I can't believe it has been so long since I have written. I am so sorry! And if you are reading this, B. from cooking class, you are not right about my lack of blogging! Shortly after moving here, I took a fabulous Catalan cooking class and met a handful of other Americans and international expats living in Barcelona. One of the friends I made in class, B., told me talk to him in a year and tell him if I am still blogging about living here. His theory, which I think can be totally valid in many expat blogs, is that the more you assimilate into the local culture, one stops noticing the differences worth blogging. And well, he lived in Barcelona longer than me, so maybe this could still happen. In that case, my blog would be doomed, if I haven't already lost my readers by lack of posts in the past months.
But the reality of my excuse for lack of blogging is that living life with two young children, rather than writing about living it, often gets in the way. Contrary to B's theory, I still find lots of fascinating topics to blog about as a foreigner in Catalunya. Whether it is Catalan birthday party customs, fun day trips from Barcelona or local festivals, there is always something added to my mental list of future blog posts. I have a backlog of strange finds from the Catalan grocery aisles to tell you about.
I have found the longer I live here, the less I am in vacation mode and the more I am in real life mode. The longer we live here the more assimilated we are and the more regular life demands we have to meet. My weekdays are filled with running errands, grocery shopping (which often involves going to 4 different types of stores) workouts at the gym, playdates, swim lessons, class meetings, studying Spanish (although my understanding of Catalan seems to be moving faster), birthday parties. And oh, working on a book project that is still on the hush, hush.
Many of my obligations are no different than other bloggers. We are all busy. Before I took an unplanned departure from blogging, I used to stay up until 2 AM working on my blog. This was easier to handle in vacation mode. But now that I feel like I am really living here, I realize the lack of sleep makes me cranky. As many of you probably know, the Spanish time table is very different from the USA. We eat later, the kids go to bed later, but we still get up at the same time. By the end of the day, after communicating in Spanish and trying to comprehend Catalan and Spanish all day, I am exhausted. Constantly thinking of how to say the simplest of phrases is extremely tiring. Most nights, I fall asleep putting the kids to bed. How pathetic is that!
So, enough with the excuses and on to getting back on track. I recently took an inspiring writing course that has helped me with setting some achievable writing goals and maintaining a better blogging frequency.
