Last week, Tricia began an intensive spanish training course for students, spouses and partners from ESADE with little or no spanish exposure. It was a rough first few days (especially with the late nights and no sleep from Eve's teething). Things are starting to come along and Tricia has put in many hours studying. Mark has been the stay at home dad with Eve but has also been busy with a lot of homework-though the program hasn't even begun yet (preparing several drafts of resumes in spanish and english, career placement tests, learning style evaluations, etc.).
We've had fun getting to know some of the other students who have also arrived in Barcelona. Mary, the recruiter from ESADE, and her husband organized a social event for all of us to go on a walking tour of one of Barcelona's most famous festivals, the festa major de gracia. It was a lot of fun and actually a rare opportunity. The festival is in a very artistic part of town and as it only lasts serveral days, most tourists do not get the chance to see it. There were lots of decorations, music, firecrackers, human pyramids, and of course, the parade. In one of the pictures you can see the famous "giants" that the parade up and down the streets followed by many people in costume with firecrackers attached to their body that literally shoot out into the crowd.
One of the best parts was the amount of candy that was thrown out to the crowd during the parade. I have only ever seen this done in small town parades (Cardston) but the amount of candy here was much more impressive-bags and bags of candies... it was unbelievable. An even better part about the candy throwing was to watch the people go after it on the streets. In Cardston, usually only the young boys and girls go for the candy and anyone over 4 feet tall or over 12 years of age will get some nasty looks if they get involved. Here, little old ladies (who move very fast by the way) go after the candy as if it were the last few rations in the entire province of Catalunya! It was certainly a sight to see-the candy doesn't really taste very good either.
After walking around for a bit at the festival, all of the students went out to dinner. It was very nice.
A few nights later we celebrated the festa major de Tricia, her birthday! We went out for a nice italian dinner with some friends from the school and came back home for a delicious cake from a bakery on our block... mmmmm....
Other than that, Tricia continues to work hard with her spanish and Mark is enjoying his last few days before orientation week begins. Once again, thanks to everyone for the consistent emails. We love and appreciate you.
Love,
Mark, Tricia, and Eve!
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