When I moved to Barcelona in March of last year, I really had no idea when I would come back to
the U.S. to visit. But after Chris' visit last summer, it made sense for me to return over the Christmas holidays for almost three weeks to spend time with Chris, meet his family and friends, and visit with my friends in the Washington D.C. area. As most of you know, my parents
passed away some time ago and my brother lives in California and my
sister lives in Kansas City. We never had a tradition to be together
for the holidays because we have always lived so far apart. So I wasn't
able to see them in this visit but hope that we will see each other in
my next visit or when they come to Barcelona.
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| With friends David and Bill |
This was a wonderful visit!! And we were busy!! Between seeing and being with Chris' family and friends and setting up breakfasts, lunches and dinners with my friends, I have calculated that I visited with others about 24 times and saw about 80 people in the 2 1/2 weeks here. There were a couple of days that we met 4 groups of friends: one group for breakfast, another for lunch, another for afternoon coffee and and another group for dinner. We ate out a lot! I'm sure I gained weight.
I wasn't able to take many pictures of all these encounters with friends, but I was able to take a couple of photos that are posted here in this article.
Most importantly, I was able to spend a wonderful time with Chris, getting to know him better by
seeing him in his hometown with his mother, family, and friends. Each day and night with him allowed us to deepen our relationship and bring us ever closer to each other. Luckily, we will be seeing each other again for 5 days in London toward the end of January for a teacher's job fair that Chris will be attending and for which I'll be accompanying him.
I very much enjoyed my U.S. visit but it became very clear to me that although I have a lot of history and feel very familiar with the D.C. area, Barcelona is now my home and I look forward to returning there in the next couple of days. Chris and I have talked about how starting this summer and fall, Chris will be in Barcelona with me (or there abouts) to live. More about this in a future blog article.
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| With friends Christian, Waits, Jonathan & Scott |
