Week 1

I decided that it would be okay to take the first week kind of easy, in terms of official schooling. After all, everything we do here is a learning experience! On Monday we were lucky to have the company and guidance of our Airbnb host, Fiona, and her kids (aged very similarly to ours) all day. They are Australian, so there is no language barrier between us. We attempted to take care of some official residency-related business, but in typical Spanish-bureaucracy fashion (I am told), we did not succeed. More on that later, I have no doubt. Over the course of the morning we took the metro, bus, and and our feet all over the couple of miles near our house. It was great to be with people who knew the area because they pointed things out and told stories along the way. However, it didn’t help my navigating skills because I just followed them. There are a number of places we went with them on Monday that I have no idea how I would find again. But that’s okay—we will discover them again as we explore on our own.

Next, an impressive sushi-buffet lunch served as our formal introduction to eating in a Barcelona restaurant. Although many people here speak some English, the server at this place did not seem to. It would have been difficult without Fiona and her kids because this was not the kind of buffet that we are used to in the U.S. Instead, you sit at a table and order off a menu, but you can order as many things as you want as many times as you want. There were also drinks to deal with. It would have been overwhelming without the help of our guides, but they made it easy and fun. We took all the kids back to our place for a video-game break in the afternoon while Fiona took care of some stuff related to her family’s recent move to Berlin. We were fortunate that they just happened to be in town for a long weekend surrounding our arrival. I am so happy it worked out that way because they are truly delightful people, and they introduced us to several very nice, very welcoming people who still live in Barcelona. This group gets together regularly in one of the local squares for drinks (for the adults) and crazy play in the square (for the kids). They invited us to these weekly gatherings, which I think we will enjoy and need after spending most of our time on our own.

Monday evening ended at a bar in Gràcia, where I VERY MUCH enjoyed my first taste of cava, a Spanish sparkling wine. It was so cold and refreshing and bubbly at the end of a busy day in a new city where I don’t speak the language. So, yes, I had a few glasses. They were served with tapas, so this was also our first taste of traditional Spanish foods. Fiona took us to the bar with several of her friends, and we had just a lovely time. The adults sat just inside the bar while the kids played outside. I was impressed with how well the kids picked up and just started playing with the other kids, especially Ryan. We will look forward to getting together with this group throughout our sabbatical.

Tuesday I designed a homeschool curriculum around exploring Park Güell, one of the most famous sites in Barcelona. The kids started by learning some words in Spanish and Catalan and then researching some of the history behind the park and created a scavenger hunt of things to look for in the park. Then we had them map out our route and guide us to the park. It worked out really, really well. The kids worked independently, learned a lot, and got to be “in charge” of the outing. We didn’t realize it would happen this way, but it turned out that they path they chose took us up the steepest hills I’ve ever seen in a city. There were escalators embedded in the streets in some cases. I had heard that Barcelona was hilly, but I had no idea how much! We explored the public (no ticket needed) part of the park for quite some time, but it turned out that most of the famous sights, and the ones the kids had chosen for their scavenger hunt, were in the ticketed area. We weren’t opposed to buying tickets, but by this time it was getting late and people were running out of steam so we decided to go back another day and do the ticketed area. All of the photos in this post are from Park Güell.

Turó de les tres creus

Pretty yellow tree

View from just above the escalators

Green parakeets in the wild

Wednesday we took a family adventure to... IKEA! I know, I know, we could have done that at home. The thing is, our apartment would be adequately stocked for a family on vacation planning to eat out most of the time, but the cooking supplies were far less than what we need for five months here. So we took the metro to the bus to IKEA and purchased some necessities (notably a frying pan, a knife that cuts food, and some cloth napkins). This was our longest, most complicated exploration of the public transportation and I was impressed! You really can get anywhere in the city, it seems, pretty easily. We stopped midway through our return trip for cafe amb llet (coffee with milk, in Catalan, which is the language all the signs are in).

By Thursday the kids needed a break so Matt and I went that morning to the institute where we are formally doing our sabbatical while the kids slept in and did some assigned math work. Our trip was successful insofar as we made it, took care of our paperwork, got fingerprint access to the facility, and met some nice people. But it was extremely exhausting. I was nervous leaving the kids behind and it just got to be too many new people in a confusing place and I wanted to retreat so badly to our apartment, which finally we did. Matt and I took a long walk later that evening to explore the area on foot, making it all the way to Plaça Catalunya, which is the metro stop where we switched to the bus when we went to IKEA. It was so cool to figure out geographically where it was instead of just popping up from underground.

Friday we walked around Gràcia on foot and Will very impressively spoke Spanish in a manga shop to purchase a figure that he wanted. I was so proud of him. We rested at home for a while and then in the evening attempted to meet up with the crowd I mentioned earlier for their weekly gathering. The problem was that the specific people that we had met on Monday weren’t there, and we didn’t know exactly where to go. Also, at 8:45 we were too early (this is Spain). Matt and Ryan eventually hooked up with the group and had a fun night out, but Will and I were done so we headed home. We will join them next week, this time knowing where to meet.

I don't know what we will do this weekend, but next week I'd like to start more formally with scheduled school topics. This week has been more like vacation but we have to get into more of a schedule.

Will in a viaduct

Ryan in a viaduct