Where were we?

I am outside of Vila de Nova de Poiares, outside of Coimbra, with my latest WWOOF family. This family is a Mom and her 4 kids: Paula, Zoe, Manu, Marley, and Caia. The dad, Calu, lives down the road with his new wife Rita and 3 more kids. They are an amazing family, the majority of the food that they eat is all grown on the family farm, which the mom more or less runs by herself. Even the bread is homemade, coming from wheat and rye that they grow. They are also in a family band (reggae) called One Love Family and are heavily influenced by the Rasta lifestyle. I have only been here for a week and I am already leaving tomorrow, but they were an awesome group to spend time with. I was able to practice some of my Portuguese with native speakers and help them some with their English too.

Catching up a bit, the rest of the time at Dorine´s was amazing, as could be expected. Here 60 something year old friend came down to visit. Erma was a retired doctor and had more energy than I did, the three of us all had a good time together. Then I followed Laura (the german WWOOFer) back to my first host Susan's and we spent a couple of days there and drove into Spain to see Seville (Pictures below). We only spent one night there but I would go back in a heartbeat if I had the chance. It was a wonderful 36 hrs of completely ignorant tourism. We knew nothing of the city and had no guidebook so we simply walked around and visited whatever caught our eye. It is a beautiful, old city with lots of old buildings and luscious parks. Oh yeah and while walking out of a grocery store I ran into one of my International Students from Macalester, Tamara. She is studying abroad in Seville, but neither of us knew that the other was even in the country until we were standing face to face! We spent an afternoon catching up and talking about Mac and it was wonderful.

From Seville we went back to Susan´s and then onto Lisbon, for another quick tourist stop. Lisbon is hilly!! It was crazy to be in a huge city again and we got to see a lot of the city and two art museums (Pictures below). At the time I felt unimpressed with the museums, but looking back at my pictures I think that they actually weren´t so bad. Laura went back to Germany (I might see her again in Iceland???) and I came here.

Tomorrow I will head up to Porto where my last Portuguese host will pick me up and take me to his cattle ranch. Wish me luck!

Leftover from Lagoa I really like this one.
A snapshot from a daytrip to Lagos, a touristy city on the SW coast.
Cathedral in Seville.
Castle in Seville.

The parks were amazing.

Old timey tram in Lisbon, still functional.
Zipper!? In Lisbon!?

The coolest clock that I have ever seen.
The coolest mustard dish I have ever seen.
Medusa.

Donno anything about him but he´s cool.


Meerkats, for some reason they were a part of the Darwin exhibit at an art museum.

House here in Poiares.

The older boy´s room and the pine covered mountains in the background.
The back of the hamlet that our house is in.

Well that´s all for now, still don´t know where I am going in May, but I bet it will be somewhere good. My mom and Grady come out in 3 weeks now, exciting!