X-Games Comes to Barcelona

This was the first year the X-Games made an appearance in Barcelona and it seems that it was well received.  We saw banners all over the city for weeks and thought this might be something fun the kids would enjoy watching.  With a long weekend this weekend and no specific plans, we decided to check out tickets.

Based on the schedule of events (some events didn't start til 9PM), we offered the kids either BMX biking or skateboarding.  They chose the latter.  And we were super excited about sharing this with them - live!  It's one thing to YouTube extreme skateboarding and other events, but to see it live is, as you know, a totally different experience.

Knowing there might be a lot of traffic and problems with parking, we opted to take public transportation over to Montjuic.  Of course, this meant leaving the house 2 hours before our Park Skateboard Finals started - because, you know, it takes barely an hour to get there but we still had to get to the top, find out where exactly our event was being held, and potentially stand in a long line to get in.

But the Games weren't as big as I thought they would be.  Yes, there were a lot of people there, but with events spread out during the day and other things happening, there weren't long queues of people getting in.  So we went right in and just walked around for a bit, got a hot dog and then headed over to the Skateboard Park where the contestants were warming up.

Heading into the Games

Me and my pumpkin pie ready to watch some skateboarding!

An attempt at them posing together... fail

Apparently Liam thinks we are going to see boxing and not skateboarding ;)

The kids LOVED watching the skateboarders warming up.  Aidan was especially surprised to see how young some of the competitors were with one kid as young as 13 that made it to the finals.  Yes, only 4 years older than Aidan.  That kind of blew my mind.  And he was incredible!!  Prodigies come in all types - sports, academics, etc.  This kid was amazing!

13 year old phenom

Excited to be at the X Games!

Making "some noise!"

The competitors

Some videos we took of the X Games

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHyl8CMRrIE&feature=youtu.be 

http://youtu.be/gD38GAlCQZU

This is some of the competitors.  I don't remember if they said "yea haw" in this video or not but the commentators were constantly saying it.  Not sure if they thought it was an American thing or not?????  It got annoying though - even Aidan agreed.

By the time the actual competition started, I could see the kids were losing their interest quick.  There are only so many stunts you can watch in the course of 2 hours before being ready to move on.  But they did it and they made it to the end.   They even learned to do the wave - how is it that they've never done the wave before?

As we were getting ready to leave we saw some guys that we were guessing were sponsored by Red Bull start to do an impromptu show out in the pedestrian area - so we watched them for a little bit.  Sadly, I think the kids were more impressed with this than the skateboarding but they enjoyed both regardless.

Some videos of the bike stunts:

http://youtu.be/o0RKK_WpMF8

 http://youtu.be/-t-oeTII-6k

They had a great time and we made it out of there just as the skies opened up to (more) rain!  But a fun and totally different day than our usual weekend escapades :)

Besos,
Julie

It Smells Like... Team Spirit!

As a native New Englander, I know a little something about team spirit.  We are die hard Patriots, Red Sox, Bruins and Celtics fans.  And if you dare enter into a bar anywhere in the Boston area claiming to be something else...well... I wouldn't recommend it.  New Englanders are passionate about their sports.  We rally for the hometeam like nothing I had ever seen.  That is, til I moved to Barcelona.

FC Barcelona (known as Barca) is our local "futbol" (that's soccer for those of you at home) team.  And the people here are passionate about Barca even more than us New Englanders are about our sports.  Don't think I'm right?  Come visit, I'll prove it to you.  Not only do I regularly see people walking up and down the streets with banners on game day, but when they win a game, you literally hear the screams thru out the neighborhood.

Now I remember when the Red Sox and Patriots won the World Series and Super Bowl respectively back in 2004 (the year Aidan was born which is why I remember it - don't ask me any other sports years!).  There was a huge amount of cheering and yelling for sure.  But could I hear it thruout my neighborhood?  Were people lighting off firecrackers in the streets and honking their horns?  No, they weren't. 

Last night, Barca played Real Madrid - Real Madrid is to Barca what the Yankees are to the Red Sox. The enemy! And every time they meet the match is called El Capital. Why, I have no idea and since this is a quick entry, I haven't got time to look it up. The season ends at the end of next month and there is still at least one or two more games to be played against Real Madrid, more than in most seasons for some odd reason. Anyways, I'll be honest, yes, I cheer for Barca...but do we watch the games? No, not really. However, you can't help but get caught up in the spirit. Last night as Josh and I lay in bed reading, you could hear the screams and shouts from thru out the neighborhood. We could tell when someone made a mistake from the booing and when they scored a goal from the cheers. We heard them scream Messi, Messi, Messi! He's our Tom Brady.

 

Lionel Messi - Picture from a web search

And at the end of the game, there was plenty of horn honking going on and firecrackers going off... I'm going to say that without even looking online at the score that they won.  My guess is it was even more crazy down in the center of the city where people were likely hanging out of their cars with banners and impromteu parades going on as well... I wouldn't be at all surprised!

So if you think you have team spirit you may want to reconsider how the people of Barcelona celebrate a victory and climb on board the Barca bandwagon!!

Julie

It's Time to Get Our Sports On!!!!

I've got boys.  Boys with lots and lots of energy.  Boys that need an outlet for all that energy.  In the last year, that outlet has been each other.  And it's been a long year of constant, "don't hit your brother." "no, don't you hit your brother either." "please stop hitting your brother."  Did I say it was constant???? 

In the States, Liam was a bit young for sports (he was 2 1/2 when we moved here) but Aidan did 3 sports during the fall semester before we left.  Horseback, tennis and soccer.  He played tennis for almost 2 years before we moved here and did horseback for 2 1/2.  It was his first season playing soccer (now known as futbol here).  Our lives were chaotic to say the least.  Getting ready for a big move overseas and then balacing work, sports and life in general.  But it was worth it.

Fast forward to January 2010.  We've moved to Barcelona and made a conscious decision that we would postpone sports for at least our first 6 months living here.  We did this for a few reasons (1) we had no idea what would be available to us and how to go about enrolling either child (2) we wanted a break from our chaotic lives for a little bit (3) we needed time to get used to our lives here and figure out what direction we wanted to take them in before making any long term commitments.  We said we would wait until school started again in September before putting the boys into sports.

This September I gave Aidan a few options for sports.  He poo pooed them all.  Said he didn't want to take lessons, just play the sports on their own.  Because like me, he's let the language intimidate him.  So instead of pushing like I normally would have, I let him have his way.  I was lazy (didn't want to have to trek him to the other side of the city for tennis lessons) and fearful of my own language concerns.  But the last few weeks have been rough with Aidan - he's been having a very angry attitude with us ALL THE TIME.  He's swearing, he's hitting.  Some of it is just him testing his boundries but it goes beyond that.  He's just downright pissed off at the world and we have no idea why.  And so, the time has come to make a decision - do we force sports upon him or once again put it in his court?

We decided that we would give him an option of a few sports and that he HAD to choose ONE.  He was welcome to choose more than one but that he needed to play something again and get some energy out.  He decided on tennis, which was what we expected.  So this week I bit the fear of language bullet and went up to Vall d'Hebron where we play for fun and asked for information for both Aidan and Liam for lessons.  Thankfully they had Saturday lessons available and at the same time for them both.  And they let us do a trial lesson yesterday before I invested quite a lot of moola into these lessons (for which I was both thankful that I understood what they were saying and for them trying to save my poor wallet). 

Yesterday was the day.  We told Aidan he was already signed up.  Why give him a chance to duck out of the commitment he agreed to.  So with a bit of a whine (ok a lot of a whine) and a bit of freaking out (perhaps a tantrum or two thrown in along the way), we were off to tennis!  Liam was so excited about going and couldn't stop talking about his lessons.

We get there and they direct us to the courts where the kids were all playing.  And there were a lot of courts and a lot of kids.  Each class has up to 10 kids with at least 2 instructors, so no more than 5 kids per instructor which was similar to the lessons Aidan took at home.  Now Liam freezes up... he wants nothing to do with playing tennis and clings to my leg for dear life.  That would be fine, except his big brother is already clinging to my other leg not wanting to join in. 

Thank goodness for Rosa.  She was young, perhaps early 20s and spoke pretty good English.  This was a source of fear for Aidan - that his instructor would only speak Spanish.  I had tried to allievate this fear for him before by saying that tennis is a sport that can be communicated without speaking if necessary.  You follow the motions the instructor is giving you, you follow what the other kids are doing as well.  But Rosa spoke English.  The kids were warming up and Aidan refused to join them for that.  We sat in front of the courts waiting, hoping, praying we could get him in there.  His shyness preventing him once again from having fun which just breaks my heart.

Finally about 10 minutes into the hour and a half lesson, Aidan said "I'm ready".  Whew!!!  I brought him up to Rosa and she took his hand.  She was so wonderful with him I wanted to cry - she would explain everything in both Spanish and for Aidan, in English.  She made him feel included with the group.  He fit right in as far as his level of ability (this session goes Oct - June so he missed the first 3 months) and knew exactly what to do.  We saw, OMG, a smile!!!  Maybe even a few. 

He left the court one time telling us he was done.  But after a quick drink of water he was back on.  At the end of the lesson he wanted to keep playing.  And he said to me as we left "Mommy, it was really hard for me to go to tennis today and I was really afraid, but I'm really glad I went.".  At that moment, I knew it was worth it to have pushed him and I only wish I'd done it sooner.  But like everything else here, we have to take it poco a poco (little by little).  And little by little, our lives, even after a year, are finally going back to "normal".

Julie