Blog From Jacob

Hello, everyone. It's Jacob, and it's my turn to do a mini blog. I am beginning to think that after 3 encouragingly lively months of having so many good experiences, it isn't going to be a too long and failishly stupid vacation after all! 

I just got my hair dyed green, and they attempted to transform my amazingly handsome figure and poise into some kind of nerdy alien spaceship dweeb by locking down this...this scary looking headgear over my constraining chair leaving me hapless to the point of insanity as I restrained the overpowerful urge to scratch at my head which was covered in antagonizingly itchy bleach. I felt like the king of the freaking universe. (*cough* sarcasm *cough*)

On another topic, we finally were able to let our inner dancer loose after starting classes (12 hours a week) one month ago. Here are some of our teachers who are all expert dancers and choreographers.

-Bea, our junior hip hop teacher, and also our new crew leader, is the first teacher we took a class from, and we are becoming good friends by the day. She is really into the groove and staying low while dancing. We enjoy her choreo a lot.

- Adam, our popping teacher, always has the most laughs in his class even though he is in the smallest room. We always look forward to his class. He is freakishly good at control and isolation. He is also really good at making fun of his own moves.

- Sergi, our krump teacher, is one of those guys who you could watch transfixed for hours on end. Although not the most humorous guy, every body looks up to his skill that only comes from hundreds of hours of practice.

- Artis, our bboying teacher, is a style master.  In each class he surprises us with new epic moves that make us drool with envy.  (Well, maybe not drool, but...)  He's a scruffy looking dude with a full beard and longish hair and super fun to work with.

Anyway, BCN (Barcelona) has been really fun so far, and we are starting to fall into routine here.  So folks, the Villaman's live on in Barcelona!

Colored Hair & More

As you may remember, back in August just before leaving for Italy, Jacob added a new hair color to his head; he modestly had a few green patches put in.  We recently went back for scheduled haircuts, and he decided on a lot more green this time around.  Here he is, happily displaying his green hair.  

Jacob also asked/suggested/encouraged me to think about some color.  Ummm...?  

Admittedly, just before we left the U.S., some friends suggested that I branch out and give myself a European "image", just for fun.  They said my new name will be "El" (for my middle name, Elizabeth!  ha, ha), and that I should get some streaks of several colors in my hair.  Well, here is my first visual attempt at stepping into my new European image!   :)

(No, I have not change my name...)

One Saturday, our friend, Robert, came over to help the boys learn standing backflips.  

Robert grew up as a gymnast and dancer, and then was an instructor for each.   

He also taught the boys to be spotters.

Our friend, Julie, went back home to Denmark, and this is our goodbye dinner with her and her roommate, Trine (Trine is here until April, so we will see her again).  We discovered a great restaurant, and these are Iberian pork ribs that the boys devoured.

Nicholas ordered "fruit and orange juice" from the menu, and this is what he got...

fruit IN orange juice!

Julie (left) and Trine, sharing cheesecake.

One Sunday there were loads and loads of people thronging one of the main plazas in the city (Plaça Catalunya) and having a huge demonstration for Catalonian independence.  (Catalonia is a northeastern region of Spain which includes Barcelona.)  We have seen these types of demonstrations before, but the topic is getting more intense because there is a vote coming up on November 9 that will decide whether Catalonia seeks independence from Spain.  

A little history: Catalonia was an independent region of Spain with its own laws, customs, and language until they were defeated in 1714 in the Spanish War of Succession, which resulted in current day Spain (two other regions were also conquered to form today's Spain).  There have been attempts to impose the Spanish language and laws on the region of Catalonia, which have always been resisted, and the effort was finally given up in 1931.  Then, General Francisco Franco came into power as a dictator in Spain, and he attempted to eliminate Catalonia separatism.  When Spain returned to democracy in the 1970's, Catalonia was given back some autonomy.  These days, Catalonia, an economically healthy region which includes wealthy Barcelona, feels that it is supporting the rest of Spain, especially in its economic crisis.  This has led to greater desires to become its own independent country.

We have heard (and we know there are plenty of opinions out there), that there is somewhat of a balanced/equal percentage of people who are for and against Catalonian independence.  The small percentage of people who are undecided tend to vote for status quo, so the vote to seek independence most likely will not pass.  We will see...

More soon!

Ray's 50th Birthday!

Barcelona...what a great place to turn 40!  :)  Oh, I mean...50!  Ray is ageless to me...the same great person I met 26 years ago.  Age doesn't matter anyway...birthdays are simply a good excuse to have more fun!  

Having just come off our big trip to Italy 2 weeks prior, rather than a bigger birthday trip like we had originally thought about, we decided to do a quick excursion to a well-loved theme park near Barcelona.  We had heard that Port Aventura is quite entertaining, and is embellished with Halloween decorations this time of year.  (Side note: there is not actually a Halloween night for trick-or-treating here, but we understand they create their own "version" of the holiday.)

NICHOLAS'S REPORT ON PORT AVENTURA:
For Dad's birthday we took a one hour train ride to Port Adventura, and we rode the tallest roller coaster in all of Europe!!!  After you flop off of it, your heart smacking around inside your rib cage, your hair blown back, trying feebly to win a losing battle to stay straight, it feels like nothing will ever scare you again!  

Dad won a fluffy stuffed pac man that is bigger than my face by shooting 3 basketballs in a row in one of those game booths with games that you're not supposed to win.  

I rode a mechanical bull that swung its behind in every direction possible and was thrashed around on the furious beast like a sack of beans (I don't know how I didn't become dizzy), as the man was shouting that the g's of centrical force would fling me off at any given moment.  The ride suddenly came to a halt, and I swung out of the saddle and staggered to the bull controller.  He presented me with a pin which I held gloriously in the sky and walked away as other little children's faces bit deep into the dirt colored pad under the bull.  It was very joyous!!!  

The Dragon Kahn, another intense roller coaster, which my mom was brave enough to go on twice, rolled our eye balls around in our heads with a sickening amount of loops and twists, but the biggest roller coaster in Spain sucks your stomach out your head with a total of 9 deathly  blasts toward the ground (drops). 

All in all the time zoomed by so fast we had to run to keep up with it, Dad had an amazing 50th birthday, and we all had a blast!

We stayed at a hotel in the park and made everything hassle free.  One hassle free option was the all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet---edible consumption heaven for the boys!  

Jacob fills his plates and bowls particularly full these days.

Nicholas is holding up Nutella packets (very popular in Europe!), which they slather on anything edible...or eat straight up, of course!

Evidence of Halloween season...

Looking up at the loopity Dragon Kahn roller coaster

This was a minor (and rickety) roller coaster.  Worth doing once, the boys say.  

(Yes, I went on this one.)

More Halloween adornments...see the heads hanging from the trees?

Also, see the Drop Tower in the background?  That was a favorite ride for the boys and Ray.
(more about the Drop Tower below)

Behind these leaping boys is the tallest roller coaster in Europe (called Shambala), speeding down through the water (you don't get wet).

Shambala roller coaster (white one)
(the U.S. has taller ones, says Ray)

Wait!  Does Jacob look taller than me?!  Well, he is...by about an inch, technically.  Maybe I was standing on the lower part of the sloping ground to look this "short"...

Wow, Ray, you look so YOUNG!  :)

Truth be told, I am NOT a roller coaster fan.  I don't really even go to standard theme parks, as I usually just stand around while everyone goes on the rides.  Well, being Ray's birthday weekend, and with the enthusiastic encouragement of my sweet boys (who played ro-sham-bo to choose who would sit with me...they both wanted to!), I did scrounge up my courage to do some roller coasters.  What I do not care for most are the big drops.  So, the first ride we went on was called the Furious Baco and didn't have any drops; it simply sped around VERY fast, going upside down once.  I figured I could start with this one to get myself going.  Within a second of the blast off on the ride, the word out of my mouth was S**T!!!!!!!!!!   As a rule I don't swear, so I'm not exactly sure where that came from.  The speed on this coaster was SHOCKING.  I later found out that the ride is hydraulically launched and goes 84 mph, reaching that speed within 3.5 seconds.  We happened to be in the front row of the coaster that first ride, and when we got off, our hair looked permanently blown back.  My hair was in complete knots, and I could barely even put my fingers in it to "brush" it all out, which took plenty of time and patience as we walked around the park.  Later that night, believe it or not, we all rode this coaster again in the DARK.  That was enough for me, although the boys and Ray did it a couple more times the next day.

Ray and Nicholas before the launch on the Furious Baco ride

And Jacob...

Here are the boys, ready to go on the Drop Tower, which drops them almost 300 ft at over 70 mph.  

I say, NO thanks!

They did this ride multiple times, and once they formed the words "MOM" with their hands, just as the automatic camera clicked at the top before they dropped.  We saw it on the screen where they entice you to buy the photos.

At night the boys decided to go on coasters over and over again since there were small or no lines

...can you tell by their hair? 

After riding Dragon Kahn five times, they rode Shambala (the tallest in Europe) over and over until the park closed; there were so few people at that point that the boys were able to ride continuously.  All the while, Ray and I stood near the photo display area where we watched for those automatic photos of the boys on each ride.  

Here is the one we bought.  

Yes, Jacob is pretending to be sleeping as the coaster hurtles downward.

So Ray spent two days riding roller coasters, which he loves, with his sons (and sometimes his wife), feeling young (as always!) and carefree.  Throughout the time at the park Ray told his childhood memories of season pass experiences at his favorite theme park in Houston.  

One story was of his younger sister, Gina, who Ray accompanied on her first roller coaster ride.  As the coaster started and they began to climb upward, she burst into screams and became hysterical, grabbing Ray and clawing at his face and arms.  Ray tried to calm her to no avail and finally slapped her in the face to break her distress.  It worked.  Wide-eyed, she sat breathing deeply and made it through the rest of the ride without causing Ray any more physical injury.  

One more story.  To preface, Ray became very good at those "carnival" games that appear easy but then impossible to win once you actually try them.  He was about 13 or 14, and he had won plenty of giant stuffed prizes at that point.  He noticed one girl who really wanted a big prize and was highly disappointed, having failed to win after many attempts, and he told her he would win one for her.  She paid him the game money, and he won the giant stuffed prize.  She went crazy hugging him as if he had just saved her life!

We finished up our time at Port Aventura on Ray's birthday (Sunday, October 5) in the afternoon and made our way back to Barcelona.  Ray is not one to celebrate himself, so we decided it was a great opportunity to celebrate our new friendships with a dinner for them.  We went to a great Mexican restaurant we had discovered previously.  Ray was able to play "host" and explain the food, as many of our new friends had never eaten Mexican food before!  They all loved it.  

This is Ray with Xavier, the owner of our language school, and his wife, Esther.

Estefania (Fani), one of our Spanish teachers, and Jacob

(bad lighting, sorry!)

Below, from left to right:  

Julie, our Danish classmate (she took Spanish classes with us in August)

Trine, Julie's roommate and co-worker

Robert, our friend from church and host for two weeks before we found our permanent apartment

Alya, who overheard our plight at the bank and invited us strangers to her place for homemade Lebanese tacos (Alberto, her fiancé, was out of town this night...we missed him!)

Far left and far right, Susan (from England originally) and Pablo (native of Barcelona), married and our good friends from church who have shown us around Barcelona and give us great tips and info.

In the middle: Esther, Christine, Ray, Xavier

Jacob with our two Spanish language teachers, Christian (who is also national champion in Spain for ballroom dancing!) and Fani (not a ballroom dancer, but a fabulous person, too!)  :)

The whole wonderful group!!

NO GIFTS was the rule, but they broke it with some sweet presents.  Naughty friends!  :)

All of us!  :)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, RAY!!

Back to Barcelona

We came home to Barcelona on September 19th.  That evening began an amazing week of festivities leading up to El Día de La Mercè (The Day of Mercy), always September 24, a holiday celebrated in Barcelona.  In 1687 when Barcelona was overcome with locusts, the local government at that time appealed to the Virgin of Grace for help and was delivered from the insects.  Thus, they made her the patron saint of Barcelona, and have had annual celebrations in her honor since 1871 (after the Pope officially recognized her patron status in 1868).

Every day for 5 days there was an entire schedule of events in Barcelona...performances, activities, parades, fireworks, etc. happening throughout the city.  On Saturday night after dinner at a restaurant, we heard fireworks, found where they were coming from, and watched them from afar through the Arc de Triomf.  We thought it was a fabulous display!  We also saw another fireworks display in the same place the following night...just as great!

Below, the boys do tricks with their skateboards over the benches at a Youth Center, right next to where we were living temporarily, until we found a permanent apartment.  

Jacob spotted this photo opportunity...

And Nicholas spotted this one!  :)

And Ray spotted this MEXICAN restaurant, which we went back to that night for dinner.  They had scrumptious nachos, perfectly made guacamole, and tasty tacos.  Definitely promised to go back.

We found that Mexican food is not popular here in Spain (the Spanish definition of a "tortilla" is what we would think of as a thick egg & potato fritatta), and we all had a desire to eat great Mexican food.  We had only found one place that was a cheap rendition of Mexican to appeal to the desperate tourist with a hankering for Mexican food.  So we were super happy to find this place, where the owners came from Mexico!

 Dinner at Susan and Pablo's...so many new friends!  

And Pablo served the traditional Spanish "tortilla" of eggs and potatoes.

On El Día de La Mercè, we went to see a hip hop performance featuring various dance groups.  This group did some break dancing, too.

 

Then, we were told by Pablo (a native of Barcelona), that the fireworks we had seen the previous weekend were nothing compared to the main fireworks on El Día de La Mercè.  We ended up finding a great spot to watch those fireworks (at Plaça Espanya), viewing them from a bit farther away which was not in the middle of the crowd craziness.  Pablo was right...these fireworks were unbelievable.  They reminded Ray and me of the fireworks display in San Francisco for the millennium.  These were like a continual grand finale like you've never seen before...  

Wow.  Oh my.  Worth every moment.

 We had dinner with our Spanish language classmate and new good friend, Julie, and her parents who were visiting from Denmark, as well as Julie's Barcelona roommate, Trine.  (Julie is behind Nicholas, and Trine is next to her; parents are on the opposite side of Ray from them.)

Here is Jacob's dish.  We are eating again at Ray's and my favorite restaurant, Teresa Carles... vegetarian, gourmet, spectacular combinations and flavors.

VERY HAPPY NEWS!  

We picked up our Spain residency cards (September 30), and we are now truly official!  Here is our lawyer, Adnan, who helped us through the process in Spain, which I described in a previous blog.  He is a wonderful man.  He is originally from Lebanon, and we are planning to eat great Lebanese food together one of these days...

Well, I have to reveal that our family occasionally patronizes the American food spots that are dotted around the city.  There is really only one that the three boys in the family have frequented... Starbucks...for the chocolate frappuccino.  (None of us drink coffee!)  One of the Starbucks was advertising "American Pancakes".

What we found amusing was that the pancakes were stacked beside the donuts in the display case.

One Starbucks employee saw us take the photo, and she told us NO PHOTOS ALLOWED.  Bizarre! 

Happy Slurping!