That time I moved to France and didn’t blog about it: preparing to move abroad during a pandemic
Sunshine and Siestas
by Cat Gaa
2y ago
2020 will be the year that the world stopped for so many. But for me, it’s the year I got to live in France. France was a lovely little séjour, despite those pesky aspects of living abroad. Every pain au chocolat  reminded me of being 16 and traveling around France with my grandfather, every new word learned was a small personal victory to untrain myself from Spanish while slowly making sense of street signs and school communications. In a year where no one traveled, a summer of exploring a new home base became our salve, the balm that soothed away all the scary stuff and ever-present thr ..read more
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Seville, with COVID: A touristic darling devoid of tourists
Sunshine and Siestas
by Cat Gaa
3y ago
It cuts through the exhaust fumes that hiccup from a bus, from the poop left by a horse stalling at an empty carriage in the shade of an orange tree. The azahar is blooming, the de facto sign of springtime in Seville. The midday bells are about the shrill from the Giralda. I duck into shady Plaza Santa Marta, where the overgrown trees send lines of light against whitewashed walls and the stone cross. It’s one of those places on the tourist drag that no one seems to know about, hidden deep in a maze of streets in the city’s old Jewish quarter. The bells sound, clear and solitary – there ..read more
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Traveling to Madrid during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Practical advice for visiting the Spanish capital
Sunshine and Siestas
by Cat Gaa
3y ago
The azahar is blooming ever so faintly, carrying its intoxicating scent right to my home office. It’s been exactly a year since the government in Spain locked us in our homes for seven weeks at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s the scent of spring – hope, new beginnings and the promise of brighter days. As the world begins to open back up, we are all traveling dreaming. Moving to Lyon for half a year was a salve for me, balm to cure my travel bug temporarily. But for someone who always has half a dozen places in mind for my next trip, there is really only one destination I am yearni ..read more
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10 Cool Things to do in Seville as a Solo Traveler
Sunshine and Siestas
by Cat Gaa
3y ago
Things have been quiet on Sunshine and Siestas since the pandemic began. In the last six months, we have experienced milestones – Millán is walking! Enrique is fully potty trained (nighttime, too!)! We moved to a foreign country! Yes, really – we’re living in Lyon, France until the end of the year. Chico tells me he misses Sevilla. I do, too – it seems like just as soon as I moved back, we were making plans to leave. When Paulina reached out to me for a guest post, I was happy to relive the days where Sevilla felt very much mine, exploring its every rinconcito. The Andalusian capital, Se ..read more
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COVID-19 in Seville: Scenes from a lockdown lifted
Sunshine and Siestas
by Cat Gaa
4y ago
Fifty days. Fifty days in my home, stealing quick trips to the garbage bins and the supermarket. Fifty days balancing a full-time job and two kids, plus a husband I am not used to seeing all the time. Fifty days with an excuse for baking cookies, sleeping in past 6 am and watching the boys’ clothes grow too small or too short for them. Ever felt like a tiger in a cage? So did nearly 47 million people living in Spain. Confined to our homes under the strictest lockdown measures in Europe, May 2nd meant an hour of freedom outside the confines of our walls, from watching the world from a window or ..read more
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Five Things You Didn’t Know About Filing Your Taxes as an Expat in Spain
Sunshine and Siestas
by Cat Gaa
4y ago
If life abroad weren’t complicated enough, filing taxes from abroad becomes even more complicated. As he drove me to the airport in 2007 for a year in Spain, my dad casually mentioned that I’d need to fax my first paycheck so that he could get a handle on my tax situation as soon as possible. “You’ll lose your passport otherwise.” I scoffed, but eventually heard horror stories of people held at customs for not defaulting their student loans or not filing their taxes. Back before we had smartphones, I scanned and made copies of all of my bank statements just in case Uncle Sam came calling. Ever ..read more
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Lost and Found in Spain: Susan Solomont talks her book about being an ambassador’s wife abroad
Sunshine and Siestas
by Cat Gaa
4y ago
Serendipity. A random occurrence of events that happens casually or unexpectedly. Not that my run-ins with Spanish bureaucrats have been serendipitous, but as I looked back on 12 years of Spain through rosy colored glasses (or just a Cruzcampo haze), I realize that so many of the relationships and milestones of my Spain life have been a series of coincidences. From my hearing casually about the auxiliar de conversación job to meeting the woman who would introduce me to the Novio (who happened to live around the corner from family back in Chicago) to how we named Millán. I recently met with Sus ..read more
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Lavender fields in Spain: the Brihuega Festival de la Lavanda and what you need to know
Sunshine and Siestas
by Cat Gaa
5y ago
You don’t need to travel from Madrid to Provence to see lavender fields in bloom this summer. Brihuega, a blip of a village in the Guadalajara province, has come to produce close to 10% of the world’s lavender. My parents had a few scattered plants in the backyard of my childhood home, and, along with lightening bugs and scrapes on my knees, the lavender bloom was the true sign of summer. During a rare weekend without my kiddo or the Novio, I stumbled across the Festival de la Lavanda, a touristic initiative in Brihuega to celebrate the town’s most famous resident. Open road, the scent of lav ..read more
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Parenting in Spain: the differences between raising children in Spain and the USA
Sunshine and Siestas
by Cat Gaa
5y ago
The 48 hours I spent in the hospital post-birth were a bit of a blur. Between doctors and nurses coming in and out, trying to figure out breastfeeding and the cycle of 20 minutes of dozing before I was interrupted by doctors or a hungry child, it wasn’t until I was back home and fumbling through the first few days and dozens of dirty diapers that the habits of Spanish parents – and just how different they were to my own upbringing – shook my baby-lagged brain. Fast fashion: my mom sewed all of my clothes growing up I grew up without technology and in an American family in a large suburb of Chi ..read more
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