First Day of School

The first day of school I happily packed my children off to school in their perfectly coordinated outfits, new backpacks, and polished shoes.

Just kidding.  I missed the first day of school for my kids.  All of them.  So I have no photographic evidence of my son's major ascension to junior high school. 

However, I did some parental duty this weekend and bought them all overpriced binders and helped them organize their schoolwork.  I also purchased for Casey a high quality trombone (well, rented) and bought a bunch of little unnecessary school supplies in an attempt to buy my children's love as I realized I was going to miss the first band concert due to work travel.

I honestly wish I didn't love the work I do so much because it would be a NO brainer to quit this deal.  Every single Sunday I brainstorm alternative ways to work in education, like going back into the classroom, trying to find a job with the school district, or a volunteer position like school board member or some other no-travel position.  But then Monday hits, I get an email on brainstorming ideas for a project, I have a conference call scheduled to save the world and WHAM I am sucked back into national work.

In an attempt to save my aforementioned neglect, I did snap a photo of my eldest this morning, his first day with the new trombone and I have to say that I am so happy with his school right now.  He is happy, the teachers seem to be exciting and fun, and so far, it is living up to my newly found Utah standards.

Isn't he lovely?

Almost Thou Persuadeth Me

I have to say that I simply love nuns.  I have never had an occasion to get to know them, but the ones I worked with in Spain were a delight.  Like, a REAL delight.

I can't really summarize an entire day of combining my three favorite things in the world:

• Progressive education
• Spanish
• Do gooder religious types

If they would have served a Spanish tortilla for lunch I think I would have thought I had literally died and gone to heaven.

A few points of interest:

1)  This particular order of nuns is focused on changing and improving families through education.  Isn't that awesome?  Yes it is.

So first they were really excited about that message.  Here they are, excited 

2)  They had great sense of humor and were so fun to be around.  They had a ton of questions and, did you know...that nuns call each other by their first name?? So it was like Monika, Edith, etc.

3)  They were happy, beautiful, and really focused on doing good.  I mean, I felt like they were doing some really special work in the world and it was a privilege to be a part of it:

I am going to start looking for nuns to hang out with them more.  Do you think there are any in Utah?

Teleferic

Sent from my robot phone

Plaza de España

With Cervantes, Don Quixote y Sancho Panza.

Madrid de noche

Detalles

So I had an awesome day with nuns but I am a few posts behind and I have to stay in order.

Fact:  Barcelona is totally awesome.  Fountains mmm:

Fact:  If you drink from the fountain in La Rambla, you always return.  Also a fact:  The water tastes disgusting.  Since I have gone to that fountain several times, the desire to return courses like poison in my veins, no need to feed the best.  I did get a foto taken by it though.

Fact:  The official language of Barcelona and the entire region surrounding is Catalán.  For those who don't know the deep roots of a very long battle, the region of Catalunya wants to be separate--not like tejas that jokes about it, but for reals for reals Catalunya doesn't want to be part of Spain and in fact does not consider what we consider "Spanish" to be Spanish, rather Castellano.  Though I have used the term before, I had forgotten that some Catalanes consider it an insult to call it Spanish (even though they don't want to be Spanish, so, weird.)  Anywho, linguists know that if a language isn't useful, it declines so they require it for everything these days to protect the language from extinction and to resurge as a great language of art and culture.  The sign below is in Catalán and is the one found at the base of said fountain:

Fact:  Awesome architecture due largely to Gaudí.  More on that guy later, but everywhere you see his influence:

Fact:  Spaniards love motorcyles.  Harleys, really, but they don't drive them, they drive little motos.  Here is a sampling of moto love:

Fact:  El Barça has the best soccer team in the world right now.  My friend (well, her husband to be exact) es, like many other in his city, un fanático.  Their entire family dressed up and of course bought me un original shirt.  They were very happy to see me in the shirt, I hope I actually wear it again in my life.  Maybe Halloween?

I have many other pictures, but at least I got these up for now.  Next post:  Mucha marcha en Madrid and Flamenco.

The Spanish Beso

I was planning to do a post on detalles--all the details of Barcelona which focused on hundreds of pictures of roof tops.  Be thankful for lousy internet that all you get is this post until my pictures finish downloading.

Since I mentioned the Spanish beso in my last post I thought I would help out those of you who have no knowledge of the beso.

In Spain, you give a kiss (beso) to people on each cheek under the following circumstances:

1)  You are being introduced to someone new

2)  You see someone you know after a long time (a month, a year, 5 years, etc.)

3)  You see someone you know really well after a shorter time period

It is a very sweet tradition, people seem to do it in place of a hug and there is an indicator that you are going to get a beso when the person leans in towards you--not really any awkwardness, a nice simple expression of kindness and caring.

Not surprisingly for those of you know about missionary policies in the Mormon church (which are basically guidelines similar to what a nun or priest might follow), the missionaries are discouraged from giving besos to the opposite sex.  It goes hand in hand with a strict no-opposite sex general policy which precludes missionaries from being alone in a room, or even at a 1/1 ratio with members of the opposite gender.  It is a really important guideline that helps missionaries really focus on spiritual work instead of on their more tangible and very alert hormones at that age.

Anyway, as a person who is a bit of a hugger (not like, lingering huggy and hang all over you hugger, just a normal I care about you hugger) I had a hard time with the "no beso" rule when I was on my mission. 

See in Spain, a beso is a gesture of friendliness, not attraction, and by making it taboo, it actually elevates the level of the beso to feel like it IS related to attraction.  So... I admit a few times when someone was already leaning in, I let it slide.  Mostly we used the line "no damos besos" (we don't give kisses) but it was such an awkward moment if the person was already moving in for the kiss.

Fortunately, we could beso the ladies all we liked which were mainly the people we kept company with anyway, so I didn't miss out on the tradition entirely.

Now that I am in Spain as a post-missionary girl, it is enjoyable to not stress about that awkwardness of  "no damos besos" and instead meet and greet whomever I like in a platonic kiss.

I highly recommend both Spain and the beso.


Today I splurged and got myself tickets for a dinner and flamenco show at what is apparently the premier restaurant of Madrid, Corral de la Morería which is featured in the Book "1000 Places to See Before You Die."  Hopefully I can get a few snapshots without looking too touristy.