Fourth Edition

Welcome to the fourth edition of The Mintzer Chronicles!!! Here is the latest update on our life here in Barcelona...

I (Naomi) am teaching private English lessons. So far, I am teaching all girls (ages 8 - 13), although I just received another referral and will begin teaching two young boys next week. All of my students live in amazing neighborhoods with amazing homes and awesome furniture...it's quite a treat to work for them and to get a sneak peak into their lives here! All of my work has come from referrals by Miranda Wilkotz (for those of you on my side of the family - Miranda is one of Jason's cousins that lives here in Barcelona). Miranda has already had Jason and I over for dinner with her family twice! It is wonderful to have some family here in Spain.

My teaching highlight was when one of my younger students asked if we could hold the hampsters during the entire lesson. As I'm a bit homesick for my kitties, it was quite a treat to spend an hour with a snuggly little hampster. I used the hampster to teach her words like "tail" and "fur"...

As for Jason, he is really enjoying his job. He teaches young children, teenagers, and adults (the adults are his favorite). He also signed up with a gym and is doing Jiu-Jitsu three times a week. He also entered one of his geckos photos in the Geckos Unlimited (geckosunlimited.com) 2010 calendar contest and won. His is the August photo.

Another highlight for both of us was a visit from our friends from Costa Mesa - Heather and Josh Feldman. While on their European vacation, they met up with us one afternoon while in Barcelona. We showed them our flat, went to lunch with them at our favorite Italian restaraunt (yes, I know - Italian, but we're not big fans of the Spanish food), and they even brought us a care package of our favorite foods and things from our best friends BreAnn and Rikio Ahara. (Thank You!!!)

The weather has finally cooled down here! No more beach days. Since it's getting closer to the holidays, we recently booked all of our flights/hotels for our Christmas holiday. We will spentd three weeks traveling in Rome, Aviano, Venice, Florence, Brussels, Bruges, Prague, and Krakow (Auschwitz). We are very fortunate to have places to stay in Aviano (with my childhood best friend Nikki and her husband), and in Prague we will stay with the Dagens (family on my mom's side). We hope to have quite a blog post after we're through with that trip!!

As a side note, we apologize that the pictures are so small. We will upload them larger next time, but for now just click on the photos you want to see full size.

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Anyhow, here are some pictures that tell a bit more about how we've been spending our time here in Spain!

This is the world championship Air Show - on the beach in Barcelona...yet another free event! Airplanes were flying through all these giant obstacles set up in the ocean. Take a look at the video for a better look. (This one's for you, Grandpa George).

One highlight of the last month was a week-long visit from Michelle Griffo, a friend of Jason's from high school. She is currently teaching in Cairo, Egypt - so it was only a short flight for her to come to Barcelona. It was wonderful to spend time with a friend from home!

Something great about Barcelona is that every day is an adventure, and we always find something new. One day, we were looking for a museum and found an amazing botanical garden. The tree in the first picture reminded me of something you might see in the Garden of Gethsemane.

There is always a festival going on somewhere in Barcelona. One night, we saw The Hives perform at a free concert as part of the Merce Festival. The stage was set up in a street intersection, and people were crowded together - shoulder to shoulder - for block and blocks just to hear the band. It is really amazing how Barcelona puts on so many free events...this city sure loves to celebrate! The blonde guy in some of these pictures is our flatmate Ben.

Once a week, we go out for the night with many of the new friends we've made here in Barcelona. Lots of them are other TEFL teachers, but we've also become friends with a number of our Spanish students. It's always interesting spending the evening with a group of people from all over the globe - we always learn new things!

Here I am dancing in the park with Michelle to a free Jazz Concert - part of yet another festival here in Barcelona.

This is Jason with our friend Irish Jason. We found Duff Beer - from The Simpsons - and I had to take a picture.

This next segment was from our day-trip to Sitges, our favorite small beach town just outside of Barcelona. Just as we were about to leave, we saw they were having a grape-smashing contest! We had to stay for that.

Even the street signs in Sitges are beautiful!

Gaudi's arcihtecture is all over Barcelona. It is quite a treat to be sitting at a McDonalds (yes, although we avoided McDonalds at home, we crave good old American food every once in a while and head for the golden arches...) and look out onto some of the world's greatest architecture. Honestly, though - there is a McDonalds across the street from three of Gaudi's most famous buildings! These next photos show Gaudi's Casa Mila. We found out that this building was commissioned by the Mila family (the family we mentioned before that had us over for dinner and has given me all my referrals). Gaudi's work is very unusual, and truly incredible. Every last detail is full of imagination, and almost everything we've seen yet has been inspired by someting in nature or animals. Each building shows examples (like the tree below) of his inspiration.

I wanted to buy a Christmas-ornament sized model of this chair, but it was 99 Euros... :(

One of the Casa Mila flats was staged with furniture (and doll houses with the most intricate furniture, and dolls) of the era in which it was built. Although the dolls looked like they could star in a horror movie, I couldn't resis a few pictures.

What a beautiful wood floor! I wish I could take it with me when we move back to the OC and install it into our next apartment...

Even the mouldings were completely custom and full of imagination.

Here is the view of the patio railings from inside one of the flats.

A view from the interior of the building. It almost reminds me of Alice in Wonderland...

And the best part - inside the entry way, stairs, etc. I felt like I was inside a real-life scene from The Little Mermaid with everything so swirly and colorful and creative.

Here is a scene of the roof top.

One Sunday afternoon, Jason and I decided to tour the Barcelona Cathedral, which was built in the 13th century. As I tried to walk in wearing a tank top, the guards pointed to my "bare shoulders" and shoo'd me away. Jason and I had to take turns going in the Cathedral - he lent me his shirt to wear so I could get in.

Every festival here in Barcelona seems to have a parade with these giant medival statues bopping around. The streets are always cram-packed with people and their kids exstatic for the statues. This is a major city street shut down for the parade!

Here are some pictures from the monastery in Monteserrat as well as some hiking pictures from Monteserrat.

Here are some photos Jason took outside of the Barcelona Cathedral at night. After a while, I got bored standing around while he took all his photos, and decided I'd jump in a few and pretend I was in a photo shoot.

Here are some photos of the free fountain show in Montjuic. There are shows from 8-12 Thursday through Sunday.

These are a few photos that I (Jason) took from the castle at the top of Montjuic (The Mountain of the Jews). I stayed past closing time (7pm) to capture the photos just before and after sunset (It was nice not to have a bunch of tourists in the photos as well). No security guards came by to check if anyone was still there. When I went to leave, the huge castle doors were shut. I then looked for a way to climb down, but it is a castle, and is built to thwart the efforts of people climbing. I then went back to the doors and realized that I was on the inside, so all I had to do was slide a huge iron bar, open the door, and run.

Well, that brings to a close the fourth edition of The Mintzer Chronicles. Until next time...