T-minus 6 weeks and counting...

It's unavoidable. It's coming on like a lumbering freight train, or like Austin Powers on a steamroller. I can see it in the distance, getting gradually closer, creeping on so that when you look at it, it doesn't seem to move, but if you take your eyes away for a few days and then look again it seems bigger, closer.

We are inching towards our return to the United States.

This week begins our "visit" period, that will take us from this Friday until a week before we fly out of Barcelona (volcano willing) for Boston. On Friday the Websters arrive from Bethel to spend a few days with us. It'll be exciting to have other Mainers see our city, and through their eyes we'll be able to see things for the first time again. Pilar, La Seo, the historical core of Zaragoza, the 9th century Aljafería (if you don't know what these things are, you have either to go back and read 9 months of blog or to google them), we will visit them all again in the next week. Then, we go to Barcelona to pick up my dad as he arrives by ship (did you know that people still take transatlantic cruises?). Two weeks later Andee's sister Trina and her family arrive from Houston, and will be with us until the 24th of June. Eight days later AerLingus carries us home.

So with that in mind, on some days more than others, I am starting to look at some little things more carefully, more slowly. Yesterday I saw, for the first time, a beautiful statue along the side of the street that goes past the "big" Corte Inglés (I say "big" that way because, to THIS small-town boy, BOTH of them are big). Honestly, I have crossed that street maybe 100 times in the past year, but I just saw the statue yesterday. Yesterday Andee and I bought bocadillos (sandwiches) for lunch and ate them sitting in the little park down the street from our apartment. And we noticed, again for the first time, that a street sweeping truck washes and sweeps the entire park.

It's amazing, the little details that you pick up, and equally amazing what you miss on a daily basis. Example: I know that most of the traffic lights on Paseo de la Independencia go from green to red, one after another, almost exactly 6 seconds apart (except for the one in front of Santa Engracia, which changes 4 seconds after the previous light). what I don't know is if our trash gets picked up on Saturday night, Sunday night, or neither one. I have tried to get as much as I can into this blog, and in photos, so that later I can look back and remember the details. The big stuff stays with you, but it's all of the little things that make an experience what it is (just ask anyone who has ever been on a Junior Point trip). So I think that in these, our final days in Spain, my focus will be to try and look at, write down, and photograph the little things. Things that, without warning, tend to slip out of your memory and are gone.

OK, this entry is a little too nostalgic for 10:15 in the morning. I'm going to work out, sauna, and teach class. In that order.

And I'm bringing my camera with me.