Monday – Day 117 – A Great Call & a New Podcast
My highlight of my day was my call with David Bach. He is a former EO New York member who recently moved to Florence with his family. I was emailing him about an opportunity to connect with the Barcelona chapter, but it soon led us to compare war stories about our experiences abroad.
What was so cool he read through many posts on my blog and shared how often his experiences mirrored ours. It once again reinforced why I write this blog. While David and I were in the same chapter in NY we never really connected until this call.
It was also great hearing about his experience in Florence as I lived there for 6 months in college and it is one of my favorite places. David is also a very accomplished author with his past 10 books in a row becoming NYT best sellers. He has sold over 7 million copies of his books. He has written 12 books, I am working on number 2 and have aspirations to not only write 12 books, but to be a multiple times NYT best selling author. One step at a time.
Later in the day, I was interviewed by Kristen Manieri who runs the podcast called Synced Life. She asked fantastic questions. Looking forward to it going live in a few weeks.
Tuesday – Day 118 – An Insightful Lunch Helping Someone Else
The highlight of my day was lunch with one of my new friends who I met living in Barcelona. He is a big time business professional and is looking to make changes in his life to both to grow himself inside and outside his company. He asked if I could grab lunch with him as he wanted to get my insights about his next steps. It was a great feeling as we only hung out a few times and he respected me enough to ask my advice on this subject. I love going deep and going deep fast… Good food never hurts either.
I had a call later in the day with Bryan Wish who manages my marketing and personal branding. His team has done a great job this year and could not be more excited about what is coming down the pipe in 2020.
Wednesday – Day 119
Spanish class. Gym. Coaching call with COO. Hanging with kids. Dinner. Sleep.
Thursday – Day 120 – Jonah’s Winter Wonder Concert
The highlight of the day was attending Jonah’s elementary school concert where every grade did a song or two. The school gym was filled with parents just enjoying and watching all the songs. All I kept thinking to myself, a big part of family life anywhere is about a strong community. To be surrounded by so many caring parents reminded me of our strong community in Brooklyn. Again, it just reinforced one of the main themes from living abroad so far…..it is so simple but profound to me…People are People.
Afterwards we went to lunch with the kids as they only had a half day. In fact, it was their last day of school until January 8th. Gotta love Spain. I headed to a quick workout and then got a haircut. Haircuts, is another way I keep track of how long I have been here. That was my third haircut, my second was on day 79, and my first was on day 43. Just little facts I can now keep track of since I am journaling each day.
Headed to WeWork from there. Sent out my first email newsletter called The First 100 Days to The Rest of Our Lives to share about this journey and the upcoming book about it. I explained the reasons why I have been blogging daily, how it has helped me say YES more. If you have not seen it yet, check it out!
For dinner, we headed to an Italian restaurant that was started by Brooklnites called Grecos of Brooklyn. We went out to dinner with the Rapkins to celebrate 2019 in Barcelona with them.
We have come a long way since our first meal together at the mall on day 12. This being their second year here, they have become a mentor family to us in so many ways and have been a big part in making this first 120 days in Barcelona more seamless. I met Andy through Entrepreneurs Organization. Again, another example of how EO has had such a strong impact on my life.
Friday – Day 121 – Lights Out
The kids first full day of vacation. The plan was to take the boys hiking while Kel went shopping with Leila, but the stormy weather in Barcelona did not corporate. So we had a lazy morning and I headed to Turo Park with the boys after the sun came out. Kel had a nice day with Leila.
That night, I headed to the gym and 10 minutes into the workout the power went out and it was essentially pitch black. But what was more amazing to me was they let us stay for another 30 minutes and keep working out. In the US we would have been ushered out within one minute of the blackout to avoid any lawsuits. Actually it was kind of fun.
Saturday – Day 122 – A Visit from NYC City Friends
As we were about to go away for the Holiday, we spent the afternoon packing. I went with the boys in the morning to buy some birthday gifts and some things that would be fun to have in the apartment. We ended up with a small foosball table. Oh yeah not to mention some crepes with Nutella and then a little trampoline action to burn off the energy.
At night, Dara & Michael Kass, from who just arrived from NYC, came over with their 3 kids. Our babysitter brought her boyfriend to watch all 6 kids while we took them to a local restaurant. Because it was our only night with them we had to take them to a cool Speakeasy afterwards. It was of course great to catch up and I think we may have even inspired them to make a similar move some day. We will see.
My kids were happy that we got back with only 15 minutes to their birthday. Josh turned it into a New Year’s Eve style countdown. It was a latenight, with an early wake up for the airport. The life of a traveling family.