Reward time
My little smartass (I mean that in the most positive way!) didn't have much luck this holiday. The week before the holiday started she was home ill and she didn't recover much at first even though the doctor prescribed her meds twice. Thankfully it seems that she also felt this was the moment of change and left her stubborn eating habits in 2023 and decided to not make a fuzz about any food anymore since. We still can't believe that this huge change came overnight after our seven years of attempts to make her understand that she needs more healthy food. I know I was a tough cookie as a child, but she was a tough cake, if you know what I mean..
Anyway this huge change has left us without daily headaches of struggles to convince her to eat a bit more of the healthier stuff on the plate so I figured now that she's also feeling better, it's time to do something fun.
Cinema time
I decided it was going to be a cinema visit by just the two of us on Friday afternoon. She always wants to do something together and I thought I could sit out another Spanish movie even though I risk not understanding it fully. When checking the schedule, I saw the movie "Wonka" and decided this was the one we'd visit.
Here they don't do English with Spanish subs, it's all Spanish (with some exceptions, I think mostly in big cities) and it gets a bit of time to get used to that to be fair. Thankfully it's done much better in Spanish than the movies I remember seeing on German tv in my childhood which they replaced with German audio. Horrible and something I really hated seeing, lol. It sure helps that I love the Spanish language, I guess.
Surprise
I only told my boyfriend about my plans, and waited until the morning when it was time for her fruit to tell her we'd go somewhere later that day. Of course she was curious but I didn't tell her. In the morning I made sure to do some paperwork and after I hit the shower as I wanted to test my hair straightener which had been waiting for a week for me to test it. I went to the hair dresser to cut my hair a certain way but never followed up by actually styling it myself since.
A girls day out was a good moment to change that. Luckily for me, the straightener works like a charm and works just as good as my once owned expensive Chi straightener. I'm happy that I didn't spend that crazy money on it this time as my hair looked absolutely gorgeous if I may say so myself. When I was done I made sure the cute little waves in my daughter's hair appeared as well (naturally!) and added a cute bow.
We hopped in the car
While driving she could only guess and thought we'd go to the fair maybe. A logical guess but not correct. In the car she said she loves these surprises and I asked her if she'd rather have known where we'd go before leaving, she said no! Glad I didn't spoil it, haha.
She didn't know until we walked in the cinema as the cinema is inside a shopping mall. She first thought we'd go shopping for nice things, the doll. She was over the moon!
Cinema to ourselves
I bought the tickets and a movie card which gives you some cashback on every ticket and drinks and food. I paid 2,50 for the card but received a popcorn (worth 6 bucks) for free which I was already going to buy. Good deal if you ask me. Crazy that they ask 6 euros for a small box of popcorn, I love popcorn a lot but that's a bit too crazy for me honestly.
We entered the cinema and sat there alone until the movie started, just 4 others entered later. I don't mind, we had the best spots.
Wonka in Spanish
So at first I had to get used to the Spanish audio a bit as you naturally check the mouths of the actors and see it's a bit off. But I have to say, I got used to it quickly and it was done quite well in my opinion. Much better than the German audio I mentioned earlier, that was always so off that I could not watch or listen to it.
I'm sure I didn't get everything 100% right when watching it, but I really like the fact that 9 or 10 months after we went to the Spanish cinema for the first time, my level of understanding has definitely improved and that's always a proud moment of realization.
The movie was nice in general and I actually enjoyed some of the Spanish songs in it as well. We also had a few good laughs, which is even more fun if you realize you understand the Spanish humour too while not speaking the language fluently yet. If I needed, I could have asked my daughter to translate as the little missy had a 9 on her report for Spanish (lengua) so I'm sure she'd be able to help me translate. Thankfully, it was not needed.
I won't spoil any details though, but I recommend the movie for sure!
Ice cream and tapas
After the movie, I gave her an ice cream at the big M fast food chain. We headed to the Primark quickly as I needed to add a few basic shirts which I've been using as pyjama shirts at night. It was super crowded there but as they had the desired colour, we went there anyway. After a quick stop at the supermarket to get something requested by my boyfriend, we could finally jump in the car to head home.
My boyfriend had the craziest week in terms of hours. That day he started at 8 while at 2 AM he was still having a meeting with the others about some stuff that didn't work properly. That was not the first time that week that he had such a long day. He could definitely use a break so I booked a table at our favourite tapa place to have a good night out with the three of us but not break the bank at the same time.
Grateful and proud
I probably mentioned it a dozen times that day how proud I am of my daughter that she left that stubbornness in 2023 and is doing so well in school her second year. In case you missed it, she had 3x 10's, 3x 9's and 1x 8 on her first trimester report. I mean, we could have never hoped for that when we moved to Spain as it's not her first language.
She seems to make huge hoops in her development all of the sudden and it's amazing to see how a child can grow this quickly mentally. I'm very proud of her and I will most likely end up at the cinema more often because it was also a thing I did with my oldest daughter when she was little. It surely brought back memories yesterday as my youngest also looks so much like her now.
That was our Friday summed up, it was a good one and one with some new memories made. I hope your Friday was good too!
Have a good remaining of the weekend :)