A Bend in the Road: Sister is Abroad! (Flashback to April...)

I can talk about our experiences...blog about them, and share pictures. I can Skype, and take my friends and family on virtual tours of our apartment with our laptop and have the children pop in to say hello and talk about their day. But ultimately, it feels like no one will ever "get it" without coming here to see for themselves. The good and the bad. For me, time abroad no doubt has altered my perspective on life and I often have a hard time trying to temper that little voice inside me that screams, "I realized an important lesson about life today, let's share it with the world!!!". When I see beauty, when something rocks me to my core, when I'm humbled and feel like I'm seeing something for what it really is for the first time, I want to share it with anyone who will listen so they can feel it too...find that moment for themselves, and then tell me what they feel and think about it. My greatest challenge is finding the right voice, the right forum, and the right audience, without imposing my thoughts and ideas of those who may not, quite frankly, care. It's been hard when these moments are coming at me fast and furious while living in Spain.

I knew coming here visitors would be limited. Airfare is far from cheap, and when it is multiplied by four, as would be the case for many family members with children, well...we're talking about the price of a new car here. Add to that school, work, kids, and I fully understood we would likely be just sharing stories and pictures of this experience with those who were closest to us.

It was an added bonus when our parents all came to visit last year (Chris's mom, Chris's Dad, and my mom), spending time with us as a family and seeing for themselves what this experience is all about. We were still newbies ourselves, figuring out life and slowly spreading our Barcelona wings, so their experience I think was also focused on our new view of life in Barcelona, and much of what we saw and did, we were discovering together for the first time.

When I was home with Evan in the US in February, I sat sitting at my sister's counter having coffee one morning, the questions started to come...

"What is the weather like in April?"

"When you get to the airport, how do you get to your house?"

"What is the flight like?"

She was going to do it...my sister was going to come! It wasn't as if I wasn't excited about our parents who had come to visit the year prior. We were thrilled. It was just that this would be my sister's first trip to Europe. It was special, and something I knew she especially would love and appreciate. There's something kind of unique when you step out of a plane for the first time in a completely foreign land, and realize that the places you had spent your life thinking and reading about actually do exist. Seeing the similarities and differences, realizing the world was even bigger (or smaller) than you realized. Maybe I'm just overly indulging my own little world view, but at the very least I knew she would not regret her decision to come. .

Never one to miss the opportunity for a family Jamberoo, and much to my excitement, my mother decided to join my sister for the week, and so began their travel plans for a mid-April visit to Barcelona. We were THRILLED to have them.

I have to say, I'm not a huge planner by nature. Most of the vacations that Chris and I planned included hotel and car reservations, but apart from that we usually just had a general idea of what we wanted to see and do, with no real plan on how it would all happen. Over time, we've realized that it does work to our benefit to put together a loose plan going into it -- you eat better food, waste less time, and are able to see a whole lot more. But never once I had a made an hour to hour itinerary...until my sister's visit. I was DETERMINED to fill our week with as much of the European experience as we could fit into seven days to make her trip worthwhile. We are talking a week filled with the best of the cuisine, Barcelona sightseeing, and even a two day excursion to Paris. In hindsight, I think I took it to the extreme...I ran my poor guests ragged the first few days and after an epic alarm clock fail that was quickly followed a minor injury on the morning of our Paris flight, we all agreed to take it down a notch. We included more downtime, planned a leisurely drive up to Carcassonne, France and a night in Toulouse instead, and just focused on enjoying each other's company, filling our time with sights at a more reasonable pace,

Overall, the week was a huge success. I will be forever grateful and appreciative that my mother and sister were willing to come so far to see us, and to share this experience with us...An intangible life experience that, ultimately, really has nothing to do with Gaudi buildings or tapas...it's something we will always share.

Some little snip-its from our week together...