hoooooome! we returned south this week, to our home sweet home. the main train got delayed by some signal malfunction in alentejo, forcing us to catch the very last train connection home, which meant we had to switch to a bus in fuseta because of the nightly electrification works of the south line. it was a looooong ride, but we made it!

i read a lot on the train, and ended up finishing 3 books this week: wintering, the thursday murder club #1 and contos da montanha. they’re all so different, but all interesting in their own way. i don’t remember if i had ever read anything from miguel torga beyond loose poems, but contos da montanha was a fascinating (and depressing) trip into early 20th century rural portugal, featuring a lot of the stories and vocabulary one hears from their northern grandparents.

in other news, the tomato plants have gone wild and the big surprise is that we now have soybeans! we got the seeds in the netherlands, and i planted them just for fun, but it seems like we can do this! right now they’re tiny, and i’m curious to see if we can grow them to full size and eat a dish of edamame. that would be cool!

summer is the time when we end up seeing friends who are holidaying nearby, and this week we had dinner with 2 different groups of friends and their respective children.

i had forgotten we had booked tickets to david fonseca’s concert, which was this past wednesday! it was a retrospective concert, looking back on his 25 year career, and it was a whole thing, with quirky video effects and lots of dancing and shouting the lyrics of songs that we’re very familiar with. it was so much fun!

so it’s maybe hard to believe that despite all of these things, the week was mostly a quiet one, hiding from the heat and trying to catch up with work. this is the run-up to world postcard day, and there is so much to do. it was go go go!