February 21, 2008. I invite anyone reading this to submit changes/improvement/ideas for the www.barcelonasabbatical.com. Let’s both make this a fun project. I’ve spent a few hours correcting my programming errors and such, but otherwise just wrote it off the cuff. I think this should be the information source for everyone planning a sabbatical in Barcelona next year (about 10 people, by my estimation). I put the following information on that website in case either of you didn’t read it:
Books, for some strange reason, are very expensive in Spain. Especially English language books. The strange thing is today’s La Vanguardia (Barcelona’s local newspaper written in Spanish) says that Spanish kids have low reading comprehension, even lower than the US. It seems if books are so expensive, they would make the effort to understand them. I just scanned the article so I probably didn’t fully understand it anyway.
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February 22, 2008. Friday. I need a break from Spanish since I seem to be going backwards. I am thinking about shooting a video and want to do it right (shot list, ideas in a script, etc…) but a short. I’ve enjoyed putting my Barcelona Sabbatical site together and want to see if ANYONE ever looks at it. It’s a nice complement to this site for me.
David had a soccer game tonight and he was on the bench for close to half. When I asked his coach what was up, he said that now that David was on the elite team it would take some time for him to play up to their level and I should be patient.
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February 23, 2008. I got our video camera out today. We are starting to think about how to organize the remaining months we have in Europe and already have the idea of going skiing for Semana Santa, which is March 17 for a week and we are going to Sam Rosen’s son’s Barmitzvah on the first week-end of April. We want to do a lot of other stuff too including visit the Baleric Islands (Minorca, etc…) and more.
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February 24, 2008. Anne and Rocket are bonding more now that she has seen a professional dog trainer (the Spanish dog whisperer).
After some discussion and analysis, Anne and I have decided that the Spanish here have no senses of humor. That’s not very good for me. And, frankly, that’s why the French understand me better. We’ve been thinking, “when do we ever hear anyone laughing in the street.” The answer is, never. You hear a lot of explaining, punctuated by the word “vale” meaning “get it.” And their idea of humor is really slapstick; so much so that it’s unwatchable for normal people (me?).
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February 25, 2008. I brought David to his soccer game today, which requires that I commute about an hour to his school and then back to the soccer field with him. Then I sit and watch the game, which sometimes offers me an opportunity to speak Spanish. Today the guy I thought was retarded was there. I’m not sure if he is retarded, but he has a speech impediment like he used to stutter, and a somewhat limited repertoire of ideas about what makes good conversation. For him, it’s the weather, as in “it’s very warm today.” This, I suppose he thinks, is supposed to take us through the next one and a half hours. So, when I saw him, I sort of cringed, hoping that I could come up with lots of vocabulary to describe the weather. Thankfully, after talking about how the days were getting longer, he asked me if David was learning any Spanish. This gave me an opening, and off we went — he listened to my halting Spanish and I listened to his halting Spanish.
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February 26, 2008. The weather is getting kind of nicer here, which provides the opportunity to get out and run. Anne and Rocket have been doing this and Rocket’s training seems to be going well (well, he’s getting trained). Speaking of training, I’m keeping some semblance of a routine up and plan to start cycling more as the weather turns.
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February 27, 2008. For the second time this year, school was cancelled because of a water main break. Of course, I got a call, which was delivered as “We have an emergency…” which of course makes me think the worst and then finally they get around to telling you it’s the water main. They need to lead with “Not to worry, but…” Anywho, got the kids and brought them home and they wanted to just hang out.