these last few months have been quite intense, and i didn’t have much time to sit down quietly and do these videos… but now it’s time to catch up!
may was go-go-go! we stepped onto 3 different countries (5 if you count some layovers)! ? it’s way too much moving around, but we got to see family, explore tuscany with friends, and then jump over to stockholm where we saw yet more friends. :) there was a lot of touristing around, and a lot of enjoying art, good food and sunny days.
a quiet week at home, catching up and doing house things. it fills me with a quiet kind of joy, to be here, without many plans or much else going on for the rest of the month. this is the month where friends usually visit the region on their holidays, so we get to meet them for ice-cream or a meal. it feels good.
so we worked, i lifted heavy stuff at the gym (and did some sauna too!) and then the AC people finally came and replaced the broken ACs. things looked good, until one of them started dripping water after a while… ? so, maybe we’ll need to fix that too at some point. for now, we’re doing a good job of ignoring the problem.
we saw the trailer to project hail mary a while ago, and this week a friend mentioned the audiobook to me. i’m in a bit of a reading slump at the moment, not really feeling like finishing anything i started… so i gave it a go and holy cow, the narration is amazing! the book feels like a mix of cinematic scenes and stream-of-consciousness rambling inside someone’s head, and ray porter (the voice actor) brings it all to life in a way that is blowing me away. i just want to keep listening to it all the time!
this week we’ve also experimented with a 10 hour work day. i’m a fan of trying things out in regards to work schedules, and seeing what works. we’ve previously tried working in cycles of 2 days (one for 8 hours, one for 2 hours), and this 10 hour work day is a kind of more extreme version of that. the benefit though, is that if you can make it, every other day becomes a free day! it can become a bit inflexible though, because you really cannot schedule much else on these full work days… but we’re giving it a try when we can, and see how it goes.
towards end the week, the full moon shone like a big biscuit in the sky and we watched “the new year that never came” on the outdoor cinema that takes place every summer in tavira. the movie was a tragicomedy that runs parallel to the romanian revolution. it was interesting, though i was very tired… night sessions are hard for people with insomnia.
aaaaaah… there was too much going on and i missed a few weeks. let’s see if i can recall what happened.
week 29 was a really good week. we celebrated postcrossing’s 20th anniversary (can you believe it?!) on a monday, and spent the whole day on a call/livestream with other postcrossers that miraculously took place without a hitch.
the rest of the week was just quietly recovering from that, but also enjoying the last art lesson of the season and the yearly outdoor film festival that started this week. we only caught one film (black dog) this time, but it was interesting because it showed what was happening on a very different part of china at the same time we lived there.
the local book fair was taking place too, and we checked it out and stocked on even more illustrated books that we’ll eventually gift to little niece and other children. it’s always a pleasure to discover the classics and also new ones – i should write a post about my favorites!
weeks 30 and 31 were spent in the north, celebrating family’s birthdays (the boy’s dad turned 88 and little niece turned 2), enjoying the summer bounty and suffering from a mysterious itchiness that came out of nowhere (and thankfully seems to have mostly abated now).
towards the end, we spent a couple of days in aveiro, to scout the city and see how we liked it. i’d like to spend more time closer to little niece, and we’re kind of considering potentially living in the area in the future… but i confess i didn’t fall in love with the place at first sight. :( we’ll see what the future holds!
my brother bought a super cool electric bike though and thus joined the e-bike gang. he’s been using it quite a bit and the kid likes it too!
media wise, i finished the fourth wing saga, and then devoured atmosphere in a few days — probably my favorite book of the year so far. maybe i’m in a “space stories” phase, because i’m currently listening to andy weir’s project hail mary, and being blown away. also read nem todas as árvores morrem de pé, a portuguese book for a change! and we watched nobody wants this on netflix, which was sweet.
we’re back home this week, and it feels good to be back to our bed, to my desk and monitor and treadmill, to the beach nearby, to the sunny embrace of the south. the garden has gone berserk in our absence, but even that feels like the good kind of chaos.
we saw royal bermuda‘s concert. went back to being chased by zombies near the beach. drew some faces in art class. cooked moussaka. ate leftovers from the freezer. went to the french bakery for some nice almond croissants and came back with a book about whales of azores. printed some photos for the scrapbook. voted.
everything feels like it’s in its right place, somehow.
have you ever seen one of these stickers?
i had never even heard of baden-württemberg before i started noticing these oval stickers eeeeeeverywhere around the world… first in thailand, then here in portugal, then in france and germany… they’re all over the place and their yellow oval shape really sticks out. it’s become kind of game for us, to see who is the first person to spot one in a touristy place!
whoever came up with this marketing campaign for the region was probably a genius. either that or Baden-Württemberg has the fiercest fans, and they want to make their region very famous!