These days, you can’t leave this building without seeing something going on in the city centre. Which is quite fantastic, when you consider I haven’t gone out all that much before this week when Josiah was finally definitely over chicken pox. He wasn’t particularly ill with it, in fact you would never have known he was ill if it wasn’t for the spots, but we knew other parents didn’t want their children to catch it and were concerned about some old lady catching it or shingles or something from him, but anyway I digress.
Pox ridden Josiah
The few times I did go out for a break in the day those last few weeks I have seen the Coimbra festival of flowers; a random group of students with musical instruments walking around and singing traditional songs; a whole orchestra seated and playing rather fantastically; an antique car boot sale type thing; stalls laden with traditional ware to sell along the river and a few other interesting things that I can’t quite remember right now. Today when we went out there were also lots of children doing sailing lessons on the river. It looked like fun.
A few from the festival of flowers
When on Monday we determined that Josiah was well enough for a little venture out we decided to start a new family activity: Geocaching. If you haven’t heard of this, it is fun. It is basically a treasure hunt on a world wide scale. Coordinates of a cache is posted on the Geocache website so you can go and find a little box with a booklet to write your name in, or maybe even a treasure to take or add to. We did not expect there to be so many Geocaches here in Coimbra even, but there are. Any way, we have found one so far, and have a vague idea as to where a few more are. We almost didn’t find it, as we were looking around the wrong fountain. It was just as we were leaving that I pointed across the road and said “are you sure it’s not THAT fountain?” We decided to look anyway, and there it was! The thing is, you are supposed to look for them in a subtle manner, which we are not very good at. While hunting for one today we got many strange looks as we opened doors to pipes and stuck our fingers down cobweb ridden holes. You could tell they were thinking something along the lines of “mental foreigners.” We are going to hunt for one in the botanical gardens after church tomorrow, and take a picnic with us.
Hunting for the Geocache…in the wrong place
Mission accomplished!
Now I know I have already written a blog on little old ladies, but this week I had two experiences with them here that I found quite fantastic. First, a withered old lady spotted me with Josiah in his carry sling and she made a bee line for us. I was surprised when I understood what she was saying, something about not being in his pram and then she asked if she could give him a kiss. I said she could and was warmed by the loving smile she gave Josiah as she gave him a peck on the cheek before I hurried across the road because the green man had appeared. I did feel a bit funny about letting a stranger kiss my baby, but that is the culture here, and I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. Then a few days later I was cuddling Josiah while waiting for Mark to meet us from university, when another even more withered old lady saw me cuddling him and stopped to sing us a song. I was incredibly touched by this, and a little sad that I hadn’t understood any of it. I hope that there is always some element of that culture here. It may be our imagination, but both Mark and I have noticed some little things that have changed while we have been here, with more western products available etc. I do have hope for Coimbra though, as a lot of their income comes from the university traditions and tourism. I hope it will not be completely westernised when we visit as an older couple, showing Josiah the place where he was born.
I also had a lovely birthday, thanks to my wonderful husband and friends who came to share the evening with us.
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