How did we get here?

A window of opportunity opened and we jumped through head first.  I think we were trying to prove to ourselves that we aren't too old to learn, adapt, and change.  Our answer to a mid-life crisis. 

We had been talking about living abroad in Europe for years. He wanted Paris.  I said we were already juggling three languages at home:  English, Spanish, and Mandarin Chinese, and I drew the line there.  It would have to be Spain. What about the bank bailout and Eurozone crisis?  Barcelona was supposedly the entrepreneurial and technological center of the country.  Perhaps by working in an American company we could avoid any serious collapse.  

Zoe was turning ten.  Her skin was starting to get pimples, and we realized we had to act soon or face the wrath of a teenage girl torn from her BFFs.  We had warned them it might happen soon.  Last year we vacationed in Spain and enjoyed ourselves immensely. Spain seemed very livable. The kids are excellent  travelers, and we had just spent 5 weeks in Taipei, Taiwan doing Mandarin summer camp.  They hadn't been the slightest bit homesick.  

I told Mark that if he could find a job that would provide the paperwork, I would do it. Little did I know what I was getting into. In mid-June he attended a start-up weekend in Barcelona, and spent two weeks making contacts and job-hunting.  At the end of July we returned home to California and were happy to unpack, reunite, and enjoy the end of summer.  The first week of August Mark flew to LA for an interview with Oblong Industries.   A week later he had an offer, and we decided to take the plunge.  

I had never been to Barcelona before, but the weather was very similar to Palo Alto, it was reputed to be a beautiful, international city with beach and ocean, amazing architecture, great food... why not?  From there we could make short trips throughout Europe.  North Africa was just a ferry ride away.  

I was an advocate of the "slow move".  Mark could go first, start working, get to know the city, line up some potential apartments.  The kids would start school at Ohlone as planned, I could pack in a relaxed manner, fly out once to finalize schools and housing, and we would be there by Thanksgiving or Christmas.  Mark was adamant that our best bet was to have the kids start the school year with everyone else. School in Spain started on September 12.  We would have to arrive at least a week in advance so we could figure out where they would attend school and acclimate ourselves.   Like a dope, I caved.  

We had 3 weeks to sell or pack up the entire house, rent it out, say our goodbyes, and take a one-way flight out. I quit teaching at the Y and gave up our coveted spots in the Mandarin immersion program.  There was no time to lose.  Friends came by to help us get rid of 10 years worth of furniture, DVDs, rugs, paintings, etc. and to say farewell.  We had a mostly unsuccessful garage sale.  I had imagined freezing my wonderful life in Palo Alto for two years, then being able to return and resume life as it had been.  But as we bid farewell to our first dining table, our beds, and the purple couch, those illusions faded, and I realized my world was being disassembled.  Dismantled.  It would never be the same.  I was traumatized.  

We have never wanted to be slaves to our possessions, and they were mostly just THINGS we were selling or giving away.  Our most personal items we planned to store or take with us.  But it was hard.  I had a good cry, then got over it and carried on.  We managed to cram everything into the attic or shed, as we were morally opposed to renting storage space.  Mark's brother took one car.  The other we donated to KQED.  How I would miss KQED!   We packed like maniacs down to the wire.  We took 9 suitcases.  Mailed one box. It still kind of felt like we were just  going on a long trip.  

On August 30 we arrived, exhausted, to a cute furnished apartment in the heart of the city that I had rented for a month thru VRBO.com.  I was enchanted by the modernist architecture of L'Eixample, and walked around snapping photos of buildings left and right.  

We knew very little about the school system, as web searches had turned up nothing useful, and there were thousands of schools in the city.  We considered going the International School route, which would mean everything in English with Spanish and Catalan language classes.  Catalan is kind of like a cross between Spanish and French, with some Portuguese or Italian thrown in for good measure.  Literally everyone here is bilingual, so one could certainly get by with speaking only Spanish, but the Catalonian identity is very strong. Since Mark had been speaking to the kids in Spanish almost exclusively since birth, they understood it quite well, but had a harder time producing it.  In the end we decided that since we planned to stay at least two years, maybe up to four, we would go for the immersion experience, and enroll them in a local school.  It would be a character building experience as well.  We exhausted ourselves visiting many schools each day and weighing pros and cons.  The decision was agonizing.  There were fancy private schools available outside the city or in the periphery, but that would entail hour-long daily commutes both ways, or we would have to live outside the city, and get a car.  We had imagined more of an urban experience with no car, so we went with a tiny private school which we could walk to, called Pérez Iborra.  Class sizes are small (under 20 students) and only one class per grade level, so the kids get plenty of personal attention.  The majority of the day is spent in Catalan, with Spanish and (basic) English classes as well.  We couldn't believe that school could provide a daily three-course vegan meal for the kids!  We spent a fortune on preppy uniforms.

On the first day of school we were worried that the kids would come home crying.  We worried that they might have a hard time making friends.  When we arrived, Zoe queued up in the 5th grade line and immediately a circle of girls closed in around her, peppering her with friendly questions.  She has had no trouble making friends!  For the first few days Trev didn't seem to know what to do with himself on the playground.  The kids were nice enough, but he barely spoke and mostly just followed the boys around and watched a lot.  But now he seems relaxed and  happy with his classmates, and I'm amazed that he is now correcting my Spanish!  Zoe has had a few moments of homesickness when she misses her friends, but for the most part the kids seem happy here. 
  
My rudimentary Spanish, learned by osmosis through ten years of listening to Mark speak to the kids, is sufficient for me to get around by myself and buy the necessities, but I attend ten hours of class a week with the goal of speaking fluently.  Interestingly, recently there has been a large influx of Russians and mainland Chinese immigrants to Barcelona, and my classmates reflect this diversity.  

Anyhow, that is the long story of how we ended up here, surprising even ourselves at the suddenness of it all.  Now that we have lived here for two months, I feel more like a resident and less like a tourist. We dove in headfirst, and have managed to land more or less on our feet.