Summer's here

It’s summer already.  Tia and Sasha have finished the last day of their Spanish schooling, and are relishing in sleeping until noon and staying up until 2 am.  We let them, as this Spanish schedule does not seem to hurt them (as long as they get their chores done!). 

A couple of visitors came through in June:  my aunt Andrea from Germany came in for a week and helped me learn about the vegan lifestyle and various alternatives to dealing with menopause.  She is a medically trained naturopathic doctor who is a wealth of information about what you can do if you don’t want to go down the pharmaceutical path!  Very interesting.

Into the pool--it's summer!

We took Andrea out to my friends Maribel and Javier’s little house on the island of Culetra off of the southern Portuguese coast.  The only way to get here is by boat, so there are no cars or streets, just little footpaths through the sandy soil.  It’s like stepping back 70 years in the past, and we loved digging for blaentera at low tide, which Javier then steamed with garlic.  Delicious. 

In front of Maribel's house

To finish off the month, we organized the third annual Vale That concert at TK3 for Noche de San Juan.  Having learned in the previous two years that my kids are much happier with me if we stop playing by 11:30 pm so we can all walk backwards into the ocean at midnight to wash away our sins, we reworked the setlist to end on time and to accommodate drummer Pedro’s barbershop-business schedule.  The volume, however, was way too loud despite my best efforts to get the sound guy to bring it down, and I was happy to get off stage and jump into the water by midnight!

Rockin' TK3

Our friend Sonali came out to visit again with her daughter Acacia.  We hiked the Caminito del Rey with them, an impressive gorge with a reputation of extreme danger due to the rickety and unguarded footpath carved into the cliffside.  After several people fell to their deaths, the Spanish government closed it and completely rebuilt the trail, installing a wood boardwalk and acrylic panels at intervals so you could give yourself vertigo looking down at the rushing water 100 meters below.  We relaxed, swimming in the nearby reservoir after lunch.   Check:  one more thing seen as our time winds down here!

Fabulous