Truuuuuu-cooooh!

After dropping Lily at school this morning, we adults went for pastries and coffee in the park. Soon thereafter, Marty and Megan had to catch a bus to the airport, so we said our goodbyes and they departed for Rome.

It was nice to have good friends here during this last week. It's always nice to share this city with people from our hometowns, knowing that they'll appreciate the things we do. Additionally, as we are all hammering out what the next phases of our lives will be like, it's nice to be around people who know who we once were and provide a personal check-up.

As previously mentioned, our flatmate Matt made a curry for us, Marty and Megan, and Claire and Paulo on Saturday night and we stayed up into the wee hours playing a card game named Truco.

Oli crashed out early and the rest of us battled it out on the dining table, me and Matt vs. Megan and Paulo vs. Claire and Marty.

It went down like this:

social butterfly season

Been really enjoying ourselves these last few days.

On Wednesday, Cassie and Caleb arrived. After settling in at their hotel, we shared a snack at our place, then all went to the center to walk around. We stopped at our favorite cafe in Plaza Tripi (Plaza George Orwell) for a real meal. We like it there because there's little traffic, good people watching and room for Lily to roam. It also made for a good place for Cass and Cal to recover from their transatlantic journey, and prepared them for a walk through the Born. From there, headed to Barceloneta, stopping in a plaza for Lily to play in a park and the big kids to play frisbee. Walked past the sea, then headed home for the night.

Met with them at the beach on Thursday evening and enjoyed watching the sea change color as the sun set behind us and the city.

Megamart arrived on Friday night so we had everyone over to ours for a hangout. On Saturday we all went to the Sagrada Familia, sat in the sun drinking coffee for a half hour squinting up at the face of the church, contemplating whether or not to go in, then decided to just walk through the city and get lunch. Lily made a friend in the park outside Sagrada Familia and we played 'bomba' with balloons.

Had a long leisure lunch in a plaza in the Born. Introduced our guests to the clara (a shandy-like drink made by mixing beer and lemon Fanta). Lily enjoyed dancing with her parents on a platform in the plaza. Then headed down to a chiringuito by the beach for warm milk (Lily), coffee and more beer.

After bidding Caleb and Cassie farewell (they were off to visit Cass' uncle in Paris) Megamart passed out and we did Lily's dinner and bed. Matt (our new roommate - been here a week and are loving having him around - from Shropshire and is fellow teacher at OHC) made a curry and we had our friends Claire and Paulo (Australian coarse director at OHC, her Brazilian man who's here doing his PhD) over to share it with all of us, including Megamart. We had a great night, eating Matt's curry, trying the champaign/vodka/lemon sorbet dessert drink Claire made using a really nice sparkling wine she recently got in Italy, and playing a Brazilian card game called Truco that Paulo taught us. We stayed up late.

On Sunday we ate a big breakfast then went with Matt, Megan and Marty to meet Timo in Plaza Tripi as he's moving back to London in a few days. From there it was off for ice cream, and then to the beach for burying Lego men and picnicing. We all passed out last night after watching The Prestige.

Lily's been doing really well in school, had fun walking, eating and beaching with friends this weekend, and in general is pretty funny right now. She's been telling us about school and told me the other day, "Mom, Eva says 'seieu'." Eva's her teacher and 'seieu' (say-oo) means 'sit' in Catalan. 'Yeah," Lily said," She says 'seieu' right here". I thought it was pretty funny that she said 'sit' in Catalan but translated the rest to English. She also has told me that Pau cries for his yaya (nana); she asks Nil, "Whatchyou crying 'bout?; and that she enjoys dancing with her jacket in class but sometimes Eva says 'No, Lily'.

Photos to come soon - have to get them off Matt's camera, but he needs to buy a card reader for his computer first.....


~

?!@#$%!

So I've just finished showering and making myself look beautiful before I go pick Lily and Oli up at the airport.....and now I've just walked into an open cupboard while making soup. I had to be going at least 30 miles an hour. And now a gross vertical white line is rising out of my forehead.

The old ladies are going to love asking me about this tomorrow morning when I pass them on their bench.

Amy Poehler brings her A game

Shards of Americana

Okaaaaay. After weeks, I'm finally posting more details on our visit in America, and may even get to the British stuff eventually.

Thing is, I had uploaded the photos to blogger long ago and it has a funny habit of publishing posts in chronological order, so scroll down for a big dose of USA.....or click on the links below.

PS - There's a picture of Hooter's girls down there.

Little girls are weird and can be mean

Hartrich Alert

Friends

NAB

Wisconsin Dells: Chicago's French Riviera

Wisconsin: Land of beer, fish, frogs, sun and beer

Loser!

I know I always see movies eons after everyone else, but I'm here alone in BCN having a glass of red wine and crying at Juno. When the adoptive mom is holding the baby and Juno's step-mom is standing in the doorway I just lost it. Tears streaming down my face.

10:30 on a Saturday and I'm bawling in my living room.

More blogging to come soon as I've finally finished putting our house back together here. Four days, lots of bleach and one trip to IKEA later, it's a whole new world.

~

Liliana Ballerina

Dexter

So, we don't know if you seen it and rejected it or that you just haven't heard of it yet, but either way, we are loving Dexter. Serial killer, blood splatter forensic expert, empty on the inside. Classic.

Check it out. Season 3 comes out this fall.

Little girls are weird and can be mean

My niece Marisa celebrated her 5th birthday while we were in the US. She had a kid party at her house and Lily had a great time. It was a luau and after the formal party broke up, the neighborhood kids stuck around to do makeup.









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Hartrich Alert

Lily and I rented a car (no family car available on this day) and went to see the Hartrichs in their new home. We were fed and given beds and the kids were all very well behaved, so who could ask for more?

We took a walk to the high school and the kids were entranced by the practicing marching band pit/percussion. We stopped to listen...

I thought Theo's cool mohawk made him look like a sweet little frog, which I mean only as a compliment.

Assorted cute photos:

Lily and Simon playing every kid's favorite game: "Go to sleep, Wake up".

Three kids eating well together! Incredible! Call the papers!

A lovely scene. Straight out of the 'Happiness Machine' chapter of Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine (Synopsis: After trying to build a machine that you can step in to become happy - it rather resembles a TV in a small room - Leo Auffman is surprised to find that it actually makes people unhappy because it shows them things they'll never have in reality. He realizes he has no need for such a device because he already has one. The chapter ends with him smiling at the fluid movement of the real happiness machine as he gazes in through the front window of his home, watching his family go through their pre-dinner routines.).

Friends

Oh, urban family. You are missed. I hardly got to see you and failed to see other key friends. 

In any case, I did manage to go dancing twice at Bar Chicago, which in all likelihood, is the worst bar in Chicago. But....the music was good and Jay Majetich was game. I don't think Jay knew he liked dancing before, so I'm glad he now knows. A big thanks to him for going out with me (twice!) and staying 'til 5 in the am, even though it was he who took the bull by the horns the first time and hailed that cab. I will never forget that midget on the bar, even though it did take us two days to remember that he was there in the first place.

Bacchanalia aside, I had a great time in Palmer Hall eating this breakfast that I made (because I obviously can't do that back in Barca). In all truth it was lovely to sit around for three hours eating breakfast as different people stopped by and joined us at the table.

Look at that classic Taylor pose.

There was also a BBQ at PH, but the only people who turned up were Colin, Jay, Brian and I....and then Colin had to leave at 9 for the Late Ride.  Chris Martin and Co did turn up with about 10 people at one point, but after 5 minutes, they got back in their cars, leaving us a 24-pack of beer. Weird. Here's a picture of Brian because there's just not enough pictures of him on the Internet.

Also sat out with Janice all day on a Sunday trying to sell her possessions before she moved to California. Dave Lam joined us (who, by the way has subsequently moved back to the UK and will be visiting us in BCN soon) and together we BBQed (or at least I did, and poorly) recovered from hangovers, and sold nothing. We never did figure out why, but every person we spoke to hated us, responding with witless insults. One lady, a real garage-saler came by looking for electronics, was dismayed by the single boom box for sale, and left muttering, 'Well, there's a moving sale around here somewhere and I'm a-gonna find it.'

NAB

An absolutely perfect day at North Avenue Beach with my sister, Nick, mom and the kids.