trilingual, but they will know Arabic. And maybe one day they can teach Papa Monkey and me! We always want to learn but never have the time...