I love it when school's out for summer. The feeling you have on the last day of school as a kid is like no other. It's a terrific feeling. The feeling of freedom. Our kids graduated from 10th and 8th grade at the end of May. We didn't give them much time to rejoice and whisked them off to Barcelona for a few days at JBCNConf and a bit of family vacation.
Oh my, it was so much fun! First of all, there's nothing like traveling to a foreign land, bringing some of your favorite people with you, and getting to experience it with old and new friends. We arrived on Sunday and experienced a wonderful evening at a conservatory for the JBCNConf speaker's dinner.
Monday was Memorial Day in the US, so we took advantage of our day off and booked a trip with Spanish Trails to explore Montserrat. Montserrat is a rocky mountain range in Catalonia, Spain. "Montserrat" translates to "saw mountain" in Catalan, owing to its jagged, sawtooth appearance.
On Tuesday morning, I took Abbie and Jack to JBCN4Kids and they learned all about game programming in Spanish. Their Spanish skills were tested, and there was an excellent keynote by Brian Goetz in the middle of it all.
That afternoon, Josh Long and I planned and practiced our Full Stack Reactive workshop. We had a nice lunch with my family and Mario that day too. Josh and I delivered our workshop on Wednesday morning.
If you'd like to see the slides @starbuxman and I never used during our Full Stack Reactive Workshop at @jbcnconf, we published them on @speakerdeck:https://t.co/LPyJvCxod6
— Matt Raible (@mraible) May 29, 2019
Thanks to everyone who attended. We had a wonderful time! ??#reactive#java#springwebflux#reactjs
The legendary @mraible and I got to close down @jbcnconf with a 2h workshop. Thanks to all those who joined! Couldn’t ask for a better co-presenter, audience, or way to spend the day. I love my life. pic.twitter.com/EbuqdblSsJ
— Josh Long (???, ???, ???? ????, ??? ????) (@starbuxman) May 29, 2019
Our family vacation in El Vendrell began shortly after that.
We enjoyed the experience so much, Trish and I are thinking about spending even more time in Spain next year.
Goodbye, Barcelona! ?? ????
— Matt Raible (@mraible) June 1, 2019
We had a splendid adventure touring your mountains, city, and beaches. ??@TrishPhoto is intrigued by the notion of visiting again next year.@spring_io and @jbcnconf 2020 with remote work in between? Sounds fun! ???? pic.twitter.com/340myZ1wai
For more photos, see our album's on Flickr: my Barcelona, JBCNConf, and Boston 2019 or Trish's Barcelona 2019.
On the way home, we stopped in Boston and hung out with Trish's brother's family. Our niece, Morgan, graduated high school. We are very proud of her and had a blast celebrating the event.
We started off summer pretty well so far. We've been to Barcelona, Boston, and even had a weekend of whitewater rafting on Fathers Day weekend. Life is good in the Raible Hood! 😊