Coming Home to America

Sorry I didn't post these pictures sooner but I have been distracted by a lot of things. The pictures include Claudia's wedding, our trip to Terceira, and everthing leading up to us coming home to the USA. I have tons of video's from the trip and I will be posting some of them in the future.

This is a link to my whole photostream!

Pico is Hard to Climb

There has been quite a few events and adventures since the last post. On July 27th, Michelle had her 11th birthday. We left in the morning and hiked to Caldeira do Santo Cristo from the serra this time. Our cousin who is getting married today gave Nick and I a ride to the beginning of the trail. The hike on the way down was really beautiful. When we got there we ate at the restuarant with everyone that came with us (Uncle John, Angela, Sonia, Georgina, Breanna, Clara, Carla, Jordan, and our family). Michelle went swimming in the lake and went around collecting clam shells. After our journey back home we had some cake and ice cream and sang happy birthday to Michelle. It seemed like Michelle was bummed out earlier in the day but ended up really having a good time on her birthday. It is definitely a birthday that she will remember. She even got to frost her own birthday cake.

On July 29th we were ready to go to Velas to take the boat for Pico at 10:10am and we got there and realized that the boat acually left at 8:45. My mom accidently misunderstood on the phone about the only day of the week in which the boat left early. Since we missed that boat we had to wait in Velas all day till 8:30. We wasted our time various ways but ended up getting pretty bored torwards the end of the day. When we got to Pico we got off the boat and asked a random guy directions to our hostel we were staying at. We ended up getting a ride in the back of this guys work truck with alfalfa in it to our hostel. As the guy drove away from the port with us in the back we saw a taxi driver cursing at our driver. It was quite an experience; all of us not really knowing where we were going and laughing at the situation. When we got to the hostel all our driver wanted in return was a beer at the bar next to our hostel. We abliged him and he was on his way. We found our way to our rooms and the night was done.

The next day we woke up and saw that it was a nice bright sunshiny day so we decided we would try to climb Pico. We got a taxi to take all of us(Mom, Dad, Nick, Michelle, Sonia and I) over to the base of the volcano. We checked in at the ranger station and started our trek up the mountain (volcano). Nick didn't have any hiking shoes and ended up wearing his chuck taylors (Converse Allstars). The whole day you could hear his shouts of pain shooting up and down the mountain. The hike was a lot longer than any of us thought it would be, especially my parents. Alot of the trip to the top of the volcano was rock climbing more than walking. I was very surprised that my parents and Michelle forced themselves to climb all the way to the top. Once we made it to the cadeira (the cone) of the volcano everyone got a burst of energy to finish the climb to the top of the cone which was pretty dangerous. There was a ridicious amount of wind when climb up to the top of the lava cone. As we climbed up the cone there was steam coming out of the mountain and the smell of sulfur swept across our noses. At the top of the volcano we were at the highest point in all of Portugal and the Atlantic Ocean. We spent about 15 minutes at the top of the world and took in the scenery. Then came the dreaded climb back down to the bottom. On the way back down there were more than one bloody knees. I think everyone fell at least once. Nick fell and hit his hip pretty hard. Michelle hurt herself more than anyone else and then we had a period of dragging her down the rock cliffs as she was whining to stop. About halfway into our decent from the volcano the clouds and fog rolled in and made it hard to see the markers. When we finally made it down to the bottom we were all pretty broken, beaten, and scarred(not really scarred) but I think we all felt pretty accomplished. Uncle John was waiting for us at the bottom of the mountain with his relatives to give us a ride. We all made our way back to the hostel, ate dinner, and collapsed into our beds. Michelle really pushed herself to her limits but woke up in the morning feeling better than us I think.

Today is Claudia's wedding so I am guessing there will be many pictures so stay tuned for the next blog.

Here are the pictures from our trips to the places:

Nick and Sonias Arrival

Nick arrived in the Açores yesterday and Sonia arrived today. When Nick got here I was at La Basal fishing and collecting muida. Even though he had jetlag and was tired he came climbing down there with my dad to come see my mom and I. Apparently he didn't realize how steep the hiking trail was and how dangerous it was at go down the rope. I ended up catching 9 fish and would have caught a lot more as it was still the beginning of high tide before Nick wanted to go back to eat lunch and go to sleep.

Sonia arrived today and John, Angela, and my dad went to go pick her up. She seems really excited to be here when she got to ava's house. My dad didn't have any pictures of the occasion so they are not in the slideshow. sorry...

I think we are planning on going to caldera do santo cristo again either tomorrow or monday. After that we are planning on going to Pico to climb it and check everthing out. On August 5th we plan on going to Terceira to stay there for 5 days until we leave on August 10th. Seems like time is really flying by this summer.

Click here to go to my picture photostream and go through all of my pictures.

As always here is the slideshow although there isn't as many pictures as usual:

Caldhera de Santo Cristo

This week we did three main things: the Festa de Nosa Senhora de Lourdes in Santo Antao, a visit to Lucias family in their house, and our journey to Caldera de Santo Cristo. You will find all the pictures in the slideshow. Godwilling, my brother Nicholas arrives tomorrow and our cousin Sonia arrives on Saturday. This will be the final two weeks of our vacation and should be the part of the trip in which we explore the most. We are planning to hike to the top of Pico. We are also planning on going to Fial, and to Terceira for a few days before we depart back to the United States on August 10th.

Faja dos Bodes

Our week in the Faja do Bodes was really fun. Anabell and Pedro's house has a swimming pool so I went swimming 4 out of the 5 days we were there. I went fishing a lot as well... I finally figured out how to catch fish this week I guess because I caught a pretty good amount.

On Wednesday I had caught about 9 or 10 veige when all of the sudden I see this big school of fish swimming torward my bobber. They started trying to eat my bobber. I caught one and we were told that they were pig fish (peixe pork). We had heard that you have to fillet them out and that they were good to eat. The second my bobber would hit the line they would all charge the bait, then the weight, then my bobber. It was the craziest thing I have ever seen. We figured out why they call them pig fish as they would eat anything. We started putting fava bean shells on the hook for bait and after catching 15 of them we decided we should try eating them for ourselves before catching anymore. They have really sharp teeth that could take a chunk out of your finger easily if you got your hand too close. We took them home and filleted them out fried them up and they actually tasted pretty good although I still prefer veige.

On Thursday I went fishing with Michelle and she caught I think her 3rd veige (with help to pull it up to the port). We ended up catching 13 veige. Basically, it was a really fun week filled with swimming and fishing. Plus I loved staying in Anabell and Pedros house.

So Very Tired

I am really tired this week but I figure I shouldn't keep you guys waiting for more pictures any longer. I stayed in this week a lot and tried to learn to program but my parents still went places. I went swimming for the first time this summer. We are going to be staying at Anabell's (Jose Lauriano's daughter) house in the faja do Bodes this week so we will have lots of pictures of that I am guessing.

Here is the newest slideshow of 100+ pictures....

Bullfights, Sao Tome and Velas

The last few days have been very eventful. First we went to an arena bullfight in Velas and checked out the festa they were having there that wasn't religious. On the way there we ran into our old friend Anna from the Ribiera da Areia festa. We also stopped and took pictures of the windmills that collect power for the island. This Velas festa was like a giant party. Apparently it had been going on the whole week but I didn't know till Saturday. I guess they play a lot of different music on the stage but that night was supposed to be reggae. I didn't get to check out the music because we went to the arena bullfights instead.

When we went to Velas we visited Nelia again. She had all her children and another family staying at there house and she still invited us over to eat lunch. I didn't really get to eat her food because Michelle and I ate earlier at a cafe. The arena bullfight was much like the ones I had seen in Gustine but it was still a really good show. There is nothing like watching the suicide squad (pega unha) try to stop the bull with sheer force. I videotaped most of the bullfight but the size of the video is a little too big to upload so I will have to chop up the better parts and upload it later. My parents are really used to going to sleep early so we went home after the bullfights.

On Sunday we went the festa in Sao Tome. We didn't make it in time to see the budleite but we went to the parade, bullfight a corda, Lucia's dad's (Jose Oliviera) house, the theater show, and a little bit of the dance. This was the first time I saw a bullfight a corda and it was a pretty cool experience. It is more exciting because you are kind of part of the bullfight and not a spectator like in the arena bullfight. Lucia's dad was really nice. He fed us a really great meal. I really need to learn more Portuguese to communicate with all these really nice people. His gigantic cat was really cool. He also gave me a pen from the cheese factory to remember Sao Jorge. The theater show was really funny and I didn't even understand most of the Portuguese.

Today and yesterday have been rainy windy days so I figure waste it creating content for the blog. :)

This is a link to a video of the first pega unha (suicide squad) at the Velas arena bullfight

Here is the newest slide show:

Piexe, Piexe, Piexe

The reason I haven't posted is because he haven't had a car the last week which meant I have been walking everywhere and have therefore been very tired. We got a new car today. I have been fishing a lot this week and we finally got the hang of it. The key to fishing for veige is collecting these little crabs called muida. You have to flip over rocks and grab them before they scamper off though.

Earlier in the week; Me, my Dad, and Uncle John all went to the Faja of Sao Jao and caught a lot of little crabs to use as bait for fishing that day. We ended up walking really far across the too. After we caught about 200 crabs we found a place to fish and I caught my first bigger fish of the trip. I caught 3 really nice veige although I lost one in a hole in the rocks later. While I was fishing later a big wave hit me while I wasn't paying attention so I called it quits and went to the car to change my shirt and try to dry off. The weather that day wasn't very nice. It was cloudy all day and rained on occasion plus the ocean was very choppy. Uncle John kept fishing for another 3-4 hours and caught 7 veige and 3 perch (I think). We had a really good dinner that night. Aunt Angela knows how to fry those fish to perfection.

This week has been quite a week. Lots of fishing and hunting down mueda(small crabs). My Mom climbed down to La Basal with me and we got a whole bunch of mueda for the next day. After collecting crabs for 3 hours we went tried to fish even though it was low-tide and there was really big waves. I caught a perch and then I heard my mom scream. While I had been fishing my mom was getting attacked by seagulls. It was quite a scene. She was throwing rocks at the birds and they were swooping down at her. One actually pooped on her. After everything was said and done I thought it was pretty comical.

After we collected all this muida we went fishing at the port in vila do topo. We fished for pretty much the whole day but we came home with 35 veige and a couple smaller fish. We didn't take the camera for this trip and we filleted the fish at the port so you will only see a picture of a bag of fillets. We gave some of the fish away to our friends and family in the area, ate some, and froze some.

This time I have videos and pictures.

Here is a link to a video of the muida

Here is a link to a video of Uncle John reeling in a veige

Here is a link to a video of the band at the fiesta in Santo Antao

and here is the newest slideshow

Uncle John and Aunt Angela's Arrival and Brianna's Birthday

I haven't updated the blog for way too long. A lot of stuff has happened. Uncle John and Aunt Angela came last week on the same flight as Ruben and Brianna. I will do my best to remember what we did this whole last week. We took Uncle John down to La Basal and he got all the way to where the rope was and made the decision that the rope doesn't look sturdy enough and that he could get down but would have a lot of trouble getting back up. After making that big hike Uncle John and my dad ended up going to the port in Topo. Uncle John caught 11 good sized veige the first day he went fishing(red carpe looking fish). We was happier than I have ever seen him when he came back with all of the fish. He caught all of them on the little crabs that hide under the rocks. He went fishing a second time but he went during high tide so he couldn't get the crabs and didn't catch any fish. I didn't go to Brianna's birthday for a whole bunch of reasons. But pictures are included that my parents took while they were there.I lost count of all the festa's that we have gone to.We went to one in Topo last week. The last one we went to was yesterday in the Faja of San Jao. This festa had 2 bands play in a parade. We went to Fatima Alves (Joao Laurian's wife's sisters house) house. She had some very good food and its the first time I saw thremos in the Azores. We met one of Lucia's(Brians wife) sister; I can't quite remember her name. I drank some of the red wine there and it didn't agree with my body. It gave me a headache and a stomach ache for the rest of the day. I met a whole bunch of people and family that spent 7 years in Canada. There was a hiphop dance thing at the Faja at night and after that there were a few bands playing. I felt sick and very tired so I decided to go home even though it would have been an awesome night had I not been sick. No more of that red wine for me. We were shown the only beach in Sao Jorge at this festa. It is small but there is in fact nice black sand there. Here is a link to my photostream. And here is the newest slideshow.

Pamita´s Festa, My Bday, and more

I haven't blogged in a while because I have been in Topo and haven't really found (or looked too much for) a place to use the internet. I am posting from the firestation in Topo as Brian´s wife Lucia told us about. Since the last post I had my 22nd birthday on June 6; Nelia got me a really big birthday cake and we had the best champagne I have ever had. We went to Palmita's festa on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday June 7. It was also in Ribeira D'Areia and it was about the same as Grandma Silva's festa. I was still craving the festa food so I am happy that there was another festa we were invited to. After Palmita's festa we have been living in Santo Antão at my Ava's house. We got the water, phone, and electricity working. We got a a lot of dust and cobwebs out of the house but there is still a lot of work to do. My cousin, João Brasil came and weedwacked our front driveway during the middle of a huge storm. We didn't know he was out there till my dad called and told us. I think it was very nice of him although pretty crazy to be out there in the middle of the rain and wind. We are extremely greatful to have a driveway you can walk through without weeds up to your bellybutton. I haven't had too much luck on the fishing front mostly because I am a horrible fisherman. I have only caught one fish successfully and had a lot of fish that I reeled into the rocks to have the line snapped because of a wave taking the fish into the rocks. The one fish I caught was a really tiny rock cod. Some people have told us that the fishing isn't as good as it used to be because of people in boats trolling around the island with 1000 lines out catching everything in sight but I don't know for sure. The hike down to La Basal has become more treacherous than it used to be because of an earthquake. The trail apparently used to be a lot bigger and easier to get down to the bottom. Now you have to climb pretty much straight down at one point and use a rope to give yourself more traction. The two times I went fishing I had a lot of fun although I wasn't very successful with the fishing. I think I learned a lot about how to fish off the rocks from my failures. Also, after I got a little bit frustrated from the fishing I just walked across the rocks and looked at all the stuff washed up on the rocks. I found a life preserver from a ship in Panama called the Santo Lucia. I thought it was pretty cool so I hauled it up the mountain with me back to Ava's house. The reason I prolonged the blog was that my 200 picture cap on flickr ran out and I was trying to figure out if there was any free way to continue posting picture slideshow's easily. I figure the 25$ per year charge to upgrade to a flickr pro account is worth it since there is a large group of people looking at the slideshows. Here are a whole bunch of photos and I hope you guys like them.

More Pictures

We have been in Santo Antão all week but we are back in Velas staying with Nelia for the weekend for Palmita´s Ribiera D´Areia festa. I am really tired from doing stuff all week like cleaning my Ava´s house a little and hiking La Basalle(?) twice and other stuff plus lack of sleep.

Here are 30 more pictures.

Santo Antão

We made it over to the east end of the island yesterday to go visit Santo Antão. There was a huge fiesta in Santo Antão that day. There was a apparently a guy riding a motorcycle doing tricks on one wheel and a bullfight later. We didn´t get around to going to see any of that because we were busy finding my relatives Maria Eduarda and Conceicão. We drove to the end of the main road and it turned into a dirt road and then I remembered that my cousin Brian had told me if we visited Ava´s house to go down the dirt road and go fishing (if I remember correctly). Knowing that, I knew my Ava´s house was pretty close but we knew we had to find Maria´s house so we asked the person at the end of the road. My mom ended up knowing him as José Victorino and he helped us find Ava´s house and Maria´s house. When we made it to Maria´s house my mom remembered her little hiding spot in her backyard. She is in a bad area because people drive really fast around her house and it has been run into at least twice but has since been rebuilt. After talking to her inside her house and giving us the key to Ava´s house she led us to Conceicão´s house which was pretty close. She gave us a tour of her house and we met their brother Miguel who lives with her. After taking a few pictures and talking for a while we made our way back to our car and we drove to Ava´s house with Maria. Ava´s house is pretty overgrown with weeds and the inside is pretty dusty. We turned on the power after a few attempts but the telephone line it seems is cut. We were expecting much worse after seeing my grandpa Silva´s house. We are contacting the telephone company today and hopefully we will get the phone connected again. I was thinking that the floors would creak but they didn´t. It is gonna take some work but we are planning on cleaning it up. Hopefully we will have it ready by the time Uncle John arrives. There are a few pictures of the inside of the house that my dad took (I would have taken more and will take some more today). There is also some pictures of Maria, Conceicão, and Miguel in Conceicão´s house.

Pictures Galore

I have pictures from yesterday and today to put up on the website. There are so many that I am gonna create one album for yesterday and one for today. The first one will be the pictures from Saturday and the second from the fiesta today. There are 3 pictures from friday of the fiesta cow. Saturday is mostly the women preparing the meat and the poppas (rice pudding). Also there are some pictures of George, Phyllis, and Nellia delivering meat to families in the area. Im sure Tina and Paul have already noticed their uncle José Morais, (I think that is his name) but if not he is in alot of the pictures. He reminded me of my Uncle João Morais alot which is pretty obvious since they are brothers. I also fixed the spelling of Ribeira D´Areia from the other post and got a picture of the sign in the second album. Hopefully this will satisfy your craving for pictures for a while. I wish I could upload the videos but I will have to do that whenever I can get a hold of an even faster internet connection because the videos are really big. I don´t think I am going to put info on the pictures mostly because I just don´t have the time to write descriptions for 100+ pictures. I wish I could make it so everyone in the family could edit what the info on the pictures descriptions but oh well.

Here are the Pictures from Friday and Saturday.





Here is the ones from Sunday as well

Fiesta!

Today is the fiesta espirito santo in Ribeira d´Areira. I don´t have enough time to post more pictures or video because we have to leave for the church in 10 minutes but just trying to keep you guys updated. We will have sopas today and tomorrow. I will try to get pictures of everything I can. We are relying on my mom to be the cameraman for today because I am carrying the flag in the fiesta. My dad is carrying the crown, and Michelle is helping make the square around my Dad and Tío Carlos. You will see what I mean when I post the pictures hopefully. I´ll post tomorrow probably.

Ribeira D´Areia

The fiesta we are putting on is taking place in Ribeira D´Areia. So far we have got quite a few pictures of the women making bread and also some videos. We also took some pictures of us going through Velas and the surrounding area in São Jorge. Sorry if most of the pictures are of our Michelle and my mom because my dad is taking most of the pictures. The videos of bread making are really big and I think I will have to compress them before putting them on the internet. We ran out of batteries on our camera today so we didn´t get to take any pictures of Jose Mandalín, Lino, or of the Conhgra (eel, sea-snake, or fish to some). We ended up running into Oliver; Brians cousin in Velas. I am having a hard time remembering a lot of peoples names so please don´t feel bad if I don´t include your name in the blog correctly; just send me an email or something so I can correct it. Here is a little tiny slideshow for everyone to look at. I will be sure to put up the more recent pictures and try to get them all on here but I have been really short on time so far this week.

Açores!

We made it to the Açores. We took 3 flights in one day. First from Boston to Pointa Delgado to San Miguel. Second from San Miguel to Terciera, and third from Terceira to São Jorge. The plane ride from Boston went by pretty quick. It only took about 4 hours. The flight was a little bit turbulent during some points but it wasn´t that bad. During the flight some lady got sick and started puking all the way in the front. We were about a half a football field away so I couldn´t really see what was happening. When we got to Pointa Delgado, San Miguel we got off the plane and were greeted by people in H1N1 masks. I don´t know if it was because that lady got sick or if they do that for every flight entering from the United States but it kind of sucked. We had to wait in line to fill out a form saying where we had been in the last month or so, where we are going to be staying and a lot of other information. Then they took our temperature. It was a bit of an inconvenience and we thought we weren´t going to make it to our plane. We eventually got done with that and took our flight to Terceira. We took a British ATP I think it was on our flights from San Miguel and Terceira. It was a plane with propellers but it was a decent size and sat about a hundred people. There was almost no turbulence on this plane and the takeoff and landings on these two flights were near perfect. When we got off the flight at Terciera we thought we were going to be late for our flight to São Jorge but we were actually had to wait an hour for boarding. We finally made it to São Jorge and waited for our baggage, which all came through. Once we had our baggage we walked through to the other part of the airport where we met our cousin Nellia and her husband Antonío(i think thats his name) met us. We took a quick drive from the airport to their home in Velas where we met Nellia´s son Tessío (I think thats his name) and her sister in-law Fátima. Their home is beautiful and they have a very nice view of the ocean. I was very tired at this point but I ate a nice meal with fresh bread, spagetti, and that oh so good stinky São Jorge cheese. One thing I noticed is that almost all of the electronics in their house is Samsung which is good. It was probably 1pm and I just crashed. I woke up at 9pm and my parents who didn´t go to sleep had just got back from their trip to visit the people making fresh bread at the fiesta. I had a nice little dinner, played my psp for an hour till the batteries ran out. Read my book for an hour and then fell asleep again. I didn´t wake up till about 9am. I don´t know how I slept for over 14 hours but I did. My dad took some video´s of the Portuguese women making bread and I will try to post that on youtube and put an embedded video under this. Other than that I have a few more pictures from Boston to add to another slideshow but they are on my laptop which is out of batteries and I can´t find the power converter to charge it. We also have a few pictures from our flight to São Jorge. You will have to give me a little time to get all this content up on here since there is a pretty good amount of it. The internet connection has a download speed of 1.5mbps but a 0.10mbps upload according to a speed test. My dad´s movies are really big files so I will probably have to compress them or just wait a long time for them to upload. Being that at home I don´t have anything close to highspeed internet this is heavenly. Well, I have to go visit Tío Eliás so I will try to get those video´s and pictures up as soon as I can. I don´t think spellcheck worked so pardon my bad spelling and grammar.

Boston

We made it to Boston. The flight on Virgin America was my first but it was really good in my opinion. The take off and landing were really clean and there wasn't very much turbulence. All of our bags made it Boston with us so that is good. Hopefully the luggage will make it to São Jorge. We had our first meal in Boston at the hotel but it was good. After having our meal we all just hit the bed like a pile of rocks and slept for at least 11 hours each. The people in Boston have been really nice. Too bad the Red Sox are on a 10 game roadtrip otherwise I would attempt to see a game. Here is a slideshow of some of the pictures... I will upload more as we take more.

Updated with more Pictures in the slideshow. Be sure to make the slideshow full screen by clicking the fullscreen button when hovering mouse over slideshow.

update 2: To turn on the captions for future reference when you are in full screen mode move the mouse and it is in the upper right "show info".

update 3: I added a few more pictures from the Boston Airbridge from our motel to the airport.

Getting Ready

Just getting things ready for when I take off on Sunday. I have to take a few finals early and my Calculus 2 teacher is making me take the final when I get back from the Azores. We are staying in Boston for two days because SATA messed up on the tickets. Hopefully I will update this blog a lot and it will get a lot of views. I'll post when I get to the Azores.