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on motherhood

a bit spontaneously coming back to this as a new chapter began 3 years ago. i am so humbled in this process, continually. not sure if this online format will compare to my written journals but i'm curious to try both in tandem.

themes on my mind lately:

-parenthood/childhood patterns

-seeing and being seen

-control vs guidance vs trust

-mothertongue

-the beauty of imagination

i'm/i've starting a bit of the artist's way/morning pages and parenthood psychology reflection and we'll see where this goes

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summer-to-fall

i'm back in barcelona living la vida dulce! the sweet life. with a lighter class schedule this term, there is more time to savor all that is the spanish way of life; buying fish from the market, seeing sweet elderly couples outside late at night, trying out new menu del dias, and as always, sitting in the plazas . the 2nd year of the mba feels totally different; i'm re-exploring the neighborhood to find what new has popped up; returning to old favorites, and always simply enjoying a good stroll. at the moment the catalan independence movement has been taking over the streets through protest and some violence, but in the cozy enclave of gracia all of the noise feels far away.

summer in bavaria... well the internship certainly impoved my excel skills but more importantly made me appreciate the tough and underappreciated work of a delivery person, allowed me to explore some new cities including lovely vienna, and best of all: tilo and i were just an hour and a half by car away, so we got to adventure in bavarian lakes and mountains on weekends. we took balu (a charming t3 vw bus/van that tilo is in the process of building out #vanlife) out for his first few trips. tilo and i went to the us for a wedding and we experienced a whirlwind of meeting family, franconia notch, and boston; meaning: devouring lobster rolls and peanut butter cups.

i'm excited about more travel that will commence in the coming weeks along with some visitors in barcelona. i am hoping to close out the rest of the year with improving spanish, doing more of what makes me healthy and strong (and less of what doesn't) - such as, but not limited to yoga, being outside, drinking lots of water, and flossing, and enjoying the company of many awesome people around me as it will all change quite quickly.

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mountains and fields

a well-deserved, weeklong jaunt in the spanish pyrenees was a nice way to close out time after summer classes in barcelona before moving back to germany. tilo hopped over to spain and we escaped the barcelona heat by heading toward the mountains. for 7 days we traversed with fairly light packs through aiguestortes i sant maurici national park and encountered some fellow hikers along the way, incidentally many from israel, who were especially kind. we looped around through various peaks, lakes, and saddles, and stayed at a handful of huts, each with its own personality, cuisine, and levels of snore. wildflowers were in full bloom and each day felt like a nice reset, that magic refresh of the trails. all in all, we covered about 55km and our highest peak was at 2800m, so it was a fairly friendly trip overall. the park is a definitive gem of spain and also fortunately not too crowded. our favorite day was between huts ventosa and estany llong, where traversing through a stunning valley and scrambling over huge boulders up to the col felt rewarding - especially with the luxury lunch of hardboiled egg, homemade granolabars and quiche- heaven!

we returned to germany and eventually i moved to a small village outside munich, full of farmland wheat, to start my summer internship. while living with a family this summer, i am settling in to the suburban life. i'm fortunate to have a dream commute of a 15 -minute bicycle ride to work and in my first week i have been humbled. to get a feel for all processes, i've done the morning shift, late shift, night shift, and on-road ride-along, and needless to say, i am immensely humbled by the work that goes into getting a package to your doorstep, especially that last mile. i'm feeling good about the start and looking forward to getting deeper into the weeds of my project!

well, it's been a year since i set off for europe- i am really grateful for the time here, with tilo, new friends, on two wheels... meanwhile, i am looking forward to our august visit back home for a wedding and time with family. lobster, pie, good sandos, kimballs, REI, and especially my mom's cooking... (food much?) america here we come!

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verano - summer

is june the month that follows october? because 8 months flew by in nearly a breath. i finished my foundation terms of the mba and what a wild ride it has been, naturally with highs and lows of a demanding program, and eventually finding awareness again of the importance self-care. from the backdrop of days where i’d arrive to and leave campus before and after dark, the sun returned and i could feel the air shift in the neighbors/hood; this spurred on my sunday ritual to ride my bicycle again. it has already become summer now, hot, and in a few weeks i will take off for munich to discover a new place, where i’ll be doing an internship. and, before that, a trip to the pyrenees to reset in the mountains. 

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view from MACBA

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(via https://open.spotify.com/track/4eAdqRX5RNQYS9StJx942p?si=07gY0j2ZQzye66zwwU9n1g) 

a moment of repose

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octoBLUR /octubre

It's already November as I'm starting to write this post mid-commute on my train ride back home. These days, time evaporates. At school, I've been immersed in all of the amazing people, learning (to be economic and strategic... with my time), and everything that has intangible value outside of the classroom. Alas my studies have taken a bit of a back seat and I have begun to test limits on ‘minimum’ sleep for function, adopting coffee as my beverage of choice.

Meanwhile, I'm pretty grateful to be waking up happy nearly all days, even when I am unbelievably tired, so that to me speaks a lot of volumes. The community culture among our cohort feels strong and all things are accelerated in this program, somehow wonderfully and formatively so. I appreciate the different people I get to to hang out with in all of the facets of life I love: neighborhood Gracia gang, taking the speedy morning bus [see video for the commute], bicycling, going to the gym, playing volleyball, apartment-and neighborhood mates, classroom seat mates, outdoorsy activities, and more. Lately I've been busy sprucing my internship application materials, and eyeing some options for next summer.

I had a chance to catch David and Amy in Madrid, and check out my second Spanish city which was rather stately and grand! I also got to escape the hectic life for a weekend for a cozy fall perfect weekend in Stuttgart with Tilo... In fact, this is my first weekend in Barcelona in a long while with a few moments to indulge in reading and writing, so I’ll savor it.

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el bus a escuela / the schoolbus ...an awe-inspiring view of barcelona from up in the hills

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wow! - guau!

an actual spanish person asked me for directions while i was taking out the trash and i directed them to the correct road en espanol! suffice it to say i am sensing that ~something~ is happening even though at times i still feel like a transplanted outsider, although not a fully fledged tourist...  what a nice moment though. then karma decided to keep me grounded and i subsequently took a few wrong turns ;-) 

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september: getting down to business [school] // septiembre: ponerse a trabajar [escuela]

The heat has subsided and the weather has cooled to a tolerable level from the stagnant, humid heat of the final weeks in August. Fall is seeping in and that means mixed weather storms and one night even beautiful booming thunder and downpour. Meanwhile I’ve started business school full-time and met so many new faces from all over the world [the diversity includes 187 students from 51 countries!]. I’m just on the cusp of hearing their stories– it has been both amazing and sometimes exhausting especially in the first week. I feel like the experience is as if I’m traveling, but all of the countries have come here, to Barcelona. 

Monday through Friday I am the classroom with 62 people, sitting between two awesome ones in the last row, but we have the “corner office,” so to speak; Arief from Indonesia and Aloysio from Brazil, and both happen to be fathers and have experience in finance [a huge help - cha-ching$] ! And I have a smaller team consisting of a French biologist, Peruvian financier, Swiss lawyer, Chinese supply chain manager, and Colombian risk manager with whom I work on projects and homeworks. In class, we are in a first month of “foundations” sessions that include finance and accounting, teamwork, leadership, etc. I’m most excited about engaging my brain in lots of challenge – although there is a stereotypical choice between two of the three following options: sleep, social life, and studies. I’ll let you ponder which two YOU might choose ;-) I’m re-learning how to focus in the classroom – back in my day there were no smart phones! I am really excited about the program and opportunities ahead and know that the time will fly by. Outside of “class” I’m hoping to launch myself into what’s important to me and take part in case competitions and find a way to be outside and explore the beauty of Barcelona and speaking with locals who I’ve stumbled upon in Spanish~English and loving it. I’ve been lucky to have my first handful of visitors from home, Andrew, Hailey from SF and Steve and Virginia [now my Madrid “neighbors”!] and Tilo. There’s nothing like a reminder of your roots and the people who ground you, familiar faces in new places.

My typical routine so far is to wake up very early birdy and head to the school gym – there I’ve been taking yoga, spinning and bootcamp classes in Spanish which has been fantastic and totally amusing to say the least. Incidentally a handful of the guys at school also happen to be early birds and so we’ve seem to have naturally gravitated as friends. Of course, real friendship will take time, but there are a handful of folks that seem especially awesome, down-to-earth, funny, intelligent, and active. School will be intense, especially this first semester, but I’m pretty stoked about what lies ahead. 

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a beautiful photobomb / una hermosa foto bomba

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gràcia y brava / grace and bravery

back into the full heart of my neighborhood called gràcia, i’m immersed in a dreamworld. colorful flags and streamers lead me down streets where greek gods seeming of marble are merely elaborate uses of cardboard, balu the bear from the jungle book boasts an inviting grin, the paw patrol pups are on a rescue and all of this feels like halloween for the neighborhood. it’s a tradition that goes back over 200 years.

welcome the the annual gracia neighborhood festival.

each street association in our neighborhood plans their block theme and the club’s locals socialize and craft together on humid summer evenings out on the sidewalk while paper mâché creatures poke their heads out of garages. especially as the week-long festival draws near, toward the middle of august, you can feel the excitement in the fruition of their year-long efforts; literally, around the corner. the winning neighborhood club for best decor receives prize money with which to spend as it chooses. the only stipulation of the event is that each block must use recycled materials; resourcefulness, creativity, and beauty ensue.

i’ve caught the tamer tail end of the festival; the noise has already died down some, the multiple music stages playing rock, pop, folk, metal, oldies, swing or some mixture of them all with a signature trumpet player, until 3 and 4 in the morning are now retiring a bit earlier at 2am. this is a night festival for young and old and in-between, because spain bursts of life in the streets at night.

on the final evening, there is the “correfoc”, or the “fire run” in which children and adults dressed as devils are running with dragons and beasts, showering the streets with sparklers and shrieks. the neighborhood catalan pride is so palpable, almost diffusing into my psyche, even though i’ve only just moved here.

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another adventure takes me north to the stunning “costa brava,” or literally, “brave coast” where a jaunt with friends of friends led us to swimming in spanish mediterranean coves. we hike back through an arid spanish forest, with its dry beauty and bark. morsels of wonder and adventure to savor for a while, since,

school starts tomorrow.

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le tour de mont blanc

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back from the mountains /regreso de las montañas

i am back [in barcelona] from the tour de mont blanc with tilo! ten days of backpacking and camping beauty throughout france, italy, and switzerland. through climbs, descents, hills and valleys, sunshine and rain, the rhythm of dawn and dusk, and some stunning stars in between. we saw recurring faces pop up along the trail [french boys with chocolate biscuits at the start; australian-soon-to-be-london couple, adventure mountaineer dad with fearless kids, americans from virginia and more] and met new friends from spain - in fact, our doppelgangers, carlos and laura. it was roughly 107 miles / 170 km and on the order of 10,000m net elevation. no shortage of smiles and and sweat along the way and through the end. with our tent, we stayed at several campsites, wild camped twice [the best], and stayed at a classy hotel mid-way in the italian town of courmeyeur. weatherwise, we beared only a little bit of rain, a few nights falling asleep to the patter and distant thunder, some heat, with most days fairly temperate. my favorite memory happened early on in the tour, ascending the summit of one stunning valley into the cusp of another, from les balmes toward bonhomme, in france. on day 3, we had adventure day, where we trekked on a minor route crossing through snowfields, and trying to climb up shale slabs - and despite that we didn’t make it to the remote refugio ‘robert blanc,’ it was fantastic to get off the beaten path, find an quiet, crystal-clear alpine lake essentially to ourselves for lunch, and descend through grasshopper-, butterfly- and alpine flower-filled fields into the valley. on day 8, we climbed 1000m directly to a ridge and i think it was all adrenaline fueling me allowed me to race to the top, feeling purely like a mountain goat. and on day 10, we ran back into the spanish couple, carlos and laura, with whom we banded and summited le brevent peak together to finish the tour back down to chamonix via gondola. this final day was foggy, misty and dreamy... even a bit somber to come back into reality, where the finality that tomorrow, our task no longer entailed completing the next leg of the tour with everything strapped to our backs.