Sept 8 2013

What do you call cheese that does not belong to you?? Natcho cheese!! Get it? If you visit france, italy, and greece, where should you go in november? Turkey!! get it daddy, get it?? Thanksgiving duh.  lets go swim in the pool.       Corrinne, cindy and I have spent our first two weeks in barcelona living in a hotel.  Very together.    As you would expect, each of us has had our 15 minuts of "leave me alone," but we have survived with no regrets.
 So this is our blog. It will probably justs be the ramblings of cindy and i as we live these 10 / 11 months in spain. You can tune out when it gets boring. I am trying to document our time here hoping we can read and remember it thirty years from now. Corrinne's kids may get a kick out of it. They will probably be telling her the same jokes.
On aug. 20, 2013 we presented ourselves to barcelona spain. We are well received. The city begs to be explored. Old enough to be interesting, modern enough to be easy. Exploring would have to wait (we thought). There was so much to get accomplished before corri started school on sep. 2. First priority was to find permanent accommodations. Our usual travel accommodation M. O. Is "wing it", find a place when you arrive. This may work when you are lugging a back pack, but not so joyous when 12 bags follow you everywhere you go. Four of them where 49 pounds (Ask american airlines). We arranged a hotel, unseen, at the airport. Moved in and fell asleep. Jet lag was a bit difficult. When we were up we were combing the city for a place to live. Hard to do in the Barcelona humidity. Actually i do not think the humidity is that bad. Spoiled, dry climate so-californians, just need to get used to it. Walking a few blocks and finding perspiration on your forehead is just inconvenient. So while not sleeping we were walking, sweating, and, Inadvertantly exploring the city as we looked for a place to live. Our search was hampered by the lack of businesses that remained open in aug. Turns out, in spain, most businesses (including rental agencies) close down in aug and everyone goes on vacation. Omg, dont these people know we need service now!! The agencys that did remain open were mostly geared toward tourist looking for 1 -2 weeks stays. We eventualy did find some agencies managing longer term rentals. Unfortunately, in barcelona, the agents only show properties that are listed by their offices, usually limited to the neighborhood were they where located. We had to work with several different offices to look at apartments in different neighborhoods. By our standards, majorly ineficent. Joe american will notice many inefficiencies in spain. Tradition takes precedence here, and barcelonians seem less stressed , perhaps because of it. We quickly found that we would exceed our accommodation budget if we were to rent our dream apartment. After two weeks of looking we settled on a smaller, two bedroom flat in a very nice, family neighborhood. As luck would have it, the apartment had just changed ownership. The new owner had just put in new everything. New beds, furniture, kitchen ware, etc. We unwrapped brand new, unused, sheets and blankets. Major bonus. A lot of the things we were expecting to buy ourselves were provided by the landlord. Any unexpected savings is a nice surprise. Everything is more expensive. Not much value for the us$.
 corrinnes school started monday 9/2. we moved into the apartment 9/4. finally, home cooked food. restaurant eating gets tiring very fast, and its hella $$$. corrinne is attending benjamin franklin international school (BFIS). as you would expect, it is chock full of international kids. k thru 12th grade. the school charter requires it be at least 30% local spanish kids. there are aprox 500 kids attending. there are more american kids then i expected. seems that taking time off to live in barcelona for a while is more common than we knew. the parents are very present. especially all the newbies. everyone seems very nice and welcoming. we are all in the same boat, and most are more than happy to enjoy the ride with us. there have been many opportunities for me to practice my social skills. i'm holding my own thank you very much.
sept 13, corrinne is having a rough time adjusting to her new environment. she was doing pretty well at first, when she was on a mission with mom & dad looking for a place to live. then she started fifth grade at a new school, in a foreign land, without her usual friends, then the bella-missing started, the daisy-the-fish worrying, then bri's bunny had bunnies, then this, then that. we are trying to help but its slow going, day-to-day stuff. i am sure she will be fine soon. meanwhile Cindy and I are staying busy getting our ducks in a row. among other things we are personalizing the apartment, working on resident documents (the US embassy charged us $60 for a notary) , gyms are being vetted and joined (no we are not just sitting around drinking wine, though one of the dads at ben franklin owns a vineyard in Washington State and has promised a wine experience soon), getting cindy's arm worked on(its looking good) and ferrying corrinne to-and-from school. all this is being done in-between social engagement. there is a very small upscale roman pizza joint a few blocks from our apt. they have a master baker who is making the best (most $$$) pizza i have ever had. i am lobbying them to let me work/learn with the baker. like an internship. its a new venture for them and they feel its to early to add an intern to the mix. maybe before i leave though. i will stay on them, we shall see what comes of it.
ok, i am posting this today 9/13. there is more to say, we have been able to visit a few of barcelonas sights, but i will keep you in suspense. we have some photos to post, but that's a job for IT personnel to look into for another post. I don't like to spend time capitalizing ( my writing professor sister-in-law is going to love that). Kevin
fyi, "be no dust" refers to a poem read at our wedding: 10,000 miles, no dust.    i'm not sure what mile we are on. kch