In January, we bought a house about 2 and a half hours from our Lisbon apartment. It’s massive with a large basement where all the kids hang out, and a pool that we have yet to fully clean. We also bought a hot tub for the house. We have invited over one family so far and they have loved it. It even has a gym that I love using but my mom and dad want to try and get rid of it (Dad: in order to make space for more guests!). Dad made me clean out the gym and there was a foot bath full of dirty water — that was “fun”! There is a large kiwi vine above the pergola and an outdoor kitchen with grill and an oven. The house is in a town of only 30 people! I look forward to spending more time there this summer.

We recently went to Turkey, Georgia, and Armenia. Armenia is my new favorite country (besides the US). It has a Wendy’s! It’s a little overpriced but I still loved it. In Turkey we bought a small Turkish carpet and there were wild cats everywhere. In Georgia, there was a delegation from Azerbaijan, and in Armenia there were delegations from Estonia and Kazakhstan on the same day. Between the two major cities, we had a transfer tour, and at one of the tops in Armenia we could see Azerbaijan over the hill (they do not have diplomatic ties). On a different tour in Armenia, we were on the Turkish border and you could see small mosques in the little villages. In Yerevan, Armenia, we did a lot of fun activities like climbing up nearly 600 stairs and going to the Museum of Illusions. In Georgia we did a food tour and had delicious potato dumplings.

In this fall I did many wonderful things such as having my birthday, going on a shopping spree, having a 3 day soccer tournament, and having a pro club trial. The fist thing this fall was the 3 day tournament and during the tournament we had 8 games and they also sold tacos at a stand which was amazing and we made friends with a bunch of the other school like the British international school of Porto which was the main school. The second thing this fall was that I had my shopping spree with my friend as an early birthday present and we went to a really big mall and bought a bunch of things with the money.

The third thing was that I had my birthday and turned 14 and had a wonderful cake that my aunt and mom made for me. The last thing was that I tried out for a pro club in Portugal called SCP (Sporting Clube de Portugal) and made the team and I am currently training with a friend and my other friend is joining in January.

This year I decided to go to Camp T in Michigan for 2 weeks over the summer. The first week I had a lot of friends and two were in my cabin. I got to stay in Morris with its own bedrooms, bathrooms, and showers! I spent some time practicing for the Order of the Birch initiation that would occur on my second week. On the weekend I got to call home and order food. In the second week I was doing Order of the Birch the whole week. It’s the highest honor at camp. In order to achieve it, you have to do a service project, do polar bear plunge every morning, attend all the free choice activities, lead the sing-along one day, and give a speech at the end of the week. It was very well worth it to go for two weeks. I hope I can start training to be a camp counselor soon.

#FredBombForever25

We went to MyCamp last week for school. It was three full days of fun and adventure like paint ball, swinging over a cliff, archery, water park, rock climbing, tree course, and zip lining! My favorite activity was paint ball. I didn’t get hit, though I got a little splatter from hits near me. We played capture-the-flag twice and I captured the flag both times. It was a nice getaway to wrap up the end of the school year.

Last weekend was the championship football (soccer) game where the two Lisbon teams were playing other teams but whoever played the best game would win the trophy. I was all geared up to support Sporting and we went to Delphi (a cheesesteak place, and one of our favorite restaurants in Portugal) to watch the games. Sporting won their game 2-0 and Benfica tied 1-1, so Sporting became champions (bichampions if you consider their win last year)! They shut down the major roads and set up a large stage for all-night celebrations. I went there with my dad and we didn’t get home until about midnight.

Both of these activities were really fun in the last week! I’m looking forward to the summer after next month.

We went to Sweden two weekends ago. Most of my family went there as part of a longer trip a few years ago, so it wasn’t a new country for me. My dad had a former coworker that was going to be Sweden and we found cheap direct flights, so we thought why not?!

On Friday night, we went back to a Viking restaurant where they announce each reservations arrival to the whole restaurant. They passed around a Viking outfit that we all got to wear and take photos.

On Saturday, we went to the ABBA Museum. It’s a museum where you can sing in a booth and go on stage with a hologram band. We had a great lunch at a burger place named Barrels where my sister and I got fun shirts. We stopped at a bunch of different metro stops that were very pretty and intricately painted and designed.

We went to the Vasa Museum on our last morning in Stockholm and we learned about the Viking boat that sank 30m off the pier where it was launched. It had a lot of paintings and statues around the outside of the boat. It was under water for about 400 years so the paint was mostly long gone but the rest of the boat is very well preserved.

We went to Universal Studios Japan in Osaka! It was one of many awesome activities over 2 weeks across the four cities we visited. We went on multiple rides that took forever to get through the lines. On a few of them we took the “singles” line which was faster and sometimes we still got to ride together. My favorite ride was Jurassic Park’s The Flying Dinosaur. It was super scary and I was shaking after the ride! We went to many shops which had a wide variety of things and we got some souvenirs. There are a few large themed areas within the park. We went to the Harry Potter world, Super Nintendo World, and a Minions one. I liked all of them. In the Harry Potter world, you got to walk through a very detailed Hogsmeade town with shops, restaurants, etc. We loved drinking Butterbeer!!

We started in Tokyo and my family surprised me with a couple different animal cafes. Our first one was a pig cafe, and I was completely in shock the whole time. There were a lot of pigs of different sizes that would pile up on people’s laps. I was a bit skeptical at first until a caretaker convinced me to try it with a sleepy red-haired pig. It was so cute and just wanted to fall asleep in my lap. We also went to a cat and capybara cafe. The cats were the fluffiest things in the world. There was about a dozen cats and a single capybara which just stood there and stared at the wall until we were feeding it leaves. When the cat food came out the cats would climb on top of you and on top of the cat trees.

These are just a couple of highlights of our amazing trip to Japan!

This is the first time I have watched the EuroCup and it has been very entertaining! I switched teams a lot because my team selections keep getting kicked out of the tournament. Portugal lost in penalty kicks last Friday.

I feel like the Netherlands has been putting in the work and trying to win the EuroCup. They also have really cool jerseys. My family and I watched the game last night and they won 2-1 against Turkey. Turkey has been a really good team throughout the EuroCup but they couldn’t beat the Netherlands. The next game on Wednesday is against England, which just beat out Switzerland in penalty kicks.

The games have been really exciting to watch but also stressful at times. I really hope France or the Netherlands wins the entire tournament.

Over Spring Break we traveled to Italy, San Marino, and Monaco. In Italy we went to many different cities such as Florence, Pisa, where we saw the famous leaning tower, Parma, Genoa, Bologna, and Cinque Terre.

We started off in Bologna which is famous for several tall leaning houses. The most famous Two Towers were closed so they can stabilize them but we went to the top of the second tallest one in the city. It was a hike! We climbed up 12 floors of wooden ladders to get to the top.

When we went to Parma, we spent a full day visiting many farms and taking cheese tours. We loved the end product and brought a bunch back to Portugal. My favorite cheese was Parmigiano-Reggiano 24 months old.

Later we went to Cinque Terre which is a bunch of little fishing villages on the coast with hilly mountains. That is one of the places where we saw the most tourists. Each town was really cute and small, and the views were amazing!

Next we went to Genoa which we thought was a small town without much to do, but it ended up being a pretty big city with lots of great food and things to do! In Genoa, we found short red cookies which were delicious.

In the middle of our trip to Italy we went to San Marino on the east side and Monaco on the west side. I thought that San Marino was a coastal city but it was actually a walled city at the top of a mountain. We climbed to the top of the old city towers for amazing views. In Monaco, it was very expensive and there were a lot of fancy cars driving around. We had milkshakes at the Steak N’ Shake there.

Just recently girls at my school created and signed a petition to create a girls’ soccer team, and it was the first team of its kind in the entire school. I have already been doing goal keeping after school but that’s associated to the Sporting FC. There are 8 girls on the new team. We collected votes for the petition back in November and the new team just kicked last week. I’m looking forward to the rest of these season until the end of the school year. They are already planning to continue it next year. I’m also continuing with my goal keeping lessons and will play with that team too.

We went to a Sporting FC game recently and they ended up winning 5-1! They are currently ranked first. It was our first game seeing them. The stadium was easy to get to and we got seated early. The stands were fairly empty at first, but then just as the game was starting, everyone rushed in to take their seats. It started off with a couple songs where people, including us, were holding up their Sporting scarves. We really enjoyed the Sporting game, and couldn’t help but compare it to the Benfica game we saw a couple months ago. Overall, we liked Sporting a little bit more due to the location, uniforms, and action, etc, but it was certainly a bit calmer than the Benfica game. Benfica fans are much louder and rowdier, which makes for a fun and exciting game.

I moved to Portugal last month with my family. I didn’t really want to. It’s been quite an adventure. We arrived to an empty apartment and had to buy everything here. I got to pick out everything for my room. My room is the only one with an attached bathroom, because it used to be a maids’ quarters. I got an awesome mushroom lamp that my dad keeps trying to steal for the living room!

I just finished two weeks at my new school. The lunches are much better here! There’s a library where you can rent books for 2 weeks. I have two after-school activities. Tennis is on Tuesdays and Thursdays and goal keeping is on Wednesdays. My left thigh is really sore from all the diving and twisting in goal keeping! I’ve met a few friends and they come from different countries around the world.

Yesterday, we went to a large flea market where I bought a crochet whale with four baby whales that fit inside its mouth. We were there several hours and everyone got a few trinkets. I also got a gummy bear necklace, a few lego characters, a coin purse, and a ring. We played at a nearby park for a little bit. When we were leaving there, I recognized the street as being close to an escape room place we went to in April. I got excited and asked my dad if were were doing there again. We nodded yes, and my sister and I ran up to the door. We did an Aladdin one this time! We got stuck on a couple early clues but picked it up near the end. We escaped in 62 minutes!