And So It Begins...

This is my first post in many months.  Since I last wrote, we've traveled through Guanajuato and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico and made a concrete decision to move to Barcelona.

We applied to, and were accepted at, a few schools in Barcelona for the children.  March is the month when it is necessary to decide which school they will attend - so we decided to come to Spain over our Spring Break from school in California, to look at schools, neighborhoods and apartments.   

What a big decision!  So exciting, and a little scary too.  Finally the day of our flight to Spain - March 21st - arrived.  The kids and I flew separately from their dad, as he was able to get a free ticket on a different airline using his mileage points.  The rest of us also got a great deal (but not free) flying British Airways out of Los Angeles.  The tickets from LA were significantly cheaper than leaving from San Diego.  

The kids and I flew on the new Airbus 380, a giant of a plane (two levels!) and it was easily the best flight I have ever taken.  (High praise, since I hate flying.)  The plane was more like a massive tank pushing through turbulent air masses as though they were nothing more than whispers.  My boys were elated to discover that there were gaming consoles at each seat, and all three kids spent the majority of their flight playing games - ping pong, robots, asteroids, etc.  They had a great time!

Despite white knuckling it the entire way, completely focused on the 3D world map that tracked our flight progress (flight arrived early in less than 10 hours!) we landed without event.  None of us had slept much, and I'd not slept at all.  Still, we were full of joy to have safely crossed the Atlantic.  

We arrived at Heathrow around 10:30am local time Tuesday, just after three terrible suicide bombing attacks took place in Brussels, Belgium.  We were blissfully unaware of this, and felt surprised when we had to go through a more intense TSA scan at the airport than we've ever had before.  Little P was asked to go into the full body scanning machine because the zippers in her Doc Martens set off the alarm. She is six.)

People from Britain's TSA were yelling at passengers and everyone seemed on edge, the security lines went on forever. We had no idea about the airport attacks until we were in the international terminal eating some carry-out from Pret a Manger, and it was surreal to be learning about airport attacks while seated in another European airport waiting for a flight. The urgency definitely felt different in Britain than it does at home... and everyone in the packed international terminal seemed quite on edge.

Thankfully we made it safely to Barcelona on a much shorter (less elegant) flight. Barcelona feels like home as always and so far we have loved our time back in our favorite Placa.  More soon!