Category: weeknotes

weeknotes, 31/24

one week spent with the family, taking parents to doctor appointments, working from the library, running errands and watching the olympics in the in-betweens…

the highlight of the week was baby niece’s birthday party! the parents gathered family and friends in aveiro for a little celebration, and there was a shaun-the-sheep themed cake made by a neighbor, a little swimming pool for the kids, music and lots of food and drinks. and the baby was happy the whole afternoon, despite having skipped her nap!

we gifted her (and the parents) year passes to the local zoo, so they can go with her whenever they want. i hope they like it!

and since we were in aveiro, we spent some hours exploring the city. we still don’t know it very well, but it seems nice at first glance… more explorations required!

weeknotes

weeknotes, 30/24

another week spent with family, the whole reason for coming up north! little niece was sick for a bit, but recovered in time to spend the weekend with us in celorico again, while her parents attended a wedding. her favorite thing is this downward dog yoga pose:

also, squashing her face against glass doors:

her other grandparents came to spend one day with us, and we had a meeting of four grandparents, all very smitten!

sadly, by the end of the weekend she was feverish again… sigh. toddler’s life is hard.

weeknotes

weeknotes 27/24

a hot week spent mostly at home, catching up with work, eating tiny tomatoes from the garden and not much else! :) i guess we needed some time to reset and rest, after last week’s excitement.

i cut my hair really short, which feels like something i do every few years. i hate dealing with hair, and when it’s long, it’s just a huge hassle every time i have to wash it (and particularly in the swimming pool). short hair is so much easier!

we had pizza night, and saw good will hunting. i’ve been making my way through circe and enjoying the ride through greek mythology. it’s the time of the year in which there are street performances in town every night, and yesterday we watched desanuda with some ice-cream. feels like summer has really arrived now, and we’re here for it!

weeknotes

weeknotes 26/24

we spent week 26 on a houseswap in lisbon, mostly catching up with friends, visiting bookshops and filling our bellies with good food. it was brilliant! we were spoiled for choice, and ended up going out everyday to try some exotic dish, or check out a bookstore, bakery or chocolate shop that we had previously bookmarked.

right now, i think i love our quiet southern corner too much to consider living in a big city again… but these escapades feel like much needed field trips into a different dimension. the people! the metro! the diversity! stuff happening everywhere! whoa! it’s almost too much.

the bookshops were very nice and particularly it’s a book, which has just illustrated books! kids’ books are my soft spot, and it’s amazing to be able to look through the books before buying them (as opposed to getting them online, which is why i have to do back home). needless to say, we brought home quite a few to gift to little niece, when the time comes.

we also saw rodrigo leão’s concert, our initial reason to go to lisbon. it was a soothing show, with voices and tunes that we are so familiar with, songs that we used to have on repeat 20 years ago.

sadly, i got covid at some point… four years after the start of the pandemic, the virus finally got to us. it wasn’t that bad though, just some fever, throat pain and malaise. a lot of napping! we watched the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, and i read half of sally rooney’s normal people from our host’s bookcase… now i need to find the book in the library to read the rest!

just life weeknotes

weeknotes, 24-25/24

the most exciting thing these weeks was probably bike upgrade. i’ve taken it on several rides, and it’s just pure joy!

because it’s the end of the school year, the chinese teacher thought it would be a good idea to do an exam on the last week of the course, and it was a disaster. i don’t know if she realizes the only reason i do ok in the classes is because i spend hours preparing for each of them, meticulously looking up every word in the lesson that i might not know. 😅 anyway, the class is now over, and in the summer ahead i want to try to focus on speaking practice, because i feel it’s the area where i am less good at. i can read ok at a basic level, and i understand when people are explaining things to me… but speaking is a whole other beast.

speaking of chinese, this week we were watching the 3 body problem on netflix, and i understood this screen that showed up!

i guess most of the time i don’t feel like i’ve been doing much progress at all in this language learning journey, because the process is just 99% work and frustration… but then, 1% of the time something like this pops up and it feels like magic!

also these weeks, the boy had the second shot of the miracle injection™, and it was my birthday too! i turned 42, had brunch with my brother, and then kidnapped niece LJ for 24 hours, so we could kiss those chubby cheeks to our heart’s content. 🥰

she’s still the most chilled baby ever, and loves tomatoes with a passion but can’t quite manage the tiny ones yet… more for me! :D our tiny raised bed in the backyard is now entering tomato season, and i’ve planted some soy beans after the last peas were gone. hoping to have some edamame at some point!