a busy week — and the week that i finally made it to the local library! i had been there before moving to aveiro, but now i actually went to make myself a library card and get some books.

i also registered for a mail art workshop they were doing this same week, and so i went there twice! for the workshop, each of us had to create a series of 16 cards, to be included in a kind of time capsule. i picked a kind of industrial theme, with technical manuals, stamps and geometric rubberstamps that the teacher provided. it was hard to make so many specimens in a couple of ours, but i managed! i ended up loving the ones that the children drew most of all.

but i guess the most surprising news of the week is that i bought a ukelele! i’ve been thinking of getting one for years and every time i heard amanda palmer sing the ukelele anthem, i would sing along with her “they’re only $19.99, that isn’t lots of moneeeeey! 🎶“.
so when the music shop down the street put up a sign saying their last units were on sale AND they had a yellow one (!!), i couldn’t resist. for now, i’m stumbling my way through the major chords and strumming patterns, taking it slowly until my fingers get some kind of callus. but i can’t wait to be able to play and sing at the same time — it’s a silly little thing that makes me happy. :)

what else? there was a nice vietnamese place we tried and also lots of pears from the parents farm! pears make me a little wary, because in order to pick them, my dad has to don the beekeeper’s suit and brave the asian hornets buzzing around the pear tree. one of my uncles ended up in the hospital after being bitten by one of those, so…

the pears are lovely though, and as usual, the village is full of small religious festivities on the weekends. whenever we go to one of these, we always find multiple family members there, either participating or just watching!

a quiet week in aveiro. little niece has 2 weeks of holiday from kindergarten, so she’s at her grandparents in celorico. we came back from there with a trunk full of produce, and as usual, struggle to eat everything before it goes bad.

it was a quietly productive week too — the first week in a long time in which we didn’t have to take some hours from the holidays to run errands. we saw the odyssey with friends, and it was as epic as promised. other than that, nothing special, mostly work, study and food. we went to bertrand and fnac and found some nice books for kids.

the chinese political & intellectual foundations course continues, now with a lot of confucian and daoist philosophers making an entrance. this is the first of five harvard courses on china, and i’m really enjoying the format. the assigned reading is the part i struggle with the most, but it feels manageable for now.

i also got a cool new pizza-themed jason polan tshirt that uniqlo just launched… and promptly made it dirty eating pizza… so it was sad but also felt somewhat appropriate.

a week in spain, and the main event was of course the eclipse!

seeing a total solar eclipse has been on our list for years, but i think it rose higher on the list in the last decade or so, as the US saw a couple of them that missed us here in europe. seeing videos from our favourite youtubers about their experiences of a total eclipse solidified the goal and the certainty that, if one ever came near us, we’d go see it. and would there ever be a better chance than when the eclipse comes to your neighbors across the border? so, a couple of years ago, we put it on the calendar and started planning.

we scouted a few locations on the days before the main event, and landed next to a field of sunflowers… with dozens of others who had the same idea. initially, we thought we’d like the quiet solitude, but there’s a kind of magic in being with others too in this kind of events.

and the eclipse itself was beautiful, of course. it’s hard to explain, even when you’ve seen it with your own eyes. when the moon finally positions itself in front of the sun and you finally take your glasses off, all you see is this huge white corona stretching outwards from a black circle… whoa. rationally, you know what is going to happen, but at the same time you feel like a pre-historic peasant fearing the end of the world (what did i do that angered the gods…?!).

it felt a little bit like the earthquake in sichuan — like something unstoppable, humungous and completely outside of your control is happening around you. it feels immense, and it makes you feel tiny too, like your life and your petty problems are so insignificant in the grand scheme of things. the planets and stars will align and do their thing, regardless of your worries and dramas.

and somehow it also feels really emotional, to be alive and able to see this thing happen, and to share in the beauty and joy and amazement with others. a bit like this.

so i’m glad we went to see it, and i think we’ll probably try to catch a few more in our lifetime, if we can, and bring others with us. other than that, the week was just work, some spanish meals and the very cuddly cat we shared the apartment with in valladolid. :)