Nicole's Adventures

October 5th is a public holiday (Republic Day) in Portugal which landed on a Friday this year! Finally a holiday that would land on a Friday to make a three day weekend! I had wanted to visit Geres for a long time and since we are always trying to get in our Kilimanjaro Training Hikes no better time to visit! We stayed at Ermida Geres campground and at first had a lot of area in the tent area to ourselves. By the time we came back from our walk the tent area was full. As an American who grew up camping, I am still in shock with our two Portuguese camp ground experiences. This one had baby trees dividing out the spots. You are to park your car and place your tent in the same little area. So cars, tents, cars, tents, are packed in literally like sardines.  In Figuiera da Foz campground we had a little more space but neighbors are still very close by! It isn't like in the US or in Australia where each car and spot has their own little driveway and plenty of space in between spo...

Ok onto the fun stuff! The travels of the year!  My mom came to visit for 5 weeks from the end of March until May. It was really nice to have her here to keep us company, do some gardening work, and we went on a little trip as well during her time here. In Portugal we went to Coimbra together for the day, Soito to enjoy the Senora da Granja festival, and Obidos. My mom also visited Lisbon on her own. In between her visits in Portugal we headed to Toulouse where we visited our great friends who are French but raised their girls, similar in age to myself in the Phoenix! One of their daughters lives in NY and Melissa was currently staying with her parents but kind of floating around working in sustainable fashion design. She was working on a project while we were there creating a dress from plastic bottles! I loved seeing some of her photos of her work!  Anyways, They moved back to France after Melissa graduated High School in AZ early. It was so much fun to catch ...

July 31st Yay I think I can finally say summer has officially arrived, though only a few weeks ago in my opinion. I am finally able to wear shorts inside the house and not be cold! The last month or so we haven't had any big rains and usually the sun is shining. A few days of clouds or overcast every now and again. I have a hard time picking up my computer now days after a full and long day of work and classes and staring at the screen. Usually by the time I finish 5 hours (6 ish in summer holidays) of working, the last thing I want to do is look back into the computer light! So I blame my lack of blogging on that. Mel has grown to an astronomical 37 kilos! Soo she gained 31 kilos from when we rescued her! She is just a little bit overweight though so she is on a little diet to get her hips back in shape! She has really calmed down quite a bit but still has moments! And she still needs lots of practice meeting new people! With different people she is still jumping up on th...

My trip to the US went by sooo quickly! I was sad to be away from Joel (and MEL) for the first three weeks but the time really flew and both of us were so busy it went by in a blink! I flew home on December 6th. For the first time in my flying history... or that I can remember the airline lost my bag! My flight from Porto to Madrid landed late and my 2 hour connection turned into a 40 minute connection. This would have been okay if I didn't have to cross the world in that time. I was running to make it through. I was one of the last passengers to board my Madrid-Chicago flight. When I arrived in Chicago I was going to have to recheck my bag after clearing customs.. So I already knew in Chicago that it didn't make it. I definitely suffered from a bit of jet lag and kept waking up in the early mornings, which was okay when I decided to teach a few classes during my break and not lose all my kiddos. When I taught classes at home it was usually from 5am to 7am.. however I did ha...