FinMeander

 SOAKING IN OURENSE HOUSEKEEPING NOTE:  With the assistance of my lovely technical advisor, I am working to migrate this blog to a different platform.  If you have struggled with navigating among the posts, you are not alone.  Thankfully, only a small minority of family and friends have been following this blog, so the combined effects of my slow learning curve and the platform's inherent limitations have hopefully not caused too much pain.  Lyn is doing most of the legwork but we will try to get his figured out in the next week or so. TRIP OVERVIEW NOTE:  Our visit with José and María was a fitting finale for Phase 1 of our EuroTrip, which I call the "social phase".  The remaining three phases of our trip are: Phase 2:     Stay in Galicia for a combination of regional travel and working on some personal and professional goals for about a month.  Ourense is the preamble to a 25 day stay in Pontevedra. The other big difference with Phase ...

Born in the VALENC-I -Ā: Our Adventure with José and  María The week in Barcelona with our Swiss friend Simone was truly a blessing and demonstrated how minor initial conditions affect the trajectory of relationships and experiences in life.  If Simone had been assigned to any other high school in America for her study abroad, this week in Barcelona would not have happened the way it did and probably would not have happened at all.  Simone is the one who made the big leap and accepted the risk of going to a foreign country for a year as a high school student. Yet somehow it feels as if Lyn and I have benefited from that decision without having to take any risk ourselves.  It almost doesn't seem fair and it's part of the reason we value our friendship with Simone so much. That feeling of gratitude and dumb luck got reinforced this past week during our visit to the city of Valencia and the charming town of Pedreguer as guests of a wonderful couple named  José ...