Our Last Trip to Portugal

Our last trip to Portugal was bitter sweet. This place has been our go-to vacation spot for the past 2 years and now where will we go!? For this trip, we finally made it to the island of Madeira, off the coast of Morocco. This little, rocky island was a part of Chuck and Liz's mission and a beautiful vacation spot for a lot of Europeans. The thing about this island is that there is not a flat spot on the whole thing! We counted 18 tunnels that we had to go through in order to get from the airport to the hotel and we went through many more while we were there for 3 more days.

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This is the hike down to one member's home. We parked on the side of the winding mountain road and then walked down for about ¼ mile to get to their home. The new picture at the top of our blog is taken from this home. I think the walk is worth the view!

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Monday was P-day and so Chuck and Liz took the missionaries on a hike around the center of the island. This hike follows the lavadas (or aquaducts) that flow from springs high in the mountains of Madeira. Since the lavadas are at a gentle slope, the hike was not all that hard but we did hike a total of 23 miles (possibly more with all of the detours we took, trying to find the actual trail).

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Matt hiking along and enjoying the beautiful views.

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The group of missionaries that went on the hike with us. These are all of the missionaries that were currently serving on the island of Madeira. I think they all loved spending this time with their mission mom and dad before Chuck and Liz left for the the mainland of Portugal and then back to the US.

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This was our second stop, Calderon Inferno. I bet you could guess why this place is named such…. It was very, very, very hot! The angles of the cliff faces are such that it directs the light (and heat) from the sun, directly down on the trail. It was a pretty place but not one where we wanted to stay for very long.

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One of the many tunnels that we had to walk, duck and shuffle through along this trail. It was quite an adventure since only a few of us had flashlights that actually worked so we never wanted to be left behind in one of these tunnels. They were so long and windy that you could almost never see the end until it was right in front of you.

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Chuck would suggest that you bring a helmet if you ever go on this hike. (He bumped his head quite a few times in the tunnels. In fact, I think most of us bumped our heads at least once on this hike, but not too badly.)

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Back on the mainland of Portugal, Matt and I did what we never thought we would do, take a Yellow Bus Tour. We felt strange being on a tourist bus when we had already been to this city two times before but we were tired and wanted to see the city in a different way. It turned out to be well worth the money as we could hop on and hop off as we wished and we go to see a few places that we had never seen before!

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Another view of the iconic bridge built by Eiffel (Yes, the same man who built the Eiffel Tower in Paris). The view from up higher on the river bank makes the bridge stand out among the red roofs of Porto.

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The hop-on, hop-off capability of the Yellow Bus allowed us to stop and take more pictures or explore side streets as we wished. Here, we just could not pass up the opportunity to take a few photos of this church decorated in the traditional blue painted tiles of Portugal. So stunning, yet simple. I love it!

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After we had rested up on the Yellow bus, we walked around the city a bit more. Instead of walking across the Eiffel bridge on the bottom portion of the bridge, we decided to cross back on the upper deck which is shared by the above-ground metro. Such amazing views of the duoro and the river front shops and resturants from up above! We will miss this city.

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We hopped off the Yellow Bus for lunch at this famous little place, the Cafe Majestic. I very old, very traditional little cafe where we could get traditional Portuguese food such as…

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A francesinha! Basically a ham, sausage, roast beef sandwich covered in melted cheese and drenched in a beer sauce. Simply yummy if you ask me.

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I just had to take a picture of the old leather benches that we sat on in the Cafe Majestic. Worn but still holding on to their original delicate design and high fashion.

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We celebrated the festival of Sao Joao (Saint John the Baptist) by heading down to the river at about 11:30 PM and then watching an AMAZING fireworks show (which was based on 5 or 6 barges anchored in the middle of the river). The show started at midnight and was the kickoff for the festival which includes hitting people on the head with plastic, squeaky hammers, drinking and eating along the duoro and walking the few miles from the river, where the fireworks show is, to the mouth of the river. The idea is that the party ("mob of people") will end up at the river mouth as the sun rises and then everyone goes home to sleep off the night of partying. We only participated in the fireworks show and then headed back up the hill as the mob of party goers was heading down it! It took a very long time to fight the crowd back to the Metro and it turns out that the best way to make your way through a claustrophobic crowd is to hold hands and let me lead the way :) It was my good looks and determination that got us home safely ;) No. I just held up my hand and with Matt and Chuck hanging on for dear life, I pushed up the crowd to the Metro station. A fun night and a great cultural experience!

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Fireworks off the bridge. Just wonderful!

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One of the days we had in Portugal, we went on a little adventure with Liz. She was our driver as we hit some of our favorite spots and then uncovered a few more. This bakery is in Viana de Castello where they make the best bolos in the country! (or at least the northern part) We had to stop for just one more…. :)

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Our next stop with mom was Ponte de Lima. A small town with lots of European charm and a Roman Bridge for which it is famous.

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This side of the bridge in Ponte de Lima is NOT the Roman side but is a continuation of the Roman bridge just the the right of us. These arches are too symmetrical to be Roman. But it was a pretty view back at towards the town itself.

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Then to Lindoso! This is one city which lies inside the Peneda-Geres National Park in Northern Portugal. This castle was closed so we could not walk around inside of it, although Matt found a way in (climbing the outer wall) and walked around in the turrets and on the outer walls. Although these stone things to the right of us in the picture look like ancient stone crypts, they are actually pretty modern granaries. The stone pillars they sit on, keep unwanted rodents and pests from getting inside. They are still used today and are quite neat to look at.

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After leaving Lindoso, we drove up through the mountain roads for a while as we searched for the church de Sao Penera. Its backdrop is supposedly awe inspiring, more so than the church itself, with shear volcanic rock walls behind it that have angular surfaces. However, the roads continued to climb and wind and it was getting later and later, so we decided to just enjoy the mountain views around us and head for home. This is one spectacular view that we saw along the way and Matt was trying to take it all in as our trip to Portugal was coming to an end.

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Some sort of medieval watchtower that we found along the mountain roads above Lindoso. We could not get in (the current owners had placed a metal door in the entrance) but I did climb onto Matt's shoulders to get a look through a window and since I still could not see inside, I reached over the edge with our camera to take a picture. There was a small stairwell at the bottom that lead to a make-shift platform made from an old millstone. Who knows what it was used for but we had fun exploring this old place just the same.

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This is the map that we were following to try and get to the church de Sao Penera. Matt had the idea to take this picture of a sign in the town of Lindoso and then use it as we drove along. But since the map did not have any distances listed, it was a little hard to follow.

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Our last stop in the northern most part of Portugal was to the Spain-Portugal border! Since both countries are a part of the EU, there was no passport control and not even a police station! I don't think that I can claim that I have been to Spain but it was fun to cross the border, none the less.

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And just like that, it was time to leave. It was a little strange saying goodbye to Chuck and Liz because they would be leaving only a few days after we left, but it was also as if we were saying goodbye to the country that we have grown to love so much too. We can only imagine how it must have been for Chuck and Liz to leave behind, not only the country of Portugal but the people that they have grown to love as well. It was a wonderful "last trip" to Portugal but I think that we will be going back at some point in the future. This country is just too beautiful and peaceful to stay away for long. :)

Classroom Library

When I found out that I would be teaching 4th grade, I was not only happy but very excited.

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This is for a few reasons:

1 - I would be working only one grade level below that which I spent a year interning in and therefore, I feel (although I may be just kidding myself) more prepared to teach 4th as opposed to a Kindergarten class or even 1st and 2nd grade.

2 - I would be working at the same school site and therefore, the same great team members and staff that I worked with and grew to love last year.

3 - I had already begun collecting children's books for my classroom library which were focused on 4th and 5th grade readers.

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My third reason is probably not a very good one, but it is a reason to be excited none the less. I began collecting books since the beginning of my student teaching year and I knew then that I loved the 5th graders that I was working with and that I wanted to teach either 4th or 5th grade. I was lucky that things actually worked out and that I did not need to spend any more money on my classroom library to adjust it to fit the reading levels of a 2nd or 3rd grade classroom.

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The above picture is my library, which includes the following: Non-Fiction (40 books), Fiction- Realistic Fiction (123), Historical Fiction (31), Fantasy (39), Mystery (25), Newberry Honors (26), Poetry (2) and Picture books (4, so far) and some odds and ends for a grande total of 304 books!

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So with my classroom library filling out, I began to think about the layout of my new classroom and how I wanted things to flow and how I wanted to organize things. After getting to see my new room right after signing my contract, I began drawing out various scenarios for desk layouts and where I wanted the library and the teacher's desk and computers to be, etc. (I did this for my own bedroom growing up too. Any time that I wanted to make a change to my room, be it paint or simply moving my bed and nightstand, I had to draw it out so that my dad could see that I had thought things through and that he would not be moving the bed back to its original place only minutes after moving it for me. I guess this skill has paid off in at least one way:)

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With some ideas floating around my head day in and day out, I was looking through my emails and found one from the Container Store which displayed their various wares and some ways that other shoppers have used these items. One of the items was a so called indestructible milk crate in various colors. This was used for storage and one idea was for seating. I thought 'why not buy a few of these (which were on sale at the time) for seating in my own classroom library?' The pictures to follow show the progression of an idea, into a reality and hopefully something that will actually work out for my classroom this year and beyond.

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Two 13" x 13" squares and one 3" x 52" strip of fabric.

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Pinning the edges of the pillow together before sewing the strip all the way around the edge of one of the 13" x 13" squares.

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The almost finished product! Just add a square pillow form, hand stitch the open end together and...

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You have three lovely little seats for my classroom library. Not only are they cute and comfortable, but they also naturally limit the number of students in the library to 3 at a time (maybe 4 if one student is browsing). Not bad for a little time and some scrap fabric.

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Another perk is that they conveniently stack up so that they are out of the way if more floor space is needed (sorry about the sideways picture).

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Now that things are beginning to come together (and pile up) in my house, I feel the pressure to get into my new classroom so that I can store all of this stuff elsewhere!