A Few Instagram Accounts to Follow

 Wow. It has been a long time since I have posted anything on this blog. 

I have been dreaming of going back for a visit (I was actually there a few years ago, but didn't post to my blog during that trip). But with dreams comes scoping out what others have been posting. I thought I'd share some Instagram accounts that share beautiful photos for you to visit:

Photos from all nine Islands:

https://www.instagram.com/discover_azores/

https://www.instagram.com/visitazores/

And Sao Miguel specifically:

https://www.instagram.com/sao_miguel/

That's all for now! Enjoy.

Local Fruit and Vegetables

I haven’t eaten this much meat since…well, since the last time I visited here probably. It seems very strange that there’s a lack of vegetables here. Meanwhile, there is a dearth of local fruit. Perhaps it’s the season, but people seem to be more interested in fruit than vegetables when it comes to food that actually grows.

My parents and grandma have a substantial garden to grow food compared to us urbanites. They have potatoes, taro root, an assortment of beans and collard greens (of the infamous caldo verde soup). Then there’s the fruit. They have orange trees and Brazilian guavas. In their yard!

Other local fruit include the baby bananas that I’ve been eating with breakfast everyday and the local pineapple, which is sweeter and more orange in colour than the pineapples you see from Hawaii. My mom’s friend also recently gave us some lemons from her yard. They’re strange little lemons. The look like tiny oranges and their juice looks orange. But they’re sour like lemons.

So yes, back to the meat. Perhaps it’s just my family, but god, there’s a lot of meat in their diet. My mom or grandma will make chicken, and in the pot there’s the chicken and then the local sausage and potatoes. If my mom is the cook, she’ll add carrots, but it doesn’t cross my grandma’s mind to put any carrots in! She says that she’s no rabbit.

TV in the Azores

I just saw An Officer and a Gentleman on TV in the Azores. I was going to write about the movie and how it introduced us all to what soon became the most over used wedding song ever (…okay, maybe not ever, but certainly if you went to any weddings in the ‘80s, there’s a good chance that the bride and groom’s first dance was to “Up Where We Belong.”), but instead, I thought I’d introduce you all to Azorean TV.

When I first started coming here as a child, my grandparents only had two channels—the local, Azorean channel, RTP, and another one from the mainland. Lucky for me, my grandpa recorded all the English movies he came across (hence my introduction to one of my all time favourites, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off). Today my parents have cable with 36 channels—one of which is still the local RTP.

A good portion of channels are in English with Portuguese subtitles and are recognizable to us at home. There’s the Discovery Channel, the National Geographic Channel, the History Channel, the Turner Movie Classics Channel, and oddly, something called Fox Life. Fox Life showcases a lot of dramas and sitcoms including Desperate Housewives, the Ghost Whisperer, and How I Met Your Mother. I don’t mind having so many English channels to rely on. I don’t have cable at home, so it’s practically all new to me and the Portuguese channels are hard to follow since my language skills aren’t up to par.

The odd thing is that most of the shows that are in Portuguese are telenovelas. These are over the top soap operas with a story arc that lasts a season. They are on all the time. There are two that my parents like to watch at lunchtime. One has something to do with Brazilians in Italy and the mafia. A car blew up in one episode that was full of children. In the other, it’s olden times, the 1800’s I would guess. I have no idea what’s going on in it, but there were some courtroom scenes. I do like seeing the costumes they arrange. Then there's the one this images comes from. There are wolves, I guess. I kind of wish they had English subtitles so I could catch more.

Then there are other ones on at dinner time and late into the evening. The one my grandma likes to watch is on then and takes place in Lisbon with someone who’s got amnesia or something. Like I said, it’s hard for me to follow—but I’m sure you can throw your own plot line together. Just make sure there’s lots of intrigue and meaningful looks and embraces. Oh and throw some eavesdropping in.

The Weather

Before leaving home, everyone said they were so jealous that I’d get some warm Portuguese weather. Little did they know that the Azores has winter too. Even I, despite visiting the islands many times, was a little dismayed by what welcomed me.

I checked weather reports before I left home and was expecting a balmy 16 degrees Celsius. It may very well be 16 degrees, but it sure doesn’t feel like it. The humidity here is intense, making it seem much, much colder. “It reaches the bones,” as my grandmother likes to say.

At night I’ve been sleeping with a hot water bottle along with a sheet, a wool blanket, a fuzzy blanket, and two afghan blankets. Not to mention sweatpants, a long sleeved top, and socks. And I still feel cold.

Other weather weirdness here includes windstorms. Last night it took me ages to get to sleep because the wind and rain kept beating down on the roof (I sleep in the attic bedroom). Just minutes ago, there was a sudden thunder and lightening storm. It only lasted about ten minutes, but the rainwater poured down the outdoor balcony steps like a river and a small lake appeared on the patio. The electricity even flickered in and out.

Then it stopped. There are now puddles everywhere and it’s still misty outside, but otherwise it’s hard to tell that anything out of the ordinary happened. But that’s just it. This is ordinary. It’s February on these little islands in the Atlantic.

New Blog!

Hello, hello!
As you can probably tell, I've been pretty lazy about posting here, but I'd like to invite you to read my new blog about DVDs (and likely other fun stuff) you can find at the public library! It's called The Shelf Scene. Check it out here.

Resurgence

I nearly forgot that this blog existed. I'm not sure what brought me back to it. Perhaps it's just that as a writer, I'm supposed to be blogging like everyone else seems to do, and since I'm pushing forward with the writing and editing on a freelance basis, I took a look at what I had an d made some revisions. I finally added photos after over a year of ignoring the blog.

I came back from my last trip to the Azores in June of 2007. It's now nearly 2009.

So, I'm no longer in the Azores, but I figure I could still post the odd thing now and again.

My parents sent me some Christmas gifts, including a very strange package. I'd never seen it before. It's Predilecta brand Goiabada Cascão. The English translation on the package is "guava paste with fruit pieces." I haven't opened it. But it's supposed to be like jam. It's actually from Brazil, but obviously there are lots of connections between Brazil and the Azores. I'll post again when I actually taste it. For now, enjoy the photo of the package.

My mom also sent me pair after pair of amazing tights. Interesting looking tights are difficult to find in Canada...or at least in Vancouver. I'm not sure why this is. My mother though, knows that spicing up an outfit with a crazy pair of tights is my style. She sent me at least ten pairs this time in patterns ranging from purple argyle, to green diamonds, to crazy diagonal mosaic in grey, maroon, blue, and purple. This last pair is so amazing that when I first wore them, I hadn't even gotten three blocks from my house before a woman stepping out of her car had to comment on how great they were. Thanks Mommy!

Antiques and Tea

The weather has been far from fabulous lately, and since Sao Miguel really is an outdoor destination, this has made my trip less than perfect. There are, however, a few spots that are fun to visit while it’s raining out.

The Museu M.J. Melo is set up to resemble a small village in times past. Every room encompasses a different type of shop, ranging from a newspaper’s printing room with various printing presses, to a carpenter’s workshop, to a clothing store filled with hats circa the 1920’s, corsets and gloves. For only two Euros a guided tour is provided through the antiques village and guests are made privy to the manner in which local artisans create their work.

There is a room with two looms, one of which was in the middle of producing placemats to be sold in the gift shop. The lady working there told us that threading the machine is one of the most time consuming parts of the job since the fibres have to be laced through a series of strings before the weaving may begin. For decorative affects, recycled fabric is torn into strips and woven into designs. The craftworks make rare and durable bedspreads, rugs, bags, and kitchen cloths, pot-holders et cetera. My mother bought me an assortment of objects for my home, and another bag (I had one from my last visit, which I still receive compliments on).

Another craft made at the museum are miniature sculptures of flowers and rosettes made of washed and dried fish scales, onion skins, and fig tree pulp. A lady was working on fig tree pulp rosettes and explained the process. After the bark is removed from the branch of the fig tree twigs, a razor blade is used to cut paper-thin discs from one end. Depending on how the disc is cut, it could become a leaf or a petal. Leaves are sculpted with a tool resembling a pin, which adds details such as leaf veins. Another fig tree branch is cut so that only the centre remains on the outer side (so that the branch looks like a spoon protruding from a can, only with the spoon sticking straight up). The petals are then glued on using special glue and a pair of tweezers. The work is done in stages, and is thus difficult to determine just how long the process takes. I imagine it is quite tedious work…at least for someone as un-crafty as myself! These works of art are also sold in the gift shop.

Another rainy day destination is the two tea factories on the island, Chá Port Formoso, and Chá Gorreana. The Port Formoso factory includes a video in various languages that tells the history of tea on the island and a guided tour of the machines used today and in the past while the Gorreana factory includes a self-guided tour. Both offer free samples of tea and you are welcome to wander into the field of tea bushes.

Originally tea was brought to Sao Miguel from Brazil as a decorative plant, but during the downfall of the orange trade in the 1800’s, experts were brought from China to teach the Azoreans about tea production. Tea has since thrived here, as there are no natural predators or diseases that can affect the plants here. This also means that the tea is pesticide free. The tea produced in the Azores is the only loose leaf tea grown in Europe. Seventy-five percent of the tea produced is sold in the region, but requests for tea are growing in the US, Canada, and mainland Europe. It’s undeniably the best tea I’ve ever had.