Now, I think most of you will have eaten cashew nuts at some point in your lives. Remember how tasty their were? Remember also how expensive they were? If you don't remember, let me remind you, that they are very nice, but also very expensive.... Now, why would a little nut like that be so expensive? See the picture accompanying this post? Well, that's the cashew fruit. It is red/ orange in colour, and has a soft skin. Both skin and fruit are soft and easy to c...

Another... uhm.... Favourite, amongst the locals.... the TATU, or armadillo in English.... It is quite a disgusting looking animal, but apparently it is quite... tasty? The people here love to eat armadillo's, but they seldom do. Armadillo's are animals on the way to extinction, so hunting and killing them is illegal, thus eating them is illegal as well. But here "in the middle of nowhere" technicalities such as these don't really matter. So, people do often ki...

So, I have been here for nearly two months now, and I still haven't really explained what I'm actually doing here. I apologize for that! When I arrived here at the end of January, school had not started yet, it was still the big summer holidays (remember than in the southern hemisphere the seasons are at different times) So the first few weeks of my arrival were dedicated to getting used to the culture/ place/climate and life in general. In addition to this, ...

A very common aspect to living as rurally as we do here in São Miguel, is the frequent electricity cuts. This accounts mostly due to the fact that electricity lines here are all above ground, and the poles holding them up are not very weather resistant. What's annoying though is that, even if it isn't stormy near/ in São Miguel, but further off, say Oeiras (at 90km) it is stormy, than the likelyhood of having power cuts for us is quite big as well. Being in a ...

Remember that I had hoped for a peaceful weekend? Well, it turns out, that for some reason, despite no power cut; we spent a whole week with no internet, which turned quite annoying because it was an important week in terms of university applications. But anyways, not here to complain about that...So last week was Holy Week… This here means a lot, as people are quite religious. It consists of a school holiday on Thursday and Friday, and fasting both days plus t...