...and now, News from Portugal (Luisa)

Here is the second email that Luisa forwarded to us:



Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2007
Subject: and now, news from Portugal!

Ola amigos!

Well, here i am after a great week of holidays with my family in Portugal. I caught a flight out of brussels last friday and i leave here on monday. i took the opportunity to get reaquianted with brussels, walked the grand place, saw the mannequipiss (sp?), ate a waffle, and sampled chocolates in one of many choclateries...europe is great!

this week I have spent visiting family, doing some sight seeing and eating...oh my goodness! The portuguese tease that they are last in pretty much everything within the European Union, but the one thing they do undoubtedly well is eat!! I have eaten tons of fresh fish, well seasoned meat dishes, cod fish cakes, rissois (shrimp cakes) and lovely desserts....YUM! We went out for fast food last sunday. Well, fast food being you walk into the restaurant and select the fresh fish you want from large boxes of ice at the front...they grill it up nicely for you, and to accompany this comes baked potatoes and a salad and your choice of wine...of course, the meal is not complete without a homemade dessert and espresso coffee! See the pictures attached :)

My family is here in the central part of portugal, around lisbon. we are heading north tomorrow to the second largest city Porto to visit my cousin and stay the night. we will be touring the port wine cellars of the area (the brits developed a monolopy here of port wine hundreds of years ago) and sampling, of course!

So that is me in a nutshell. Mark is picking me up in Brussels on Monday with his friend Alan in tow, and we are then heading to Paris for a couple of days of sightseeing. Then we are meeting up with 2 other friends to spend a few days in Argentiere (french alps) doing some snowboarding. i will probably only indulge in one day of this...i'm not as pro as the rest of them! no worries, the apres ski promises to be great: phil is bringing French wine (for those who don't know him, he is currently studying in france), mark is bringing belgian beer and dutch cheese, and i am bringing port wine and portuguese sausage. very international indeed!

Now i am rambling...cheers to you all, and send me news of what you're up to...i will respond with a personal email, i promise!

Luisa

News from Mark - Finally

Actually, it's news from Luisa rather than Mark. It appears that they have to work on their communication. Luisa thought Mark was sending us updates, and Mark thought Luisa was doing that. Hmmm. Here is a snip from an email from Luisa:

I must apologize--I thought Mark was forwarding to you our updates from over here, and he thought you were on my master list...sorry! As a result i am going to send many forwards your way with brief summaries of our adventures and of course some pictures.

...and here is the email that she forwarded:
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2007 02:37:08 -0800 (PST)
Subject: CARNAVAL in Breda!

Hallo!

Well, this past weekend was a blast here in Breda. In most of Europe they celebrate Carnaval--a once Catholic celebration (I believe) before entering the somber time of Lent. In this area Monday and Tuesday were holidays--schools were closed and very few stores/services were available. So pretty much, 4 days of parades, all day drinking, costumes and lots of music! Even during the day the dance bars are open, blaring folky music...kids dancing and parents drinking...It definitely puts our Halloween to shame!


I just can't stress enough that EVERYONE was dressed up in random, colorful outfits, complete with make-up at all times of the day! Mark and I partook on the parades, and headed out in the evenings too. We hadnt really planned for costumes...we went out the first night and were the ONLY ones not in costume! so we quickly remedied that with odds and ends we brought with us. Mark used his very colorful guatemala pants (some of you have had the pleasure), and i went as gypsy like as i could. ha ha, makeup does wonders! When i headed out yesterday i thought surely the debotchery was over, but no, at 12 noon, the bars were full of people in costume, dancing away...

Its very much an event for people of all ages. parents and kids, teenagers, young adults, and even older adults (our grandparents ages!) without kids--they participate for the love of it!

Last night we attended a very unusual service...the mascot of the carnaval is the Baron. He dies after all the festivities. so they hold a "funeral" procession for him. There were probably about 100 people involved in the actual ceremony...people dressed as mourners, nuns, priests, court jesters, angels, the grimm reaper, 2 bands, high society, beggers...all us onlookers were given candles too to make it vigil like. everyone was silent...finally, the dead baron is paraded into the square (a grown man, who i faintly recognized from the restaurant we went to for dinner...) complete with flies on his nose....RANDOM!

I head to Portugal on Friday--can't wait! Mark will stay behind and work...but might head to England for a few days.

I'm attaching some pictures, hope i've minimized them enough! Hope all is well on that end--keep us in the loop! We still havent met many locals yet, but Mark is going to a co-workers party this weekend and his job is to make us friends. we'll see how he does

Dag!

Luisa

Spring Thaw or Winter's Demise?

What a difference between the previous two weeks and this last week. The previous weeks we had white-outs and icy winter conditions taking the temperature to -23 degrees C, one 50-car and another 72-car pile-up on the same 400 highway in the same afternoon, and then this week we saw the temperature rise to a balmy +4 today. However, spring comes at a price as these photos illustrate.

We can now look forward to at least a month of dirty grey-brown heaps of ice as the lovely, white, melting snow exposes all the debris and muck and dirt that was shovelled up at the beginning of winter and then covered over with fresh falls of snow as the winter progressed. It left me wondering if the melting of the polar icecaps due to global warming is going to provide a new paradise for palaeontologists, enabling them to sift through the fossil accumulations of millenia becoming exposed in a matter of a generation or two. How exciting !:-(


In the middle of February the universities had reading week so that students could prepare for their examinations. Stephen and some of his friends felt that the best way to prepare would be to take a snowboarding trip to Whistler Mountain in British Columbia. After that he came home for the weekend so that he could celebrate his birthday with Mom's Home Cooking and a family get-together. Even Mark, who is in Holland, got in on the act with a phone call courtesy of Skype which meant we could see him on the home computer.

Left, Stephen talking to Mark in Holland. Judith and her boyfriend in background.













Right, Mark talking to the family.



Mark has just come back to Breda, Holland, where is new home is for the year, after a week of snowboarding in the French Alps. He must be exhausted. Please pause for a moment to feel sorry for him.

Luisa's (Mark's girlfriend) good news is that she has been accepted to do her Master's at the University of Toronto, to start in September. Congratulations, Luisa.

Judith and her boyfriend are off to Kingston and Ottawa for four days this coming week. During the school March break most of the universities have Open Days for interested high school students to come and see and ask their questions. Judith is planning on studying kinesiology, Mark to do engineering.




Judith had her ears pierced last week. Click on the image to enlarge and see the earing.


Ingrid went along and had one ear peirced that had closed up.