There's no place like home

Hola! Long time no blog writing! I've seen that people are still visiting the website despite the lack of new content recently, so thanks for dropping by! The last few months have been pretty crazy. Long story short, my family and I moved back to Barcelona at the end of last year and I joined a research group working on prostate cancer (more on that later). Things are going well so far but there have been a lot of things to sort out, not least getting my kids settled in school. Kids are pretty resilient at this age (they just turned 4) but there has been a lot of change in a short period of time.

It got me thinking about the concept of home, which for some is an easy thing to define, but for others it is more complicated. My wife and I grew up near London, England, and sometimes still refer to it as home, but we are now settled in Catalonia, we have embraced the local culture, and are doing our best to learn Spanish and Catalan, something we hope will come much easier to our kids. When people ask I always say I'm from London (or the UK) but the longer we are here, the more Barcelona feels like home.

Some people say that home is where your famliy is. My immediate family has always been in England, but my wider family is spread across Europe and the US. I recently spent several days away from my wife and kids as they returned to the UK to visit family while I remained in Barcelona. On the one hand it was nice to have some time to catch up with friends and relax, but on the other, it always feels odd to be away from them.

So perhaps it is not necessary to think of home as a specific place, but rather the feeling of having the people you love around you. Anyway, that felt like a slightly rambling post, and for the next one I will get back to some science, and tell you more about what I'm working on now, but I guess it was just a way to say hello again.

Hasta luego!