Two Weeks Alone with Two Girls!!

We have two weeks together before the girls start school and while the parents are working...so we have a lot of time for fun! Today we are starting out at the Zoo in Barcelona and spending practically the whole day there. Hmm, Spanish animals, we will just see how different they are. Then tomorrow, Tuesday, we are going to an indoor skating rink to go ice skating, and I think my foot is almost 100% so it will be fun and we will see how many times we all fall.

The last week was nice, we spent most of it in the Costa Brava just an hour and half north of Barcelona near L´estartit on the ocean, we stayed at Felipe´s parents´ house (we have done quite the tour of homes and beds, from Gemmas parents´ to Felipe´s to boats and mountain houses) and his mom knows how to cook! We ate the best macaroni all home made adn they have an orchard where they grow all sorts of fresh fruits and veggies so eating really well was on the menu everyday. I also saw the traditional Catalan dancing called La Sardana, love the culture!

About three more weeks here adn then it is off to home. I take off September 18th and will definitely be sad.

Pictures: Barcelona and My New Family!

Then after about a week we left for the island of Menorca...(PS look at this post from bottom to top)


The beautiful Spanish beach!

I spent a couple of days in Barcelona walking around while the girls were at camp. This is on eof Gaudi's designs for a building...his architecture is all over the city, it's really amazing.

The missing tooth...

This was just after I pulled Moni's tooth out...we were trying for days!

A couple days after I arrived, Claudia, Gemma, and I went to see Harry Potter in English, it was such a treat! Here I am with Claudia in the theater. The girls go to a trilingual school, where they speak catalan, spanish, and english, so they pretty much understand everything in english.

This is the view of the ocean from my room (actually MOni's but I am using it for the two months. We are jsut north of Barcelona outside the city but its super close and we have an awesome view!)

I just arrived after about 24 hours of traveling, planes, trains, and automobiles. Here is Monica on my lap and her mom Gemma.

mmmmm mediterranean food!

hey there!
tomorrow i get my stitches out it´s awesopme! we had a dinner of
cucumber with a little cheese, salt, olive oil, and an onion and squid
dish and also a little toasted bread and little clams for dinner and a
natural yogurt for dessert, it was really good and healthy! and for
lunch we had half raw inside and half cooked like on the outside tuna with a
little soy sauce and some really interesting tan mushrooms that were
really good and again a yogurt for dessert. then breakfast is always
like these anti oxidant bran flakes with soy milk or yogurt mixed in
and maybe some toasted bread with cheese...i love the mediterranean
diet!!!
until next time!!

also, after my two months here with the family, i am thinking of traveling aroudn the south of Spain since i have never seen it...to sevilla, granada, and cordoba, and if you have any other suggestions let me know!

Fiestas, Futbol, and Fun in 3 Countries!

We have been here in Sanavastre in the valley of Cerdanya for a little over a week and so much has happened. We have had picnics in the mountains, dinners at our house, paella parties, and swimming, all with my family here and about fifty other ones...well almost, almost everyday we are with about ten other kids and five or four other couples out on an excursion for the day. It´s funny too how all the parties seem to end up at our house, and while I am really only oblidged to be with Monica and Claudia, I am always surrounded by 8 or ten cute spanish kids. Alejo, Blanca, Francesc, and Marta being among my favorites.

Our latest adventures consists of swimming in Andorra today. We started out in Spain and drove 50 kilometers to Andorra and while the girls and Gemma and Felipe went swimming at a huge indoor pool complex, I was walking around (still on my bum foot with three stitches on the bottom) and then we had lunch (from about 3-4:30 which is typical) at a French restaurant and drove back home to Cerdanya through France. Three countries in one day, I think that is a record! Andorra is known for their shopping pretty much, and their great skiing. It is pretty much an outdoor mall with la calle principal full of shops with perfume, watches, clothes, shoes and anything you could dream of. The mountains were beautiful in the pyrenees, and Andorra is the only country with the official language beign Catalan, which is what everyone speaks here in Cataluña in Spain. It also rained on the way back from France which made me happy since I love the rain, and it has been pretty hot here lately.

Futbol...I was telling Felipe and Gemma how I want to see a soccer game in Barcelona while I am here and conviently, the dined with the Vice President of the team the other night...and the guy was nice enough to offer box seats to his friends at the table and Felipe, says, oh no, thanks but I dont like soccer....and hearing his response a few hours later I smacked him and he goes, oh ¨ostras, I forgot you like soccer.¨ I was just imaging sitting in awesome seats with cool spanairds...but no, aha anyways I will get there somehow...

We are here for another week and then we head back to Barcelona and I get my stitches out! So a few more days of bike and horseback riding for the girls and hasta luego mountains.

Vamos a Cerdanya

Today we are driving 150 kilometers north westish i think, to a little pueblo in the Pyrenees mountains. Two more weeks of adventure!!

Three Stitches Later...

What a day, Friday the 7th. My last day on the boat in Menorca and everything started out well. We were going to this great beach where you can only get there by boat and I went out to catch fish with the five grandkids on the motor boat that the grandfather wqas driving while the moms were swimming there. So we were dropped off, I had Moni and Alex who are 7 and 5 then the three older ones, 10 and 12, and I start to follow them in the water on the sand because I dont have my aqua socks on like they do, when all of a sudden, I slip on a rock and I feel a little pinch. I look to make sure I didn´t gash my foot open....and oh I actually did gash my foot open. WHile telling the two small ones to stay close to me so they dont fall, I sit on a rock and access the sitch. It started bleeding a lot and I saw a cut about two inches wide and a maybe 4 milimeters deep. So I kept my foot on the rock and started signaling to the boat for help (which we had decided earlier that week would be pounding on your head with both hands as a joke). But since the parents were so happy to get a small break from the kids and all 15 of us cooped up on the boat, it took maybe ten minutes for the small motor boat to come back to me, after flagging it down for a good amount of time.

So I get back to the big boat and Pablo, my family here´s brother in law who is on the boat with us tell everyone to back up, while Ana, Gemma´s sister is running away from me at the sight of a lot of blood, then after being interrogated in spanish about what happen (and me explainning there was a big rock hidden in the sand that i slipped on) pablo cleaned the wound, accessed the situation and told all the kids that he would have to cut off a toe....

After the kids screamed and calmed down and were really nice to me, he said he was kidding but that it was a profound cut. (Note to self, and this is no exaggeration, Pablo works in a good hospital in Barcelona as the director of a team of foot and heel specialists and he is known as the best surgeon in Spain in his specialty...lucky me!) So he said I would need stitches...so we took a nice little trip a few hours later to the centro de salud and he stiched me up no problem with no questions asked and after a little anasthesia and three stitches and a little limping he said I would be good to go in two weeks.

After ten minutes in the centro we came back to boat and yo estaba curada...i was cured thanks to Pablo. All the kids we at my beck and call instead of the other way around...well for about an hour. But today I am taking it easy at home while everyone spends their last say on the boat adn then we leave for Barce tomorrow all day on a big boat and then on Monday we head to Cerdaña in the mountains.

Not the best day ever, but it could have been much worse...THANKS PABLO!!

Calas, Cava y Cafe

This is my life here...we go out on the boat, swim, have an amazing lunch of black octopus rice or bocatas (sandwiches with french bread and cheese) and a huge yummy salad, little typical pizzas and filled eggplant (which are typical of the island) have some cava, then fruit dessert like cherries, peach (which they peel here, it is a little stange) grapes and what have you, then we rest and swim some more while the kids throw themselves of the boat and swim around then we come back to the apartment (one sister´s family is above us and one is next to us) adn we all eat dinner together usually at our bug table on the porch looking out over the natural port and the mediterranean, the kids play, usually chasing me or me flying them in the air like an airplane and then we get ice cream at the center of town walking or driving and then we sleep. My typical day with the three Cs, in addition the coffee is a capuccino and it is amazing.

We leave on Sunday, after two weeks and then head to their house in Barcelona for a day then go to Acerdaña to the mountains for two weeks where we will be riding horses, bikes, and being outdoors in the Pyrenees mountains. It will be great!

Yesterday I went to Mahon to main town of the island to see what it was about and then i walked to the movie theater to meet, David, Marc, Alex, Anna, Pol, Felipe, Monica, Claudia, and Gemma to watch up. Almost the whole family was there and we took up an entire row. It was a very cite disney movie about adventures in south america.

Oh the spirit of adventure...