Learning Dutch is OK
Belgium, like I like to say it, is a nice countries. Yes, countries. There are two bigger regions, Flanders and Wallonia, that even though belonging to the same government, by no means feel like the same.
Everybody knows this. If you speak the language of the place you visit, you’ll always get bigger smiles, more open doors, more generous servings in the market. And if you live there, you don’t want to pass on any of it.
Well Belgium, like I like to say it, is a nice countries. Yes, countries. There are two bigger regions, Flanders and Wallonia, that even though belonging to the same government, by no means feel like the same. Brussels is the third region. Language, flag, social benefits, bus companies, garbage disposal rules….a lot of things are different. And there’s even a German-speaking region, but I won’t go there.
I live in Flanders, where they speak Dutch but with a different accent from The Netherlands, some very interesting input from the French and with a lot of variations in local dialects.
Learning a new language is usually a synonym of getting a headache very often and I was no exception. I started having lessons, of course, but also the environment around me shifted suddenly from English to Dutch now that I had officially moved and was not here temporarily anymore. And that’s when I got very quiet. Some people are not afraid of putting together all the bits they already know, even if it doesn’t make sense, but I’m a lot more shy and I would only say something when I was at least 80% sure it was ok.
ANYWAY. After more than a year, I’m still not great at Dutch, not even good. But I can already follow a conversation, manage life by myself alone and veeeery rarely even make a joke. Those are the days of triumph! And in this year and a few months I’ve learned many interesting things about Dutch, that I decided to call from now on “The Language of Suspense”. I’ll share a few to prove my point.
I think I will never ever ever get used to the way they say numbers. Twenty-five becomes 5 and 20. So that means you have to say the second number you see before the one in the first place. You’re there in suspense, you want to know how much money this freelancer makes, maybe you’re even considering a career change. She starts by saying “FIVE AND” and you imagine all kinds of scenarios. 25 seems ok but very low for her skills, it’s probably 65…but what kind of job does she have? Could it be 95? I WANT TO KNOW. And then, in the end, it comes. I still don’t know what job she has, but it’s not worth a career change, even though I considered it between that 5 and that 20.
Writing down someone’s phone number? Zero-four-three-and-forty-five-and-fifty-sixteen. It’s a mess. Hearing the price of something with two digits for euros AND cents? One-and-thirty-euros-and-seven-and-sixty-cents. It’s a mess. Saying the measures of a table, your shoe size or a color code? It’s a total mess.
Just like Bruce Lee encourages us, friends, to be water this sentence could end there at “I am tea” (ik ben thee). But no, there’s more to it and if you’re learning Dutch you know by now it can still have many ends. And being it the Language of Suspense, you’ll have to wait until the end to realise what was, is or will be of this tea. Because maybe there will be tea for you in a near future; but maybe it’s all being thrown away in this precise moment.
The negative of a sentence comes sometimes in the end, which makes it sound more like a sarcastic hashtag in the end of a social media post than any other thing. Like:
I love Mondays. #not
(Garfield)
But this is only the simple version of what we sometimes hear in the speakers at the train station. Once I heard something like “The Intercity train from 14:23 with the destination Oostende that stops in Ghent and Bruges rides exceptionally today…not”. You’re there, you made it on time to the train station, you got the train track right, you have a valid ticket, soon you’ll be home, you’re happy, your train is coming. #not
Besides being the “Language of Suspense", the Dutch from Belgium is also the “Language of Diminutives“. You can put a -tje or a -ke after almost every noun and it will not be weird. I’ve gotten professional messages referring to an emailtje, in every corner you can buy broodjes (sandwiches), the most basic beer is a pintje, a snack in the middle of the afternoon is a vieruurke (four o’clock) and, my favorite, is when they take the French question “ça va?” (how is it going?) and they turn it into one word in the diminutive form - çavatjes?
And since they turn everything into small and sweet, I was surprised when I learned about the sweet names parents call their kids or lovers call themselves. Hilarious.
This is why learning Dutch is OK. Conjugating verbs is easy and a lot of things don’t make sense but can be very entertaining for a foreigner. For example, “pants” are lange broek (long pants) and “shorts” are korte broek (short pants). I always wonder what the middle pants are. If you’re having a baby, you will actually be buying it, because what you say is ik ga een kindje kopen (I will buy a kid). And, of course, difficult words to pronounce all together in a sentence can make me laugh out loud: gij hebt veel herinneringen van geheime geuren in jouw geheugen (you have many memories of secret scents in your memory) - you can hear it here.
And now, for my favorite way of saying goodbye,
Salut, hé.
Ik ben verhuisd!
I moved! This is what the last 3 months look like but now that Spring has arrived and it's officially T-shirt weather the possibilities are even greater!
I moved! This is what the last 3 months look like but now that Spring has arrived and it's officially T-shirt weather the possibilities are even greater!
België 👍🏼 Portugal
The day after I finished my volunteering program we were setting off on our biggest hitch hiking adventure so far. His parents were our first hitch and, after 45 other cars and around 3000km, my parents were the number 47 and the last.
That was it.
I had finished my year of volunteering in Het Voedselbos, the permaculture farm in Belgium. During that year I met my boyfriend and when he told me he would be free after my program to come for a couple of months to Portugal and that he planned to go hitch hiking, even if he was going alone, I thought "Uau, so nice for him, he's going to have a great adventure!". And then I started getting very jealous of that adventure but...I had to take back all my luggage...and my laptop. My dearest-I-totally-depend-on-it-for-my-freelance-work-laptop. I had hitch hiked before and I was sure a computer wasn't going to be a part of any of it - the long hours in the sun, packing and unpacking the backpack everyday, camping, bumping, etc. But but but....couldn't there be another way? How could I miss this?
Of course there's always another way and the day after I finished my program we were setting off on our biggest hitch hiking adventure so far. His parents were our first hitch and, after 45 other cars and around 3000km, my parents were the number 47 and the last.
To answer the question we get all the time when we tell this story: it took us 11 days, but we didn't take the shortest route. We first aimed to Gorges du Verdon, a river canyon in southeastern France for some much needed Sun and where we stayed for 3 nights. Then we made the whole French south border and we stayed for 2 other nights at Mel and Luis' home in Burgos before we set off to Portugal through Badajoz, very close to Évora - my hometown and final destination.
Nothing bad happened. Nothing bad at all. Every day we were overwhelmed with the kindness and generosity we found in everyone we met. We even had two guys that felt bad they couldn't take us and so offered us 2 bags of food to make it up. Or the one that took us and in the end also gifted us with a meal coupon. Most of the people who took us had hitch hiked before but we also had people who had never done it or who had never picked someone before, which made us feel a bit like ambassadors of a (very old) movement and even idealize that we made a very small but powerful change in the World close to us.
So many people are travelling or commuting every day, so why not take advantage of it and take our time (since we had it) to reach our destination? The journey is so worth it and it really restores the feeling that we are all the same under this skin. So many people went out of their way just to leave us in a good spot, and that was not the exception, it was what happened most of the times. We had a couple drive around an extra hour with us in Bilbao just so we wouldn't be in a completely wrong direction for the rest of the day.
We met a chef, a movie director, an acrobat, team building instructors, a couple who had just started, people with live fishes in the trunk and we saw a guy driving like a maniac that had a parrot in his passenger seat (free, not in a cage). But we were relieved he was going in another direction and we didn't take that ride. We were escorted by the French police to get out of some toll booths, the squatter friends of one of our drivers let us camp in their garden for one night and Folke even had the chance to drive the car of another driver!
We travelled by car, auto caravan and, for the first time, we managed to hop on a truck! The experience that I will most likely never forget was the one of the car that took us to Burgos after that truck driver had to drop us off. It was extremely hot even though we were already in October and we were in the middle of a very empty road about 10 km from Burgos. A small car stopped and a Moroccan guy immediately came out and started rearranging the whole car. His wife was on the back seat with a baby but that didn't stop him from taking the security shade out of the trunk so that I could sit there with both our backpacks, their luggage was moved to I don't even know where and Folke sat in the front with him. He didn't rest while he didn't leave us right in the center of Burgos, at least the one marked as center on his GPS and only during the course of the short trip I learned that the baby was merely 10 days old! He changed EVERYTHING in his car for us, complete strangers, while his newborn was there sleeping quietly and I realised that even me, as a hitch hiker, would probably not go through all that trouble in such a situation. What a lesson in altruism, true kindness and respect for fellow human beings.
Feeling so free every day, waking up in a place with zero clue of where you will sleep that night is so thrilling and so addictive. Especially if you find a nice camping in a good location, if you're lucky enough to check the local market in the morning for some tasty supplies for the day ahead and if you can treat yourself to a local beer by the end of the day to celebrate another GREAT day.
Because that's how it felt every day. A GREAT day, in the best company I could ever hope for.
Our first hitch!
And our last hitch!
We arrived in Gorges du Verdon
We didn't treat ourselves bad
You need to keep the spirit high, nobody stops for grumpy people!
Folke trying to hide the enthusiasm to drive again a Peugeot 205 just like the one at home
After the French police escorted us out of those toll booths
That time we slept in a garden that wasn't ours, allowed by the people who lived in a house that wasn't theirs (but that had a name - Chateâu des Étoiles)
Trying to cross one more border
The first caña in Spain!
He would set up this show in every camping
The first and only time we managed to hop on a truck!
Right before Burgos and the Moroccan couple picked us up
Burgos!
Where we had our weight in tortilla and wine
We don't have pictures with our sweet friends Mel and Luis who hosted us in Burgos, but Caju here stole our hearts and part of the available memory on our phones...
The first time I saw Portugal written on a road billboard
And, to not break the tradition, a very blurry picture of our first Super Bock in Portuguese territory. In Elvas, where we were already too close to our destination to camp and from where my parents picked us up!
50 Weeks of Green
So many feelings, so many moments, so many people, so many jokes, so many thoughts, so many words. Even if they don't show the intensity of it all, these pictures are what I have to better sum up this adventure.
My current business cards present me as a Curious Person & Designer.
What most people don't understand in the first premise is that "Curious Person" is not just something I wrote in order to sound interesting.
I was curious about bakeries so...I managed to make bread for a few hours in a bakery one night.
I was curious about countries like Greece, Costa Rica or Lebanon so...I went there. To some of them alone.
I was curious about cats so...I adopted one.
I was curious about event planning so...I produced one for 150 people.
I was curious about hitch hiking so...I put my thumb up for 3Km trips and for 3000Km.
I was curious about knitting so...I learned different techniques until I could make a sweater.
I was curious about Buddhism so...I went to volunteer in a Buddhist temple in the UK for a week.
I was curious about permaculture so...I went to live on a farm for a year.
That year is over now.
So many feelings, so many moments, so many people, so many jokes, so many thoughts, so many words. Even if they don't show the intensity of it all, these pictures are what I have to better sum up this adventure.
Now...another adventure begins! And the curiosity is not fading, quite the opposite. I'm curious about Bhutan, carpentry, seeds, trash collection, screen printing and many other subjects.
PS: I'm looking for freelance work, let me know if you have an idea for something exciting! And if it's not exciting...we'll make it!
Already a third of my time in Belgium?
It’s been 4 months since I started my European Voluntary Service in Belgium. Sometimes it feels like 8, rarely feels like 2. I am in Nokere, a small village that has one street, one church, one cemetery, one bar, NO bakery.
It’s been 4 months since I started my European Voluntary Service. Sometimes it feels like 8, rarely feels like 2.
I am in Nokere, a small village that has one street, one church, one cemetery, one bar, NO bakery.
Living in a secluded farm has its ups and downs. You really feel the days pass by and there’s a lot of time to think about whatever you didn’t have time to think before.
Almost every day I remember things I hadn't thought about for years, things that were wandering down memory lane and that now come to surface. That part I like. I also think about different outcomes to situations I lived and start to question everything, mostly related to how I dealt with friends, boyfriends, family, co-workers. That part I don’t like, but I know these reflexions make me grow so I try to embrace them.
I’ve also been diving deep in the art of patience. Nature takes care of us — it gives us food, shelter, warmth, cures, serendipity. But my work here is to take care of her. And she takes her time to give us all those things in the perfect conditions. So I just have to do my work and respect that. And then the same goes for people. We are a small community of three and we also take care of each other in a non-dependent way. We live in the same house and we work where we live, sharing meals, workload and a roof. Inevitably, we share problems too, but when you put all that pressure in such a small group, energy flows are very volatile so the last thing you want to do is affect them in a negative way. Whereas before I could just change the scenery by meeting friends or going somewhere else in the evening, here I need to adapt to the isolation and deal alone with whatever is bothering me. When there’s a setback, I really have to go through all the steps in my mind to untie the knots and be cool with it instead of overriding all those steps by distracting myself with something else. It’s a challenge but, once again, it makes me grow so I try to embrace it.
I miss Lisbon, I miss my friends, I miss my nephews, I miss live music, I miss red wine, I miss painting my nails, I miss my dog. I miss a lot of things but I also get a lot of things here that I wasn’t getting before. I get to stretch every morning in a huge field surrounded by forest, I get to eat what I planted in my first week back in October, I get a lot more time to read, watch movies and documentaries, I get to work outside instead of sitting in front of a computer all day, I get to feel stronger physically, I get to taste the most wonderful wild mushrooms I’ll probably ever eat, I get to learn practical things like how to use a driller, how to properly store wood or how to make chutney, I get to see the animals starting to get fond of me, I get to knit my own sweater, I get to be a lot more creative in the kitchen, I get to make new friends and visit some old ones that are closer now, I get to do things I was afraid of… I get really a lot more than I give up. But, truth be told, sometimes it feels the other way around because what I’m getting now is not what I was used to get for the last 30 years and sometimes it may feel like I’m giving up everything.
It’s hard and the cold winter doesn’t help but, once more, it makes me grow so I try to embrace it.
I start to meet more people now and have plans for several weekends in a row. Feels good to start having a network and finding my way in work and out of it. Permaculture really is an interesting way of living and makes more and more sense the more you learn about it. I still don’t know what I’ll do when my volunteering here ends but what I’ve been learning here will definitely be useful and part of future projects, even if in a small scale.
Cool things about Belgium? Apart from the basics like the amazing beers, chocolates and waffles, I’d have to say the people. Before coming here I heard several times Belgian people were crazy, only when I arrived I understood it was the good crazy. The people I’ve met so far don’t conform with the norm and do what they believe in and feel strong about. They don’t rely on their government or a “superior” entity to do things for them, there’s a lot of an entrepreneur vibe connected to all aspects of life. And the people that check the tickets on the train are the happiest I’ve ever met in my life, it’s really contagious. You also gotta love Belgian supermarkets, there’s samples to taste all over the place, and they don’t even give you parts of cookies — it’s the WHOLE cookie! And wine, coffee, cheese, nuts, cake, chocolate….everything! Also, Belgium is a small country and transportation works very well so there’s one more thing to love here.
Not so cool things about Belgium? The cold. It’s not even that cold, between -3ºC and 6ºC in the last weeks, but it’s more than I can take for such a long period. I’m the one at fault here, not Belgium.
Holidays in Portugal await me in a little more than a week. I also happily embrace that (but it doesn't make me grow).
Marhaba Beirut!
Beirut was definitely not a long awaited or dreamed trip. But I had a good friend there, an Italian guy who I had met in Macau through Couchsurfing and he had been living there for 5 years and about to leave. So....why not?
Beirut was definitely not a long awaited or dreamed trip. But I had a good friend there, an Italian guy who I had met in Macau through Couchsurfing and he had been living there for 5 years and about to leave. So....why not?
We always have these conceptions about places like the Maldives, Japan or Brazil but what about Serbia, Cameroon or Lebanon, of which no one speaks of as touristic destinations? I'm sure there's beauty and unexpected details in every country that can turn a trip into something special. The special thing about Beirut is that it's not tourism-friendly at all and that was, for sure, the most refreshing thing I felt there! I couldn't even find postcards to send to my friends!
Lebanese people were extremely friendly, the ruins of the city were overwhelming and the food was delicious and unforgettable. I still crave for manaeesh every now and then.
Here are some pictures of the lovely memories of my New Year trip to Lebanon, I couldn't have gotten into 2015 in better company or ambiance!
(the top image is my welcome work for 2015 which I did with only Lebanese items - the map, the money, the Fairuz album, the comics book, some of the most typical food, some ornaments that I bought on the street, some pictures of old Beirut and all on top of Marco's table, which he did himself and was just lovely)
New and not so brief adventure...
I'm very happy to announce that I'm now part of the Brief Creatives team! Feel free to reach out to us, we're a young and skillful team, highly motivated and with a growing portfolio full of potential.
I'm very happy to announce that I'm now part of the Brief Creatives team!
Feel free to reach out to us, we're a young and skillful team, highly motivated and with a growing portfolio full of potential.
We're in Lisbon but we have clients from Switzerland, Brazil, Ireland and...where are you from?
(Photo credits: Marco Pinarelli)
Some places are almost as beautiful in Winter as in Summer.
Algarve is one of those places. Me and Jenni, a friend from Germany, did a one-week roadtrip in the South Coast of Portugal, from Sagres to Vila Real de Santo António and then Portel on our way back to Évora.
Algarve is one of those places. Me and Jenni, a friend from Germany, did a one-week roadtrip in the South Coast of Portugal, from Sagres to Vila Real de Santo António and then Portel on our way back to Évora. It was January and the beaches were empty, the food was equally amazing and the landscapes were even more breathtaking. On the first day we met a midle-aged-half-drunk French guy who told us:
Mes filles, on doit PROFITER LA VIE!
That became our motto for the week and I think about it very often and try to stick to it as much as I can since then.
North Pole it is!
Invited by NiTiN I participated in a five days Partnership Building Activity about global challenges and Climate change in Longyerbyen (this is in Svalbard, Norway, very close to Greenland and already in the North Pole).
Invited by NiTiN (Nordisk Institutt for Trening og Internasjonalt Nettverk) I participated in a five days Partnership Building Activity about global challenges and Climate change in Longyerbyen (this is in Svalbard, Norway, very close to Greenland and already in the North Pole).
This was a unique, unforgettable and AMAZING experience! At this time of the year the sun doesn't set so we had 24 hours of daylight. The landscapes are breathtaking and the chance of seeing a polar bear is exciting and frightening at the same time. They're very cute and all but if you get to see one, it's either him or you, that's why the locals usually carry a gun when leaving the small town.
We arrived in Longyerbyen at 3AM. AM. A....M. Now check the light:
The view from the apartment
The town
The entrance of the cabin
And these are the most dangerous birds I have ever seen and with which we had to deal every time we had to cross this road. They felt threatened because it was nesting season and so they attacked everyone who would come through. The common practice (and recommended by the Town Hall) was to defend yourself with a stick.
Ride in a dog sled
Small hike
Svalbard day
And there was a ferry boat trip to the glaciers towards Pyramiden — a Russian settlement abandoned in 1998.
Whales!
And our last day arrived...
Farewell gifts
I'm still not sure what to say about leaving Macau after 4 years. What I can say without a doubt is that I left there some really good friends.
I'm still not sure what to say about leaving Macau after 4 years.
What I can say without a doubt is that I left there some really good friends. I wanted to leave a gift to some of them, a piece designed by me that they could hang on their wall and would make them remind of me. So I picked three very important families to me while being there.
I made a customised design to each family that anyone who knows them will understand and smile when they see it.
More than a farewell gift, it was a thank you gift. With all my love :)
And I ended up doing one more piece for my parents because they're the family I love first :)
I won a 1st prize!!!
I participated in a competition promoted by Casa de Portugal em Macau about April 25th. It should be an original work for this competition in the field of Visual Arts.
(INTRODUCTORY NOTE: April 25th is a very meaningful day for the Portuguese, it reminds us of a time when we were so brave that we are still proud of it 39 years after. It was a day where the People ruled and Freedom won over dictatorship. I believe we need a new Revolution these days. A Revolution to fight corruption, to fight the destruction of the simple arts of agriculture and fishing in which we used to be masters and to fight for the dreams that are being taken away from most of us. I don't live in Portugal anymore because I can't. It's a wonderful country, full of natural resources, beautiful landscapes, great food, a lot of sunlight and very genuine people. Unfortunately, I can't, because they don't let me.)
I participated in a competition promoted by Casa de Portugal em Macau about April 25th. It should be an original work for this competition in the field of Visual Arts. I created a digital illustration where you can read, in Portuguese, "Thirst for April, Forever" and the illustration makes an analogy with the wine that is called "Revolution". For the frame, I wanted it to have something related to music, since it was a specific song on the radio that triggered the whole revolution. I up-cycled a broken guitar and transformed the neck and head into the bottom of the frame and then cut three rectangles on the back part of the body to make the rest of the frame.
The jury was unanimous in giving me the 1st and only prize and I had a fierce competition so it was a wonderful and unexpected victory!
(Thank you Bruno for all the help, not only in putting the strings...)
I designed a new typeface!
Radius is a typeface that plays with two different widths and very round or very straight lines. You can already download it from dafont.com since it was submitted and accepted in less that a week!
RADIUS is out! Radius is a typeface that plays with two different widths and very round or very straight lines. You can already download it from dafont.com since it was submitted and accepted in less that a week!
Autumn Leaves and Puppets' Loves
Having found the perfect venue and sponsors, I did the production of a two-days event at Albergue SCM, full of playground activities for children that culminated in a puppet show by my long-time friends - TRULÉ.
One of my oldest friends is Joana. We've known each other since we were 6. Her father is a Puppet Master and ever since I remember from all the infinite hours spent at their place, the love put into every new puppet was truly inspiring. My favourite one - o Gato - still makes my cry after all these years and the most amazing part of it all is that he uses only his mastering techniques and music to make the puppets come alive and tell amazing stories.
So, when Joana told me they would be going to Beijing for a show (they travel every year and I don't remember the last time they came back without a prize), I had to make it possible for them to also bring their magic to Macau, my new home.
Having found the perfect venue and sponsors, I did the production of a two-days event at Albergue SCM, full of playground activities for children that culminated in a puppet show by my long-time friends - TRULÉ. In this free-entrance event, children (and grown-ups!) could play traditional games, do canvas painting, get a face painting, play with animals (and adopt them), know more about the Red Cross or the “I am a bone marrow donor” campaigns, play badmington or play with a giant tangram! There was also free coffee for all of the grown-ups!
The puppet show, entitled ”Puppet Variations on a Musical Theme” by TRULÉ was beautiful and everybody loved it, including the staff. Despite being the only producer of this event, I had the good help from very good friends and without them this wouldn’t have been possible.
It was very exhausting but heart-warming and extremely rewarding to have a bit of home come to me because of my will to make it happen. I definitely surprised myself with my ability to do it!
