Experimenting with different lifestyles
Trip Start
Jan 13, 2005
1
10
16
Trip End
Jul 2005
Castelldefels, Spain
Wednesday, March 2, 2005
Here I am in Barcelona, well, actually I'm in Castelldefels, which is a smaller town 10 minutes outside of Barcelona. I've been here for over 2 weeks now and have been purposefully waiting to write about it because I wanted to have positive things to say. You know, if you can't say any thing nice don't say anything at all...blah, blah, blah.
I've come to a point where I have nice things to say, but I'll get to those in a minute. Life here has been an adjustment, a huge one. I mean, imagine, my life has suddenly gone from university student, to traveler (which means that I can do whatever I want and am constantly meeting new people, going to new places...), to house mom. I have learned that I don't want to have children for many, many years, I will not ever go without some kind of regular something that seems important to me outside the home, and Mother, I am sorry for every bratty thing I ever did
Castelldefels
. This job of being a mother is hard mostly because there is no leaving it, they are always there with you and there is little opportunity to see other people, mostly other mothers during the children's activities...I see that the role of friendships changes greatly for families. I think that the change kind of caught me off guard. It is likely that I won't actually have a conversation with anyone outside of the family during the week. Given that, I'm really lucky with the family that I have here, particularly the mother. Claudia is incredibly personably, she's straight-forward, good since of humor, she is very good at having discussions with me about most anything, we have English lessons together every night, which are good fun, she's an enjoyable person to be around. The father is kind but a little quirky, he is obsessively clean and organized, demanding that all of his surroundings be the same. It's fair to say that he and I are polar opposites. The disorder and dirty that irks him are things that I do not even see. A spot on the floor, a crumb on the table, shirts in the wrong order in the drawer. I don't even notice...but I'm learning to. If nothing else I'll come away from this a little more organized myself.
The children that I take care of are 2 girls ages 5 and 8. The 8 year old is very bitter of my presence in place of her mother and she constantly tests and defies everything I ask her to do, her younger sister is much more easy going and is usually cooperative and happy
My girls
. Surely with time it will become easier for the older one, I've got time, eventually she'll have to decide to stop acting miserable.Now that I've been here for a little while I'm starting to learn my way around I am looking for things to do with myself during the couple of free hours I have in the morning. A little ironic isn't it? 2 Months out of the university and I'm dying to have some classes to go to. I found a salsa class that I can go to, which is very pleasing. There are a ton of language schools in the town where I have begun to inquire about jobs teaching English. There is a state run school that gives classes in Catalan for free in hopes that all the state's residents will speak fluent Catalan to increase the state's autonomy. So maybe I'll learn some Catalan, it seems a little silly since the language is only spoken in this state in Spain, but, a little learning never hurt anybody.
The town where I live, Castelldefels, is actually really nice. It's got a beautiful beach and everything is within walking distance. I'm really content to be living in Spanish again. My fluency feels so strong now. I continue to learn new vocabulary certainly but I find that there is really very little that I don't understand, it's very exciting. So darlings, there is a brief sketch of my life here...There is so much to say but then so little to say at the same time. My days are not glamorous or particularly exciting, but they do constantly present small challenges in the adaptations that I have to make.
