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The Insider's Guide to Malcocinado, Spain
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Christmas Letters
Merry Kings Day to All, In celebration of Balthazar, Melchor, Casper, and Martin Luther, it's time to write a quick note to all. First, get out your pencils and record our new address: Vidrio 12, 2D 41003 Sevilla Spain We currently have a new telephone number, (954) 41 03 38, but the mystic cosmos that is our telephone company may soon return our old number, (954) 21 32 52. The year 2000 was a year of transition for us, as we downshifted from 5th gear (New York) to 1st. Maybe Stability will now lay its firm hand on our shoulders and tell us to stay a while. That seems to be the case with my job at Xware, where I've broken my personal employment record of 2 2/3 years. Without the moral support of an office, the abstraction of what I do seems all the more surreal, yet at the same time I feel a kinship with the shoe repairman two doors down, hard at work under his single small light. Xware helped get us to New York for their Christmas Party, after which we moved on to Pennsylvania for a few weeks. New Year's Eve found us in Berlanga, as it did the year before, waiting for the utilities to be connected before moving into our new apartment. This time we're back to a purchased property. We had the contractor rip out all the walls and start from scratch. Thanks to Pura, renovations are now complete. Boxes have been emptied, and today, the first pictures were hung. Adrian met his Year 2000 resolution of walking (Dec. 20, just under the wire) and talking (yes, he's bilingual -- that is, two words: 'agua' and 'bread'). His 2001 resolutions remain to be seen, though they would appear to be more subversive. Our own resolutions are to create a couple more websites: we'd hate to miss out on the dot-com implosion. We hope everyone's doing splendidly! Love to all,
Merry Christmas & Three Kings Day to all! An American friend of ours told us yesterday that she hates Christmas. I'd say she's in a good place to avoid it, then. Aside from El Corte Ingles putting a few thousand bulbs on their buildings, there's really not much that's visibly different here when walking down the street. The only other evidence of the impending holidays is the lines of people waiting to peer into the nativity scenes on display in various places. Today we stopped into the City Hall's 'Belen'. I got the sudden feeling that I was looking in on a back-room exhibit of a museum of natural history entitled 'Dawn of Civilization'. A few more years living in Sevilla and I'm sure I'll get to respecting and admiring tradition, but for now I keep thinking what a few New York artists could do for these Belens. So I've been determined to give this Christmas a bit of American style to get me into the spirit. Pura and I discovered that the local florister does sell a few little evergreen trees. We then bought some ornaments and lights (colored and white -- we don't take sides). So as not to snub local tradition, I grabbed some of Adrian's plastic animals, fashioned a fine blue baby Jesus out of his playdough, and had a reasonable first-year nativity scene. It was short-lived though: Adrian grabbed his animals back, and then took interest in the playdough "tortuga". I admitted the resemblance to a turtle, but explained to him that what looked like a turtle shell was really a swaddling sheet covering Jesus' body. The tree, anyway, looks great! We even got a cold spell in Sevilla, straight from Siberia, we're told. The big news of the year, as most of you know, will be the big news of next year. Pura's due to have a boy in early April. On her last visit, the doctor told her he's getting pretty big -- that may partly explain why Pura's not having the most enjoyable pregnancy. With the pregnancy, we decided to rent an apartment with an elevator, and rent ours out. (We're renting ours out short-term, meaning we can make gaps if anyone wants to take a Sevillan holiday -- just give us enough advance notice.) Next year, we're bound to move again: I think Pura's decided the place we own is too small for 4, and I've decided I'm hooked on owning the place we live in -- here, my mind swirls on capital improvements that I'll never make. I haven't decided on a name for our boy yet -- not the one that's due, but the one that's out. I like 'Adrian', but Pura and everyone else call him 'Cristobal'. To avoid the problem, I end up calling him 'buggy boy' or 'Kaluo'. He, on the other hand, has a similar problem, calling me 'Papa, 'Daddy', or 'Tom' in equal proportions. His solution is to say more than one, as in 'Papa Tom'. That seems to be his solution to bilinguality too -- hence 'moonluna' and 'blueazul'. In any case, AdrianCristobal is our dreamchild. He soaks up love from all quarters, and passes it on back, knowing just how we like it. Pura often wishes he could stay small forever, which always sends my thoughts to 'The Tin Drum' -- another good reason not to have stairs. A few layoffs in my company, but otherwise no change (except my new 'window seat'). Pura gets occasional employment from our website. The website is in 'maintenance mode'; it has stabilized to getting about 70 hits a day. We're now posting family pictures in www.spainexpat.com/about.htm. Hmm. It's two weeks later now, so before Balthazar and his friends arrive, I'll send this off. Remember, have your 12 grapes and red underwear ready for New Year's Eve!
Merry Christmas to all! I hope everyone's got sugar plums in their heads and champagne bottles in their fridge. Last year Adrian got to be an angel for the school play. This year he's to be a tambourine. Tambourines are symbols of Christmas around here (kids traditionally bring their drums and tambourines to the neighbors' house, sing half a carol, then hit 'em up for pocket change). We put Paula -- Adrian's third parent -- in charge of making the costume. She's done a fine job, so now it's up to Adrian to say his line: "los juguetes." We're pretty nervous: we're told he absolutely refuses to say it during rehearsal. 2002 was a landmark year for the Strong LLorente family. In the spring we completed the family unit: Teo Rafael was born on the morning of March 26. The first few months of his life, he was more-or-less ignored. Two weeks before he was born, we bought a house in need of renovation. We spent all spring and summer moving between 3 places and fighting with the workers (a draining experience). Finally as we recovered and began to find time to raise our heads and look around, we discovered that we had an excellent baby on our hands. There's just nothing as huggable as an 8-month-old. He's just learned how to crawl, so it'll now be easier for him to go over and chew on Adrian's projects (as Adrian has discovered). I think we've decided that Teo looks like Dad and has Mom's character, while Adrian is the reverse. (Nice and simple -- dare they confound us and develop their own characters?) Adrian's first Halloween was realized on Lincoln Road in Miami Beach, where the stores stayed open and gave away candy. He began the night crying 'a casa, a casa', but then a 7-year-old fairy suddenly appeared, kissed him on the cheek, and transferred some candy from her bucket to his. He peered inside his bucket and his tears began to dry up. We walked along, and in a little while, he was ready to venture into one of the stores. By the end of the night he was swaggering with confidence -- at the last store, I even got him to say 'trick-or-treat' audibly before he hit 'em up for candy. Just two weeks ago were the "final" touches on the house: the completion of Pura's office on the ground floor. Before we bought it, this space (commercial space as opposed to the living space upstairs) was rented to an 80-year-old woman whose principal merchandise was pillow stuffing. Twenty years ago (judging from the newspapers), she'd stopped cleaning the store. By the time we met her, there were only a few square feet left of walkable space. After we bought the house and I'd begun digging away to see what it was we'd bought, I was amazed at the demand there was in Sevilla for pillow stuffing. I was constantly approached with foam inquiries; I was all too happy to give away any and all hunks that hadn't yet begun the process of decomposition. I'd put it in a bag for them like a real merchant. Sometimes I'd take a break from cleaning to investigate the drawers of a monstrous dresser that occupies one wall. The drawers were filled with a vast supply of sewing machine parts (and I eventually uncovered 6 whole sewing machines). The fathers of the renter and the owner used to run a sewing-machine repair shop. Before that, it had been a 'colmao': bar and dry goods store. Now it's a law office. The same day we carried Pura's computer down from the top floor to her new office, she got a call from a woman in Geneva: Pura had been chosen to represent an American company expanding into Spain. Her first business client! Our feeling is growing that she's going to be successful here (that is, once she can part with Teo and start taking him to the nursery). Sevilla has a hard shell to protect it from new ideas, but Pura's going to break through. Meanwhile, the New York company I work for has been struggling, as with all high-tech companies. They were fortunate enough to have developed a product a few years ago that's now keeping them afloat. I was fortunate enough to be on that project, so I haven't been included in the layoffs. A few months ago when payday started getting random, Pura said it was time for me to start thinking about alternatives. 'Pillow stuffing merchant' instantly came to mind, but perhaps that's not to be, as the company seems now to have turned the corner. The mayor went wild this year on Christmas lights. He's hung lights off every tree and building. Our street had apparently complained last year about not having Christmas lights. This year Regina street has a big 'Felicidades' and behind it, 3 sets of lights in the shape of a drum, one of them strung from a recently painted hook on our house. (Check out our house and boys at www.spainexpat.com/about.htm.) Here's wishing splendid holidays to everyone and to a peaceful 2003.
Greetings All, Time for my year-end email . . . Mysterious forces caused me a few months ago to pick a couple of ancient books off my shelf and begin a careful re-reading of Bloom County. I hadn't read these books since college. I'd long ago judged them as classics, thus justifying space in my very small book collection (product of a person who has moved too many times). In the books, I happened upon a strip about "penguin middle age", where the subject finds the need to recover his lost youth. Mysterious forces thereby explained, I commiserated with Berke Breathed and his penguin. It was recently reported to me that I was about to turn 40. I did the math, and found this to be accurate. Yesterday, this landmark event passed without too many aggrieved sighs. I admit that I didn't climb Mount Everest, create a classic comic strip, nor perform any other suitably grand accomplishment in those years. Had I done so, though, I'm sure I could still manage to judge my past equally harshly, and I'm sure I'd still be making as many grand plans for the future. My personal news of the year is that I quit my job after five-and-a-half years. Hanging up the (relatively unspattered) apron of my 18-year programming career neatly coincides with my 40th year. (These days, I read that my career is about to be "outsourced" to India. Gracious of me to donate my career to the developing world, no?) My birthday was spent chasing a guy all over a high-tech office complex until I finally cornered him in the hallway and gave him a two-minute presentation. As a soul who's been in a high-bandwidth closet for a few years, isolated from human contact (aside from my family and the breadstore man), I had to muster courage to talk to a human and what's more, a stranger. (In fact, he wasn't a stranger; he was a strangest. I was at a conference a few weeks before where he'd been on the "facing bench" making very peculiar faces.) I didn't mention that after quitting, I moved down from the 3rd floor into Pura's 1st floor law office to become employee #3 of Strong Avocados. My job description is not fully clear, though "get clients" is the gist of it. So far I've taken this to mean clean up the web site -- a gentle transition from programming, plus I avoid talking to strangers that way. (Wouldn't want to be a hypocrite: any rule that applies to the kids should apply to the parents too.) However, when Pura deems that a potential client smells of "machismo", she sometimes calls on my services in the field -- hence the birthday chase. I haven't fully made the transition from selfish to selfless that I think is supposed to come with having a family: it looks like this letter won't give equal time to the four of us. Oh well . . . The law firm got started for real in the spring of this year, as Pura left childbirth behind (leaving her, she says, with 10% of her former cerebral ability). The firm has now rebounded from a lousy fall. Still too soon to see where it's headed. Pura's convinced of the firm's future success, and it's great to see self-confidence flowing through her. I don't know if she's taking her skills at "handling people" to new heights, or if I'm just more aware now that I work across from her, but it's a pleasure to listen to her coaxing bureaucrats to action, putting an opposing lawyer in their place, or making her clients feel secure and cozy. Last August's trip that Adrian and I took to Princeton did wonders to consolidate Adrian's English. He's truly bilingual now (and, I believe, he has already corrected Pura's English and my Spanish on at least one occasion). In September, he made the leap from nursery school to regular school. The main leap, I think, was sizewise: hundreds of kids now yelling at recess. When we drop him off in the morning, he carefully avoids the fray, picking his way to the sidelines, rather than finding someone to tackle. Adrian has to have things just-so, and if he's not well-rested and -fed, he gets very upset when Teo makes things not-so. Teo's at a great age. He has a sense of purpose in all that he does. He knows what he wants and he will get there, unless of course, an adult stops him -- an action not chosen lightly. One of my parental joys these days is to watch Teo climb on Adrian (or me) with his resolute expression. Teo's vocabulary is about 8 words now, including "cayo" ("it fell") when he drops something and "ball" (his only English word). He calls both Pura and me "mama". I've been letting it ride, figuring that was a compliment to me, but today, I made a repeated effort to clear this up -- "I'm dada, that's mama". But each time he gave me a broad grin, as if to say "good joke, mama". Other cast members include Adan, a 21-year-old accountant and employee #2 in the law firm; and Miriam, our 4-8PM nanny. Tomorrow we're off to Extremadura, for two weeks of Christmas vacation. I will try to refrain from discussing business with Pura. I've decided my 2004 resolution is to try to vote 17 times in the November elections -- breaking the law in the name of one's conscience is the Quaker way! (or is being Quakerly just another way to recover my lost youth?) I wish everyone a happy and toasty holiday season.
Greetings to All, A friend once gave us advice after we had our first child. She said be careful not to talk only about the children for the next 20 years of marriage; talk about other things. Pura and I were doing pretty well with that advice until now. We talk most of the time we're awake about our latest child, "Strong Abogados". One day, Adrian, who loves to put on theatre productions, got upset because we left before his theatre began, and began crying "where are my clients?". By September, our business became an obsession. We realized we had to create a life outside Strong Abogados. So on November we resorted to our usual solution to all problems: we moved, this time across town to our old apartment we'd been renting. Our house/office on Regina Street is now just an office (with more space). Since there was no house buying or selling involved, the move was real easy: only the essentials had to go; the junk in the attic could stay. A week before our move, Pura's sister Lina moved with her two sons back to Sevilla. Lina now works in our office. We're slowly working her architectural career into our business. During our 8 years of our marriage, I'd begun to think it was our curse that I had a well-paying job and didn't want to work, while Pura didn't and wanted one. I had no idea the solution was so easy. I just had to quit, and then Pura would have one. In other words, the website has made the difference; we now have a bonafide business, albeit with many peaks and valleys along the way. The valleys come when we realize the peaks weren't as big as they seemed from a distance. Our latest peak came last week with a trip to London that Pura and I took to discuss collaboration with a tax planning company. Usually, when Pura takes me to a meeting, I don't say much; I just bask in Pura's shadow as she exudes confidence and knowledge -- though basking makes me a bit sleepy. This time, though, I almost felt comfortable in my business suit, and played the part Pura's been waiting for. The prez then treated us to an excellent Thai lunch that was almost worth missing the plane for. Teo has a commanding presence, not easy to pull off for someone who comes up to your knees. Adrian is "the good one" according to his peers, as another might be called "the tall one". In the morning we walk across town and drop them off. In the afternoon, one of us picks them both up from school. Earlier this year, ferocious animals would usually chase us home (occasionally passing through "el mundo de los dinosaurios"). Since Halloween, though, Adrian's been running ahead of me, hiding in the doorways to scare me. Teo usually manages to reach the doorway before I do to help scare me. As I sit before our Christmas tree, I wonder whether olden day folk really had Christmas trees with candles and glass balls hanging off them, or whether they didn't actually have children back then. Our little Charlie Brown tree took a beating today from the collective energies of four young boys, its plastic-but-beautiful balls bouncing all over the place. We wish all of you a splendid 2005! Love,
Merry Christmas! Or in the words of our new adoptive language, Bon Nadal! That's about the extent of my Catalan, unless I add the two words that Adrian has learned in his Catalan classes at school: "vert" and "melic" ("green" "bellybutton"). I hope everyone has enjoyed their Christmas holidays. We're especially enjoying this bit of R&R after a year where we bit off more than we could chew. Most of our years could be classified as transition years, but this one more so. The transition began in February when Pura decided bring me along on one of her work trips to Barcelona. During this trip I found Barcelona inspiring -- the continuing modernisme mentality provided fresh air from Sevilla's love of tradition -- so I began prodding Pura to move there. It wasn't so much my charts & graphs highlighting the business potential of Barcelona that convinced Pura; it was more that she felt since she picked the country to live in, I get to pick the city. The event that tipped the scales was a notary in Barcelona offering us office space. So, by March, I was on a two-week trip to Barcelona to find a place to buy. On May 3rd, I was back to Barcelona for the closing. A day later the movers arrived from Sevilla and loaded both home and office. A day after that, Pura and the kids arrived. The following Monday Adrian and Teo were in their new schools "Panda" and "Santa Claus" and we were at work at "Strong Abogados".
We thought our two employees in Sevilla had made the decision to move to Barcelona, but we were wrong. So June found us scrambling to hire new employees and get the work done (and renovate the kitchen). In July, the kids and I spent time in the USA. We got to see a lot of family and friends, especially during road trips to Detroit and Boston. Many fine reunions -- new family meeting old friends. Pura, meanwhile, kept the business afloat with one new employee. In September, we got two more employees. In October, the notary hired another notary and staff, meaning we had to leave. November was spent looking for a new office (not the whole of November -- we did in fact reserve an evening that month to discuss whether a testicle can spontaneously explode (we found Google quite illuminating on this issue, but ultimately inconclusive)), while December was spent moving and getting settled into our new, and as yet unheated, office. We are currently researching a happy equilibrium between number of space heaters vs. blown fuses. Just as we thought we'd cleared the last hurdle of 2005, Adrian told us he wanted an icthyosaurus for Christmas. Pura worked on him, and managed to convince him that what he really wanted was the rest of the "Vaca Maca" series ("Vaca Maca in the bathroom" being our one book in Catalan, bought on a trip here 4 years ago. Adrian has decided he wants to go beyond green bellybutton). All fine until we discovered, after trips to 3 bookstores, that books about cows roaming rooms of a house do go out of print eventually. In the end we got him a dinosaur game, and he's happy. For Pura's mother, we bought a "caganette" for her ever-more elaborate nativity scenes. A caganette is a fine handcrafted clay figure who is squatting to take a dump, or in most cases, has squatted to take a dump. This litte Catalunian joke in the back of the creche has apparently reached epic proportions, with caganettes now accounting for a quarter of all creche figures in the Christmas stalls behind the Barcelona cathedral.
Adrian (6) and Teo (3) save Pura and me from talking about work all the time. After the summer, Teo joined Adrian at the Santa Claus school. The school is British, with a picture of the Queen in the entrance. At first, Adrian liked his new school "Santa Claus" better than the one in Sevilla: "they don't let me choose my dessert, but it does have a playground". Now though, he's not so thrilled. Angels, especially small ones who don't like to play ball at recreo, can get pushed around a bit. The truth is, we're not thrilled with the school either, so we'll be looking into semi-public schools for both Adrian and Teo this fall. Schools with state support are required to have the classes mainly taught in Catalan. We're hoping they're mentally prepared for a new language. Meanwhile, Adrian at home is now reading (voluntarily!), inventing games (and letting Teo win), pointing out what rhymes, avoiding cracks, and drawing holiday pictures (he's now begun Valentine's day pictures). Teo began the year speaking only Spanish. It was a thrill to see him at my parents' house speaking his first words in English. He's now as bilingual as Adrian. Teo's spongy body is turning into muscle, but he remains a ticklish little ball. He frequently points out "I'm getting bigger!". Teo's generally a respectful little brother, but sometimes he pushes Adrian around a bit too. The tackles-from-behind are to be expected, but I've even seen him tease Adrian to the point of tears. I wish you all splendid two thousand sixes! Pura and I resolve to start the year in slow motion: rejecting new clients and watching our kids get bigger. Love,
Our latest contact data is:
Greetings! It's the 18th -- one week until Christmas. The tree's not going to make it. The nephews came over yesterday -- one rushed over and grabbed a handful of needles off the floor. This morning the other had the broom out sweeping the floor under the tree. Maybe we should cordon off the tree. Adrian's been pouring water into the soil like I told him to. Christmas trees in Barcelona come in a flowerpot. I've now decided the flowerpot's not there to help nourish the few remaining root capillaries, nor is it there to help me develop muscle tone as I hauled the tree up the 45 degree hill to our apartment. I think it's there because Spanish households aren't yet equipped with Christmas tree stands. Reminds me of the pumpkin I bought in the local supermarket this Halloween, which came with instructions:
I was having trouble remembering a whole year back, so I asked Pura if she could give me a unifying theme for our 2006. She told me "planting seeds". Hmmm . . . sounds good. Perennials, I hope, instead of the annuals planted in years past. I guess if I had to choose a theme for 2006, it would be "obsessions". I think this has been a particularly obsessive year with us. (Theme-ing our life is good practice, since we're planning to write an Oscar-winning movie script based loosely on our lives (romantic comedy, PG13)). Let me try out both themes (mine first). Our overall obsession, as those of you who have spoken to us in 2006 know, is our business. Then, sprinkled in have been our ancillary obsessions:
- Pura searching the web for office furniture in January. (The internet is especially good for feeding obsessions.) She found several pearls of good taste on ebay, such as http://stores.ebay.es/Antike-Fundgrube: - Adrian's obsession with dinosaurs in January. "No, no, that's not a triceratops, it's a styracosaurus!!!" "Sure, son, I'm sorry." (Adrian, in general, has a rather obsessive personality type -- wonder where he gets it from.) - Me with our blog site www.explodingtesticle.com in February (note the foreshadowing in my 2005 Xmas letter). - Pura and I with the departure of three employees during the year (and post-departure work obsessions trying to do their jobs).
- Adrian and Teo's pokemon craze, which went full swing in October. Teo really has no choice but to go with Adrian's flow (Teo learned a lot about dinosaurs too). - TV obsessions, easier in fact without a TV. We tuned in and turned on to downloading stuff in August, allowing a person to watch a whole TV season in two weeks, or less if you're not sidetracked by work. We had a "Desparate Housewives" bout, then "Fawlty Towers", now "The Office". I also got excited in August when I discovered internet radio -- heaven for an expat. Today I cranked up the Persian station. Pura's following her current obsession at the moment, reading "Management for Dummies", which we bought along with "Beating Stress for Dummies" during an notably obsessive shopping binge in Target. (It has become tradition to spend a day every year in the USA stocking up on basic provisions -- clothes, toys, books, Cheerios, and peanut butter cups -- as if we were going on a yearlong camping trip to Spain.) Now let's try the "planting seeds" theme: I guess some of the seeds would be our new employees in the business. They're all new to Strong Abogados in 2006, and they're solid. We're better at picking employees now (even before reading "Management for Dummies"). One key hire was Pura's sister, Lina, in June, moving from Sevilla to Barcelona. Her life and ours tend to weave like DNI strands. There's a good reason why family businesses happen -- it's such a relief to have absolute confidence in an employee from the start. Among other tasks, Lina performs the vital role of mediating: as can be expected, when Pura and I have a business disagreement, they are not always cool affairs discussed across a long mahogany table. After hiring Lina, we hired four more employees. The new employees all worked to fend off approaching chaos. Until chaos was averted, I vowed in October to make the company lose money: No New Clients, and kick out the rotten apples among the existing clients. Last week, chaos was officially called off. The money-losing campaign was also a success, and so I decided to turn the GoogleAds marketing switch back on. "Santa Claus" is a catchy name for a school and we liked the Tartan outfits, but otherwise we weren't convinced. We found a new school to take Adrian and Teo to for the fall. The school promptly announced it was closing down, so we found another school -- no Han, it's called "Escola Pia", not "The Easter Bunny" -- but had to pray there were openings for the boys (Catholic school, by the way). By this time, Lina had decided to come, so there were more prayers that her two boys Harito and Dario could get in also. In July we got the great news that the school had managed to squeeze 'em all in. We've been really happy with the school. Once, Adrian was even upset on hearing it was a weekend! Quite amazing considering that the classes are all in Catalan. The four boys have hardly complained. A bit more work on us parents, though, trying to decipher the memos from school: is Teo supposed to bring 3 pinenuts to class, or were 3 lice found on Teo's head? In March, we had a fine visit from my parents. This time, they didn't have to help pack our belongings. In July, my sister Laura and her family flew in for five days before heading to France. I hope it'll be a yearly visit. Since we didn't go to the USA this summer, we got in a week during Thanksgiving. Pura had two business trips this year - I tagged along on both: one to Bilbao where we celebrated her 40th; the other to Ibiza last week. Of the four new employees, I'm including Merci. She allows Lina, Pura, and me to put in our hours by picking the four kids up from school, cleaning the office and two homes, and yes, making the three of us lunch. Pura pushed the plan on Lina and me -- I knew I couldn't argue, though I know it's going to make us soft. Pura's thrilled with Merci and with the plan. Merci is going to meet the other employees at our office Christmas lunch this Friday. I'm continually amazed at how well Adrian and Teo play together. Hardly any fights at all -- I can't understand it. They're also thrilled to have their cousins around again. Jeez, now that I think of it, Pura's happy, Lina's happy, the four kids are happy. Maybe it's even time I stopped complaining. Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas to All! Christmas 2007 will be just the four of us tucked away in our nest. We got a live tree this year, I've been learning to make Christmas cookies, and Pura is playing a station of Christmas standards on internet radio. Since moving to a new apartment in August, we've been getting things curiously cozy. This time we're not just carting all furniture from the old place plus a side table from the trash; only select items have made the cut, other pieces we've bought new (and not necessarily from ikea!). What's more, I've begun to barbecue. I believe we're finally discovering nesting habits. Phrases like "5-year plan" and "a stable environment for our kids" are being uttered. The new place is a rental unit, a short walk to work or school (14 minutes with kids, 7 without). The daily routine is: 7:30 I get up and while the the coffee's brewing, I stretch and watch the sunrise (or the neighbors, whichever's more interesting). At 7:40, I wake up the rest of the family. At 8:20, I get nervous that we're running late. At 8:45 we're off, being sure to close the building door behind us so the older neighbors don't get distraught. By 9:10 we're at work checking our emails. Pura then checks if employees are arriving late, while I check the bank account to see who's paid. At 4:45 in the afternoon, I swivel my chair and ask Pura who's going to pick up the kids. She says she can. At 4:51 she's still in the office and I get nervous. At 4:53 she leaves, and I then work another two hours, and put a note in Outlook to remember tomorrow to swivel and say I'll pick up the kids rather than phrasing it as a question. We still own the apartment on the hill. Now that we've moved out, we've fixed it up much better, so that we can rent it out. It was a good place. I'm going to miss the times with the kids in the big park next door: catching bubbles, having water fights, playing upball, polarball, and snakeball, sticking little snails on big snails on benches, collecting seeds, scrambling down steep hillsides looking for the ball. The Putxet years . . . But our new place has great sunrises, and two! terrazas, so we can make our own two little parks (complete with Christmas tree). In August we celebrated the 50th Anniversary of my parents. Mom and Dad and Laura's family all converged on a little medieval town in Costa Brava. We rented a beautiful house with a swimming pool carved into the rock and plenty of nooks: a well in Mom and Dad's room, a bread oven in our room. In the midst of the meals and the beaches, we surprised Mom and Dad one evening with a play, a remarriage ceremony, and a fabulous Anniversary scrapbook that Laura had put together. During this memorable evening, we were treated to a retelling of the early romance of William and Nancy, with previously unreleased details! Also in August, Pura and I got in a 6-day trip to Ireland, leaving the kids with Pura's parents. From Dublin, we crossed the country to Sligo, my interest in that town incited by old memories of a downscale bar in Boston named Sligo Pub. In school, Adrian has found his arch-enemy: the cold and silent multiplication tables. Teo has discovered that he can read words - he now seems to be finding them everywhere. Adrian's confidence has been building steadily. Teo's confidence has never been an issue (it doesn't hurt that Pura's nickname for him is "Perfeccion Absoluta"). Early this year, Teo was chanting in the subway "I am the leader of the world". He told me that he wants to be Superman when he grows up. But ol' Superman sure wakes up in a fragile state. We always make sure to ask him before pouring milk in his "blat unflat" (Sugar Smacks). Adrian's heavy into inventing Pokemons. For his website, we told him he couldn't use the name "Pokemon", so he called it www.mysterymonsters.com. Pura thinks I'm creating a monster, that an 8-year-old shouldn't know about html. But I say he's the dotcom generation: handiness with a mouse and keyboard certainly rivals the importance of writing in script and the multiplication tables. Adrian's extracurricular activity is something called "Foc-nou" - like scouting without the knots, I think. As an American father, I suppose I should fill his schedule with basketball and piano, but since it takes him an hour to do his homework and an hour to eat, there's just no time. During these activities, I can see the pokemons floating in his head, calling his attention. In April, Teo said "I've got an avion blau". Yep, the two boys are trilingual now. It should be a matter of weeks before they discover that they can make fun of Dad in their secret language. We just got their inscrutable report cards. Adrian helped translate them for us. As all years, 2007 has been a transition year. I admit the business has been a bit of an effort these last two years in Barcelona - it had us dipping into our energy reserves. Four employees left in 2007, including Pura's sister, but a star employee joined us in April, so we now have a solid group. Our energy levels are on their way up again. Before Pura and I get over the hill, we've got to linger at the top for a while. The views are great, and I brought sandwiches! Love to you all!
The Happy Prince in Spanish To a splendid new decade for all, just as you picture it. To Carla, that you now receive the same good energies that you always give. Love, Teo, Adrian, Pura, and Tom Our 2009 photos Teo's Christmas video Adrian's Christmas video
Teo, Adrian, Pura, and Tom
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2000 Letter
