Spaniards certainly like to celebrate!

This weekend was La Mercé, a holiday to honor the patron saint of Barcelona. For three days there are special events all over the city. Even as I write this I can hear the final firework celebration booming from across the city. We took part in the festival by watching fireworks, attending parades, and visiting museums and city parks. A few highlights were the parade of giants, the "Correfoc," or fire run, and the "park of lights."

The fire run is supposed to represent the gates of hell opening. It's a parade where people dress up as devils and shoot sparks into the crowd. Spectators come dressed to jump INTO the shooting sparks. Sound crazy? It was! And we only attended the kiddy version!

While we were by the water to watch fireworks, we also went to the top up of the Christopher Columbus monument. Apparently it was in Barcelona where Columbus returned to report to the queen of his famous voyage west.




Also, apparently 30 years ago the port area was completely industrial and few visitors came to Barcelona. The port area was cleaned up for the 1992 Summer Olympics and now the city boasts over 7 million visitors a year. Here's what it looks like today. These views are from the top of Christopher's monument.

Hurray! Duane's back home.

Last night was the informational meeting for Charles 3rd grade class. It was good to meet the parents of his classmates and to see the school environment. The "information" was completely lost on me as the meeting was in Catalan. Oh well.

What made the meeting especially worthwhile was receiving a kind note from Charles, which he had written earlier in the day. I left a surprise note for him too.

In recent days I have been taking great joy in connecting with the kids through their minds. It's a new stage for the family. They aren't up for motherly affection anymore. Even a hint of affection in my voice prompts Daniel to say something like, "Mom, you're not going to start talking about love again, are you?"

It's been a quiet weekend at home. The kids have completed their first week at school. It's a totally different learning environment than they are accustomed to and they are relieved to be able to spend a couple days at home. The 9 to 5pm schedule is quite long for them, particularly Daniel. After one week they have already learned to dread Mondays!

On the bright side of things, Charles has said he feels like his Spanish has doubled in the week he's been at school. I was impressed one day when I heard the gym teacher tell him (in Spanish) he could either leave his backpack close by, or better yet, take it up to the classroom and come back down for gym class. The moment the teacher stopped speaking, Charles turned around and headed to his classroom--and my heart leaped for joy, knowing he had understood.

During the days while the kids are at school, besides daily household tasks, I've been studying on my own. It's great to have enough time to oneself to concentrate! I found a magazine for 7-year olds at the library that is just the right level of Spanish. Fortunately the library has many issues, so I have a lot of reading material!

I've also been watching TV to aid listening comprehension. In some scientific report on reading, I read that the "average TV show" uses a smaller vocabulary than the "average preschool book." I never expected that to MOTIVATE me to watch television, but dumbed-down Spanish is exactly what I'm looking for! Amusing, isn't it?

Duane left early this AM for a conference in Oxford, England. He'll return late Wednesday night.

There's a new rule in our household. ANY TIME we're home the doors in the apartment must be unlocked, or have the key in them, ready to be unlocked. From the first night in this apartment, Duane, in the interest of safety and since our windows all have bars on them, has kept the key in the front door at night as it is locked from the inside. He told me if there was ever a fire, every moment would count and that having the key in the door was necessary.

Well, apparently, and not surprisingly to me, Duane is absolutely correct. A couple nights ago there was a fire on the 5th floor. The renters were out and returned home to a blazing fire, which was somehow started from the TV plug. Here on the 2nd floor, we had no idea. That night someone did ring our doorbell, but by the time we got to the door, no one was there and we figure'd it was a joke.

The next day the cleaning ladies told me about the incident and told me that firemen had come and that the apartment had been destroyed. There were no alarms. In fact, our apartment doesn't even have a fire alarm and I'm led to believe, now, that the building doesn't either. There is only a fireman who pulls "pranks" on people. Yikes!

Happy Labor Day, dear friends!

As a last hurrah before school starts, and at the impetus to visit Duane's colleague, we rented a car for the weekend.

First we drove along the Costa Brava, the eastern coast of Spain. The winding mountain road allowed beautiful views of rugged cliffs above the Mediterranean Sea. Hoping to find a beach cove, we parked the car on the side of the highway and looked for a path down to the sea. However, this particular road down was cordoned off to all but "peotones." Thinking, by the look of things, this word must mean something like "patrons," we hopped back in the car and planned to look for another way down. Since there's no better way to learn vocabulary than through life experiences, just before we drove off we looked up the new word. How happy we were to learn the road was closed off to everyone but PEDESTRIANS! We quickly packed up the beach bags and set off on a walk.

What we found exceeded our expectations and created memories that will last a lifetime. Daniel said it like this, "This is my favorite beach I've been to in my WHOLE life." The beach was small and protected by large rock outcroppings. One could see schools of fish and rocks far below the surface of the crystal clear, green water. There were also rocks sticking up out of the water that one could climb on and jump off. What incredible fun and beauty!

On Monday we left the coast and headed to a small town called Berga to meet Duane's Spanish colleague from the University of Minnesota. She took us to an even smaller town in the Pyrenees, just south of France, for lunch (at which we ate wild pig meat, lamb's head, pig's feet, and blood sausages) and a hike to see the headwaters of the Llobregat River.



Traveling home we were caught in a mountain hailstorm. However, by 9:30pm we were safe and sound in Barcelona again, getting the kids ready for bed and for their first day of school.

After today, I highly recommend that people NOT go school supply shopping in a completely foreign language. As is probably typical (though I have no idea, since we're HOME SCHOOLERS), we received very specific lists from the school, of course in Catalan, of all the items needed for 1st and 3rd grades. We were told go to a particular store for the supplies and that they'd help us find all the items. That was true. And the store, though outrageously expensive, did help me a lot.

Trying to be well-prepared for this shopping experience, I'd translated the lists in google. The "box of scarves" turned out to be a box of facial tissues. The "colors of wood" turned out to be colored pencils. In retrospect they seem obvious. However, when one was at the store, amidst the pre school-year chaos, NOTHING was obvious. How to use one of Charles' folders is still a mystery to me! Why I paid over $20 for one pencil case is another mystery.

I'm just grateful there was someone to help. Who knows what the kids would have pulled out of their backpacks at school if there hadn't been! And now that those backpacks are prepared for Tuesday morning, I sit back, relax...and take joy in cross-cultural living.

A lot got accomplished today! Charles and Daniel are now registered to attend Escola Augusta. It's a small, partly private school very near our apartment. Their website (in Catalan) is

www.escola-augusta.com

The choice of schools came down to two. We finally decided on Augusta because of it's size and proximity. There is one class per grade, with a total of 300 students, preschool through high school.



We also purchased the necessary textbooks and uniforms. We were glad to see that the math and music textbooks are quite basic. We are hoping this will aid language learning as the material is already well understood.

The kids felt super about getting uniforms, even dancing in the dressing rooms! In addition to the typical gray pants, white polos, and gray sweaters, "robes" are required. These are similar to art smocks in the US and are worn during lunch and other messy activities.

The search for a school made for an interesting and long day. Primarily we were looking for a school that put an emphasis on Castillian Spanish.

The first two schools we visited were the two that, based on our research, seemed to use the most Castillian textbooks. Unfortunately they weren't what we were looking for. We didn't know this until we arrived, but they were both in an extremely ritzy area of Barcelona. The stately lobby of one school was decorated with ornately carved wooden banisters, beautiful wrought iron, huge crystal chandeliers and a marble front desk. Not quite what we had in mind.

The next school turned out to be for girls! Oops.

After going to a few more schools that didn't have any space left, we found two that had space and seemed OK. Though not private, they aren't exactly public either. They are both Catholic schools near Duane's work. After taking a tour and looking through the materials we were given, the kids are excited about this opportunity. Whoo! That's a relief.

Tomorrow we hope to visit a few more schools, including some public ones.