Apartment Living

Before we came to Barcelona, I knew we would be living in an apartment. I have lived in an apartment before, about 20 years ago. I knew what I was in for; smaller space, less storage, up and down steps, and the like. Well I was mostly right. I have less storage, but I have less stuff. I have to go up and down steps, but I can use the exercise. The apartment is actually bigger than the house in Seattle, so I was pleasantly surprised with that. One of the greatest selling points of the new apartment is Adrianna and Antonio have their own room. In Seattle, they share a room (a very small room). How grand is this? Well, at least that is what I thought, and what the kids lead me to believe. Turns out, that the idea of your own room is a grand notion in theory. When actually posed with the idea of sleeping in separate rooms, Adrianna and Antonio were appalled. Now they say they are having a sleep over with each other. The problem with this is now we have two kids trying to sleep together in a twin bed. We tend to have lots of falling out of the bed. We are hoping that they will gradually adjust to sleeping in different rooms. I had not thought about not sleeping in my own bed. Sometimes it can be very difficult to sleep in a new bed. This has been the case for me. Given, I have a difficult time sleeping in my own bed, but this has been impossible here. The bed that is here, has a mattress that has no squish to it at all. When you sit down, it is just like sitting on a wood plank. After a few weeks of tossing all night, being in so much back and neck pain I could hardly get my self rolled over, and in general, getting next to no sleep, I became very irritable. There came one day, when Ron could take no more of me and my attitude and asked "What is wrong with you?" My reply..."I NEED TO GO TO IKEA" He got the message and off to Ikea we went. I now have multiple cushy down mattress pads and new down pillows. I have turned back into my "sweet and joyful" little self...life is good. I guess there is some truth in the idea that shopping can cure what ails you.  Now the thing I had forgotten about apartment living - noise. I had gotten very used to living in a house. The noise that I would hear would belong to someone in my house. This is not the case anymore, When I hear a loud noise, I am going to see what the kids are into. This mostly turns out to be a neighbor coming in or out of their door. I will hear water running and I am up looking to find where the water is coming from. This also turns out to be a neighbor using their water. When I hear the argument, I know that is the neighbor. Now this next one confused me for a brief moment. I was dead asleep and I was awaken by my own snoring. After being fully awake I realized it was not me, it was the neighbor upstairs. I can not even imagine how loud this persons snores are when in the actually room with them. Every night, I lie awake listening to snores that seem to shake the ceiling. I still wake up every now-and-then and wonder "was that me?" Turns out it is not. We had decided, earplugs may be a wise investment. After some searching, I can not find where to buy earplugs. Mental note: I have to live with the snoring a little while longer. Well last night I had an unplanned breakthrough....wine! I drank a few glasses of wine before bed last night and when I awoke this morning, I realized, I heard no snoring whatsoever. Ron claims there was still plenty of snoring, I just didn't hear it. I guess I will stop looking for the earplugs and just drink lots of wine before bed. Why change what is working! With that problem solved, it still leaves me with another. Around 7 AM every morning, the upstairs neighbor wakes up. I hear them walk across the floor and go into the bathroom. The next thing I hear is the trickling sound of pee in the toilet. This noise is not so disturbing in itself, it is the thought of what does the person downstairs hear us doing. I guess I should not worry so much, the apartment downstairs is actually an architect office. They are not there all of the time. Still, I just can't help wondering what they think of what is heard. There are some aspects of the apartment life here that are enjoyable. One neighbor plays the piano. This is always nice to hear. In the evening, the apartment is filled with the aroma of dinner coming from all directions. I love the smell of food cooking. When I take out the trash, I just open the front door and toss it down the chute. I don't have to worry about remembering to set out the garbage on the right day. Over all, I am loving the apartment. This is feeling like home.

We are still on the search for a tutor for the kids. I did find a playgroup for the kids. Beginning in December, they will begin going across the street to a child center from 5-7pm every day of the week. I am so glad we were able to find a place where the kids could have social time with children there own age and I can have a few hours of free time to re-coop from the school day. Adrianna loves doing her school work. Well, I should say she loves to write and color. You should see all of the sadness that appears on this babies face when she is asked to read something. She hates to read. I think she lacks confidence in her ability to do it. She has improved a great deal, in such a short amount of time. She still struggles some, but it gets better every day. Antonio is doing some better in the school work. When I say better, this does not mean good. We still struggle to get him to do his work. He loves to read. He will read anything you ask him to. The writing part is what is so grievous to Antonio. God love his little heart, he is a work in progress. God bless my little heart, give me patience to make it through this.

I will leave you with this last bit of irony. I could not find turkey for our Thanksgiving meal, so I made ham. It was a very expensive ham, but it was for Thanksgiving so I decided it was worth the outrageous price. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving. (Well with the exception that Adrianna was disgusted with the sight of mango chutney on her ham and refused to eat it.) The next day, I decided to have some me time. I went for a 30 minute walk to a nearby neighborhood. Destination - Mercat Barceloneta. I ended up getting there about the time everyone was closing up shop. I did spot one thing -TURKEY!

Finding English

There is something very comforting in hearing words that you understand. You can not get a real appreciation for this until you have truly faced the world where everyone around you speaks in a language that you have to think long and hard about what they are trying to tell you and hope they used some kind of gestures to help get you going in the right direction. With comfort in mind, I have now found a church that the sermons are in English, I found a play group for Adrianna and Antonio that all the children know some amount of English, the FOX channel is in English in the evening, there is a TV channel that is trying to teach English to Spanish speakers (more on this in a later post lol), and the theater across the street shows movies in English. The grandest discovery of all...on the back of the boxes in the grocery store, they will list the ingredients in English. Not always, but a lot of the time. Now maybe I can figure out what I am buying without depending solely on the picture. I feel like of five-year-old...just look at the pictures and hope for the best.

We took one of the tour buses around parts of Barcelona this week.  We had lots of fun, but we realized, we will never be able to see all there is to see in one year. There is so much here, I don't even know where to begin. One of the things I noticed, was all the public art. There are statues and art structures everywhere. They go from classical figurines to crazy modern/abstract somethings that I am not sure what it is supposed to represent. I have not been able to find the explanatory plaque as you would see in the US. Oh well, I guess I will have to use my imagination. This brings me to the above photo. This is, so far, my favorite statue I have found. This is located very near the house. We walk by it every time we go to use the subway. Now use your imagination and tell me what you think it is. Keep in mind, there is nothing there to tell me the artist or his/her intent. I will not tell you my opinion, that would just ruin the surprise. Please leave me a message and tell me what you think. I am curious how many see something different or the same as I do.

We are still on the search for the tutor for Adrianna and Antonio. The home school project is going fairly well. Antonio had to miss the park today because he did not finish his work and it was quite traumatic for him. I am hoping this will encourage him to stay a little more focused tomorrow. He would be done in no time, if he would just spend less time trying to get out of doing the work in the first place. I keep explaining this to him, but so far reasoning has not made a difference. I hated to leave him home today and just take Adrianna to the park, but I had to try a new tactic. Ron says that Antonio cried the whole time we were gone. We explained to him that he can choose to either finish his work and go to the park or not do his work and miss the park. His response, in a crying so hard that we could barely make it out, was "I don't want to have choices". Then as soon as we came back, he started crying again when Adrianna talked about all the fun things she did while at the park.

Well is is bedtime for me. More later.

Today is day 4 in Barcelona

Here I am again. I have been mostly hanging in the apartment for the past two days. I will make some adventures out today. I spent most of the day yesterday researching schools. The kids need to get enrolled...soon!! This research actually began before I arrived in Spain. Ron had discovered that the public schools in Barcelona use Catalan as the first language. In case you are not familiar with this language, this is the language of this part of Spain. It is not used anywhere else in the world and has no use outside of these borders. With that said, we do not want the kids to have to learn Catalan. They are already at a disadvantage by having to learn Spanish. So the decision was made to look for private schools that the first language is English and the second is Spanish. Sounds like a good idea! I found a few British schools and a few American schools. The average cost will be $40,000. This is a little out of our price range for tuition into Kindergarten. When I learned the cost of private schools here, I started to panic and thought to myself...there is no way I will be able to home school the kids everyday, all day. Besides what about the need for time with other children and how would they ever learn Spanish if they were inside of this apartment all day. On top of all of that, the greatest panic came when I realized I may go insane trying to get the job done. After some slow deep breaths, I started to come up with plan C which is to hire a tutor to come in and help with teaching the kids Spanish and to offer me a sanity break. To get the time with other children, I can enroll the kids in dance, music, etc. I don't even know where to begin looking for a tutor, but I am going to try. I had this idea that maybe Ron's cousin in Mallorca could come and stay with us for a little while and be my personal assistant. He can help me through the language problems I have. Everyone please wish me luck in my task.

As for my language problems. I do understand some things said to me in Spanish and I know a lot of words in Spanish. The problem I have is putting the words I know into some kind of order that will make sense. I am sure I will get better with practice.

Now on to things I have learned.

Lesson #1 - Women here wear black almost always. I mean from head to toe. Sometimes I see brown but that does not happen too often. I guess I need to throw out all of my clothes with color. If I try to wear that stuff I will be sneered at and they will mumble under their breath (or maybe even out loud) "stupid American." We can't have that now can we? Oh, just forget it. I don't think I can pull off goth.

Lesson #2 - To get to the apartment outside court yard and play area, use the key to the building and go out the back door. I know this sounds obvious, but when there is absolutely nothing on the door to tell you where it might go, you just don't know what you may find behind some big metal door with no windows.

Lesson #3 - Spanish television is actually all American shows dubbed over in Spanish. I have yet to find a single channel on the television that has programs actually created in Spain. Well, at least I know what is going on. Most of the shows so far I have seen before. That really is something, considering I hardly ever watch television. I am still looking for the Spanish version of South Park. I have not found it yet but I have not given up.

Lesson #4 - In the grocery store the junk food is mainly American brands. Especially the chips. There are differences, such as the packaging is in Spanish, the price is cheaper than in Seattle, and Lays Potato Chips comes in the flavor of ham! Just so you know, ham is like the most prized food in all of Spain. The grocery store has a section dedicated to the many ways you can buy ham. The size of this section is about two times the size of your entire dairy section in the US.

Well it is time to go to the grocery store. Let's go see what I learn this time!

Things learned in two days

Well here I am in Barcelona. I have been here two full days. My apartment is bigger than the house in Seattle. I have two bathrooms ( that is a needed bonus). The kids have their own bedrooms. They are not too sure about the whole "sleeping in your own room" concept. I am sure they will get used to it. In each bathroom I have a bidet. I am not at all sure how to use it but I am sure I can find out how on google. I have not looked it up yet, because I am not at all sure if I want to know how.

I have learned a few things in my two short days. I am prepared to share this wealth of knowledge, just in case you find yourself needing to know and also if I put it in print, I can go back and reference it just in case I forget.

Lesson #1-The people that work at Starbucks speak English.

Lesson #2-The people that work at Starbucks think all Americans like lots and lots of sugar in their coffee.

Lesson #3-50 percent of the women here wear scarves around their neck.

Lesson#4-I have no idea why they wear scarves around their neck. I think it may be like jewelry.

Lesson#5-A small bottle of Revlon foundation and a blush cost $30. I thought I was going for the cheap stuff.

Lesson#6-The subway system is awesome here! I think as soon as I learn my way around a little more, I will rule.

Lesson#7-Sometimes sign language helps when you don't know how to say what you need to say.

Lesson#8-You must weigh and price your own produce before you go to the check out. This lesson was learned last night at the grocery store. I tried to get tomatoes and a cucumber. The cashier held them up and asked me something in Spanish. I did know that she was wanting to know how much, unfortunately I did not know. I nice gentlemen in the line behind me explained that I need to weigh it and print out a sticker and put on the bag. I explained that I was just a "stupid American" and that I was very thankful that someone took the time to explain this to me.

Lesson#9-The cashier does not like it when you give her a 100 Euro bill. This lesson was learned in the same check out line as the previous lesson. When I handed her the bill she kept asking me if I had something smaller. I kept saying no. I think she may have thought I did not understand the question because she asked me several times (of course she was asking in Spanish). The kind gentlemen in the previous lesson, pulled out his wallet and started to pay for my groceries (talking about the kindness of strangers) but just in the nick of time, the cashier in the next aisle over gave us some change. For a minute I thought we were going to have no dinner for the night.

I must be leaving you now. I know there are many more lessons to be learned today.