Heather’s first blog entry.

I feel a little self-conscious blogging – I’m not sure how much to “share” (being a good New Englander) and it also feels like a guilty pleasure to take time away and write about my own goings-on (another blessing from my New England heritage). But here goes.

For my first post, I thought I’d answer the top 5 commonly asked questions about our sabbatical.

1. Why Spain?

I wanted Spanish-speaking, Jon wanted Europe, Spain was the intersection of the two sets.

2. Why Madrid?

We considered both Barcelona and Madrid, but two reasons led to the latter: Catalan is spoken in Barcelona (see #1 above) and because I have a cousin, Mary Prendergast, in Madrid. Mary is married to Manolo and they have twin almost-3-year-olds, Liam and Gabriel. All to say, good playmates for our kids and someone to counsel us about Spanish bureaucracy.

3. What are your goals for the sabbatical?

Here’s what I wrote on my “Reasons for sabbatical” form at work: “My work has me watching hundreds of hours of U.S. math lessons. Invariably, some of the instruction is conducted in Spanish. I’d like to learn enough Spanish to allow me to watch and understand the mathematics instruction in those tapes.”

What I didn’t say on the form is that if I stayed in Cambridge, my life would’ve continued pretty much as is (meeting, email, meeting, email, email, daycare pickup). The beauty of Spain is that I’ll have no meetings until about 2:00 Madrid time (8 AM US time), and email traffic should also be slow during the day as well.

Finally, we’d also like the kids to learn some Spanish and live in a different culture. If they know Spanish, then when they decide to take French in high school I won’t have to convince them that French is fairly useless.

There’s a longer set of personal goals for the year, but I’ll write about them later.

4. Do you have a place to live yet?

Yes! Exactly 6 days before leaving, we procured a place to live. 100 square meters of love, about a 20 minute walk from Seth’s school. We’ll send the address/photos when available. Given that Jon and I have a habit of being, um, over-prepared, the Spanish housing schedule was a little bit of a shock.

5. Do you speak Spanish?

I took 6 years of Spanish in high school/college and never became competent in the language – I speak toddler-level Spanish (Porque? Porque? Porque?) and can read only at about a K level (“El oso come el pez.”). Jon does a little better than I – he did the high school coursework, and has been taking classes all year to brush up on the pluperfect tense of “eat good tapas” “drink sangria” and “take a long mid-day nap.”

More later!