Our favorite weekend brunch... breakfast burritos and homemade orange juice (mine mixed with sparkling water, of course!). Isn't it always more fun to drink your homemade juice in champagne flutes??
Monday, January 16th
If you've read any other entries in my blog, you already know that I love a good bargain, but they are often hard to find in Portugal. The only place that regularly has great deals is our little German grocery store, Lidl. We love them and shop there weekly. But just to further prove that even at our favorite place, the discounts are occasionally hard to come by... This sign says "Cheaper!", and if you read the small price to left of the bigger one, you can see how much. FOUR CENTS. You can see it was 5.99 and now it's 5.95. Not only that, it was 4 cents of 6.00€, which is a measely 0.6%. (We're talking less than 1% discount, friends). In my opinion, it probably cost more than 4 cents to print that big orange sign! And now you know why it's so hard to save money in Portugal.
Tuesday, January 17th
Today we had dinner to celebrate a new apartment that our dear friend and colleague, Marisa, just moved into. Check out those amazing Portuguese tiles on the wall! Marisa is an Occupational Therapist with Luis at the APCC, and was one of my first Portuguese friends, as we met at the Power Soccer World Cup in Japan in 2007. She is one of the kindest people I know, we love spending time with her, and we're so glad that she now lives 15 minutes closer to us!
Wednesday, January 18th
It was so cold all day, and specifically in our house when we got home, that I felt the need to pull out the fuzzy socks. So sad that our Packers won't be playing the SuperBowl this year, but since our love for them never fails, I'm still wearing the socks to support the greatest football team ever!
Thursday, January 19th
Today at the APCC (yes, I know I need to write a blog specifically about our work... it's coming!), we celebrated receiving a certification of quality which puts our organization on a high level in the community, and in Portugal as a whole. The entire staff was invited to the small ceremony where our president received the certificate, and after, we celebrated with a bit of champagne, natural orange juice, and sweet and salty snacks created at the biological farm associated with our Center. A few of my colleagues had never heard of "mimosas" -- champagne mixed with fresh orange juice -- and so I felt the need to introduce them! They liked it a lot more than their faces show in this photo, I promise.
After living here for over a year, I have come to find that my hairstyle is not very common, which makes finding a hairsylist to cut this precious hair pretty difficult. For those of you who love your stylist (as I did with my dear Richie in Atlanta), think about how stressful it would be to switch to a new one... much less a new one that doesn't speak your native language! I found a great stylist just after we moved, and then, of course, he decided to open a salon in London 3 months later. Didn't want to pay as much as his replacement was asking, so on to #2, who was perfect the first time and made me cry the second, so I tried the third this past week. It wasn't exactly what I wanted, but it was close, so she said I could come back a few days after it "settled" and she would thin out or fix up anything I wanted. True to her promise, she did so yesterday. Before seeing the photo, you should probably know that the name of the salon is "Radical", as was her choice in clothing, hoisery, and footwear yesterday:
Saturday, January 21st
With a 60º day today full of sunshine, we decided to take a walk around our neighborhood after our delicious [from scratch] pancake and [homemade] syrup lunch (which ALMOST made the one-per-day photo today). Since I assume not many Americans know what Portuguese houses look like, I decided to include a house that I really love, right around the corner from our condo building. A lot of Portuguese houses are built into huge buildings or connected to other walls/properties, making them not look like stand-alone houses, but these types are fairly new, probably built in the last 15 years. I love the stained glass window in the front of this one, and the balcony on the other side!
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