spring flowers, bread-making experiments, walking and cycling around the ria, birdwatching and zooming with friends. looking forward to the lifting of some of the lockdown restrictions, to seeing people in real life and to long hikes! :D
Category: one second everyday
february was rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. many missed days, but also some good stuff.
chatting with friends far away, system updates gone wrong (but saved by backups!), new birds, zoom overload, chinese new year, perseverance on mars, chinese classes, food experiments… and mr. rogers, making us see the good in the world once more. :)
a fresh new year… literally!
we spent most of january huddled under blankets, sitting half a meter from the fireplace, daydreaming about a warm house… or of escaping to a sunnier spot. the pandemic rages on in portugal and so we’re stuck at home. still, we try to make the best of it, chatting with friends online, knitting, working, reading and birdwatching. we’re lucky to have the lagoon so close by — it’s been a lifesaver for stretching our legs on a run or bike ride around the salt ponds now and then. we’ve been trying new routines and schedules, and i’ve been losing weight and messing up with some spreadsheets and beeminder. januaries are good for new starts! :)
oh, 2020… where do we even start?
as the pandemic started in europe, we cancelled all the trips and focused our energy into launching the new forum and the world postcard day, as well as keeping up with postal suspensions all around the world, saving the holidays (and our plans to visit taiwan) for a better year. we went north a few times to check on the family and stock their pantry. i finally got serious about studying chinese and did the HSK4, over 10 years after the first one. we walked, hiked and drove a motorhome. we didn’t see as many people as we would in a normal year, but there were still boardgame nights, and many video dinners with friends. my hair got short and red. we had guests (and dogs!) for the summer, and they got us into birdwatching. the garden bloomed and gave fruits, the succulent collection grew and we switched to eating mostly veggies… so much happened, and it makes me thankful that despite all the worry and distress, 2020 was still a good year for us — a much quieter year, in which we saw less but got more done. maybe we needed that.
may 2021 bring good things too!
december had so much food, walking and birdwatching! i finally did the hsk4 exam and despite some technical hiccups, i think it was probably enough to pass. we drove north to be with our respective families, spending christmas apart for the first time, which was a little bittersweet, but safer. and as a final coup de grâce on this weird year, we managed to lock ourselves out of the house on the last day of the year. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ oh well.