{"id":33,"date":"2008-01-19T10:01:46","date_gmt":"2008-01-19T09:01:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uhlfelder.com\/blog\/?p=33"},"modified":"2008-01-23T21:10:47","modified_gmt":"2008-01-23T20:10:47","slug":"week-22-january-17-to-23","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uhlfelder.com\/?p=33","title":{"rendered":"Week 22 — January 17 to 23"},"content":{"rendered":"

January 17, 2008<\/u>.\u00a0 Today was the last day of skiing with the group.\u00a0 We had a veterinarian here to inspect the property\/ski resort for a group trip coming up in TWO YEARS.\u00a0 He was pretty nice and I skied with him for the day.\u00a0 We had powder that turned into cement by the end of the day, but it was skiable and fun.\u00a0 I’m very much done with skiing for a while (well, I guess, only three weeks and we’re off to Chamonix for ski week with the kids).\u00a0<\/p>\n

January 18, 2008<\/u>.\u00a0 We took the bus from Andorra this morning, made it to Barcelona, and I actually managed to replace the two stolen passports in about an hour.\u00a0 I had emailed all back-up to the consulate, they got it and were able to do the entire job before their closing time.\u00a0 Then I let our incoming tour operator deal with the broken arm issue since it involved really understanding Spanish.\u00a0 I didn’t want to be the guy who gives the wrong dose since I misunderstood.\u00a0 I’m glad to be home, and worked hard, not fully enjoying the trip.\u00a0 I did learn a lot: don’t dismiss suggestions without making sure I can blame someone else for dismissing them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

January 19, 2008<\/u>.\u00a0 My group stayed on the Ramblas and reported that they had a good time.\u00a0 They found plenty to whine about, as usual.\u00a0 The rooms were too small (welcome to Europe) and dirty (I guess that’s not good).\u00a0\u00a0 They had a four hour tour of Barcelona which they said was really good and then I went over to their hotel and set about organizing people into groups for the rides to the airport.\u00a0 They all went at different times, so I organized a series of taxis and gave them cash.\u00a0 Then we had our farewell dinner.\u00a0 The woman with the broken arm joined us and seemed in good spirits despite having been operated on days ago.\u00a0 She was a trouper.\u00a0 Anywho, dinner was had, good-bye to all.\u00a0 It was a lot of hard work and looking back, a good learning experience for me (patience, listen, etc… stuff I loath to do) but I wouldn’t do it again.\u00a0 The resort was much too easy, the skiing marginal and the job, well, a job.\u00a0 I uploaded a bunch of photos here http:\/\/picasaweb.google.com\/skidotcom\/<\/a><\/p>\n

January 20, 2008<\/u>.\u00a0 We rented a car yesterday and drove about an hour out of town to a lunch with a bunch of people, mainly Americans but others too, that involved eating onion shoots followed by beans, butifara and more.\u00a0 Lots of fun and very Spanish — a four hour lunch from about 2:00 until almost 6:00.\u00a0 The event is a traditional Catalan \u201cCal\u00e7otada\u201d.\u00a0 Anywho, it was fun.\u00a0 Here are some photos: http:\/\/picasaweb.google.com\/markannedavidjoshua\/CatalanCalOtada<\/a><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

A few people have told me about 14 terrorists arrested in Barcelona, or something.\u00a0 I’m thinking that it’s hard to get news here, although I read the New York Times online.\u00a0 The only way I would probably hear about it, in fact, is if the 14 “terrorists” were a soccer team, since that’s about all that is reported.\u00a0 I’ll now try to find out more.\u00a0 Okay, I just found out that it’s not a soccer team but a team of Islamists who planned attacks here and in France.\u00a0<\/p>\n

January 21, 2008<\/u>.\u00a0 Started my recovery today from the trip.\u00a0 I am finally feeling normal but fighting a cold.\u00a0 Time to start studying Spanish, bring David to soccer, ride buses around and walk fast.<\/p>\n

January 22, 2008<\/u>.\u00a0 The kid in the hallway cried a bunch today and what we realize is that at some point the lack of sleep gets to these kids.\u00a0 The parents never seem to pay attention to the kids, or to scold them for anything, but they appear to turn out fine except they all smoke.\u00a0 How can they help it?\u00a0 As we noted, lunching with Amy and Dan, it was only a few years ago that we cut it out in the US.\u00a0 Now it’s just something for people who are from the third world or a lower economic strata, it seems.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Something about the stock market today.\u00a0 Apparently it dropped somewhat.\u00a0 More money lost!\u00a0 Yikes, not a good thing.<\/p>\n

January 23, 2008.\u00a0 This was the day of walking since I had to finally deal with the bank guarantee of six months of rent for our place (don’t ask).\u00a0 Anyway, this should have been done when we moved here or before (week one) but I’m getting around to it now (week 22).\u00a0 The bank made a mistake (week 12) which took until now to recognize and correct.\u00a0 This required a lot of walking on my part, picking up the document, going to and then appearing before a notary (here the notary function is very official,\u00a0costs a lot and adds friction, time\u00a0and cost to every legal transaction all mandated by the ley para empleo completo para personas que quiren llevar ropas limpias) and finally delivering the document to the managers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

January 17, 2008.\u00a0 Today was the last day of skiing with the group.\u00a0 We had a veterinarian here to inspect the property\/ski resort for a group trip coming up in TWO YEARS.\u00a0 He was pretty nice and I skied with him for the day.\u00a0 We had powder that turned into cement by the end of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uhlfelder.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uhlfelder.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uhlfelder.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uhlfelder.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uhlfelder.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/uhlfelder.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uhlfelder.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uhlfelder.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uhlfelder.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}