The Times They Are A-Changin'

Wow!  It's been more than 4 months since I last blogged.  But alas, I'm still here and I'm still in Barcelona.  I just didn't feel like I had anything new to write.  Until now that is.  So let me tell you what's been going on for the last month or so.

The Fall -  Broad Brush

The major news about the Fall was that I started to take Spanish again.  I felt that although I was

My language school

pretty fluent, I still struggled being around my Spanish friends in a group setting.  One on one I was fine.  But in a group was a different story.  Also, I am not one to hold court and have funny stories to tell, even in English, so getting two words in edgewise was difficult enough and then trying to follow the conversation that many times bounced all over the place was also a struggle.  So how could I overcome these challenges?

I began to realize that many foreign residents work in a Spanish speaking environment, and/or had a Spanish partner or lived with Spanish roommates.  These are great opportunities to naturally improve one's language speaking skills, and more importantly, think consistently in the language.  I had none of that as a retired person with an American partner living in another country.  In fact, there are many hours of the day where I am not in contact with anyone speaking in Spanish and sometimes one or two days a week not speaking in the language.  Chris and I speak with each other each day in English, which is great, but I also need Spanish speaking opportunities on a daily and even hourly basis, which I was not getting.  Don't get me wrong, each week I meet up with friends for dinner multiple times, go to the movies with local friends, go to the Barcelona Shambhala group weekly, and do all-day hiking trips with Spanish friends once or twice a month.  But for me, with my language learning capacity and my age, I saw that I needed more.  And for better or worse, many adult learning classes offered by the city are in Catalan, so it is not easy to find other avenues to get more Spanish interaction other than TV or radio.

There are a multitude of Spanish language schools in Barcelona.  But I learned that those who are accredited through FEDELE, an association for schools teaching Spanish for foreigners, have higher quality instruction.  I visited 3 different schools with that accreditation, two of which required me to take their placement test, and both of them put me in level C1, which is Superior (there is only one higher level, C2, which is almost a native Spanish speaking level).

The one I finally chose was BCN LIP (Barcelona Language Immersion Program).  I decided to do only two hours two days a week in the afternoon, although one could do up to 4 days a week.  I found that the classes were small, the teacher skilled, animated and friendly, and the materials very useful.  I only did two months to test out the program, but in the end I was very satisfied.  However, I realized that although I did not get lost by only going two days a week in a class that met four days a week, I could see that I was missing information that would have been helpful for me.

I have now signed up again in January for 3 months in a C1 level class that meets in the morning and I'll be attending all four days each week.  I'm looking forward to it!!

A question you might have is what am I doing with the Catalan that I started to learn last year?   The simple answer is that I have put it aside for now.  If I were living in Girona or in a smaller town, it would be necessary to learn Catalan to really be integrated in the local life.  But I find that in Barcelona that is not necessarily the case.  I also found that learning Catalan while my Spanish was still like wet cement caused me to mix up Spanish with Catalan.  So, for now, I decided to improve my Spanish.  I am not abandoning learning Catalan.  I just need to postpone it until a later time.

The Winter Holidays

Dinner near Reedville, VA with Carol and Dave

It's been two years since I returned to the U.S. so I thought it would be good to go with Chris back to my home country.  We spent almost 3 weeks there.  It was great!  We got to see many friends (I wish I could have seen more!), visit with my niece in the DC area, spend almost a week in Chris' home town visiting with his mom, his family and his friends there, and even got to go to NYC for 3 days to take in the Christmas festivities there.

We also got to see our good friends Carol and Dave and stay in their beautiful home in Reedville in the Northern Neck of Virginia.  They also were very generous in allowing us to stay in their small condo in Arlington, VA, which is right next to a DC metro station.  Because of that we didn't need a car while we were in DC.

It was a great time.  It was especially good to spend all that time with Chris. But I was looking forward to getting back to Barcelona.  It's hard to describe, but the pace of life, even in a large city such as Barcelona, is different and I find more enjoyable than in the DC area.  I really do feel at home here and am glad to be back.

Visa Renewal Time

My current visa will expire on March 11.  I can submit my visa application two months before the expiration date, which I did on Jan 12.  This will give me another two years to live here.  This will be my third visa.  A non-lucrative visa, i.e. a visa which states that you have your own means to live comfortably without having to work, generally starts off with a 1 year visa.  You can renew it two more times for a two year period each time.  After that, you would apply for a long duration visa, which lasts for five years.

Waiting for my number to come up....

For me, I spent the month of December preparing my documents, which consisted of getting the most recent copies of my government pension statement, my social security statement, a letter from my federal health insurance company stating that it covers me in Spain, my retirement savings investments and finally my property record showing that I own my condo here free and clear.  Other than the final document, all the others needed to be translated by a certified Spanish translator.

I thought it was going to be easy submitting these documents.  A few months ago I got a digital signature from the Spanish government to install on my computer so I could submit these documents from the comfort of my home computer.  But after spending 3 hours the morning of the 12th trying to upload these documents without success, I finally went to one of the government offices to submit it in person.  This too took another 3 hours.  But it's all done.  Now I need to wait up to a month to find out whether they approve the visa.  I don't think there will be any problems, but you never know.

Best of All, Chris is Moving Here in June!!!

The best news of all is that it has been definitely decided that Chris will be moving to Barcelona this

summer.  He is now gathering the information that he needs to apply for a year long student visa.  He will spend next year studying Spanish in the same school that I am attending.  He visited it when we got back to Barcelona just a couple of weeks ago and he really liked the school.  The upcoming summer will be hectic:  Chris will move here at the end of June and then we will go for a week to southern Spain, probably staying in Málaga and driving to some of the other cities in Andalucía. Then Chris will be in the U.S. for almost a month and will celebrate with his mom her 85th birthday and will be doing the flowers for the daughter of a good friend.  He'll be back at the end of July and I'll be leaving a few days later for a three week retreat, most probably.  Finally, at the end of August we will both be together again and settle in Barcelona making our love nest here.

The longer term plan is for Chris to get a job in Barcelona but having Spanish under his belt will be very useful for him, both for his future job and his social life here with our Spanish friends.  I am very much looking forward to our new life together here!