The Secret Project and The Diamond Jubilee

Well, wasn't I bad at posting throughout the month of May?

I hope you didn't mind too much, but I am well and truly back now, I promise!

     

       - My best friend's baby, born a few weeks ago -

Aside from some other issues which I don't want to bore you with, I have also been keeping myself extremely busy with a new little project. I won't go into great detail about it just yet, as I don't want to Jinx it, but the long and short of it is that I am going to be launching my own little online shop, which hopefully will be happening in the not too distant future! I am reeeally excited about this. As some of you will know, if you have been reading my posts for a while now, I had been feeling a little bit stuck since I've been here in Brazil. When I say stuck, I mean that I've often felt that I've had to put many of the things I wanted to do in life on hold to be here. Now, don't get me wrong, it was my choice to come here, and I'm happy that I did. After all, I had a pretty good reason to do so, and it's been one hell of a learning curve, which is still going strong. But I have often felt frustrated that being here has made it difficult for me to go into the area that I would really like to work in (Journalism) and to do other courses that interest me. Because, believe me, there are many. I love to write, I love to be crafty and creative, I adore fashion, am really interested in both Nutrition and Psychology....the list is endless. I suppose, really though, it was having all this free time (my husband and I work shifts that are more or less the opposite of each other) that made me realise what I really loved doing, and having the options taken away from me only made we want them more, so perhaps in a way, it has been a blessing.

Anyway. I'm going off on a tangent there. The point is that I was feeling almost stagnant not being able to do any of those things, and also feeling a bit helpless thanks to the pittance we teachers earn (my husband and I want to move back to the UK whenever we are financially able to do so, and it was driving me mad feeling as though I couldn't do anything much to move things forwards a little bit! I know some of you are probably thinking that I could have got other jobs over here, but actually, it's not as easy as you would think, especially living in a small town in the depths of a behind-the-times state, as I do!).

So having this little project in the pipeline, and knowing that my very own website is being designed as I type this is literally thrilling for me, as I feel that I am finally doing something that I can be really proud of! Of course, it remains to be seen whether or not my little shop is going to be hugely popular, but I have been - and will continue to - work very hard to make this work, and whatever success I do have will make me very happy!

Other than that, what have I been doing? Well, getting snowed under by paperwork at school, for a start.I think I mentioned in my last post that as it's coming to the end of the semester, I inevitably have mountains of homework and tests to sift through.

Did anyone watch the Jubilee celebrations over the past few days, or have any celebrations of your own?

 I watched a lot of it on TV with my husband, and it made me really miss home! I thought of all the people gathered together sipping tea and eating cake to mark the occasion, with their colourful bunting and cute china tea sets, and it just made me want to surround myself my all things quintessentially English!

I felt so sorry for the Queen, having to go about her duties alone over the last two days. After being married for sixty-five years and always having had Phillip by her side, it must have felt really strange for her, and I thought she looked quite overwhelmed at times. Although, who wouldn't be when faced with millions of people waving adoringly and singing 'God Save The Queen' at you over and over?

I also thought how odd it must have been for Prince Phillip to have had to watch proceedings on the television, as he has never been able to see a Royal event from that perspective before! But Charles's speech on Monday night was just lovely, and I thought he dealt with the situation extremely well.

Something very important which I can't believe I haven't mentioned yet, despite having posted a picture of him at the top of the page, is that my best friend's gorgeous little baby was born a few weeks ago! I was hoping he would make an appearance last time I was over in England, and encouraging my friend to do things like eating a Vindaloo, and bouncing around the house in order to hurry him on his little way, but alas, he was having none of it and popped his little head out just a week after I'd left! Now that's what I call difficult.

In the photo, he's wearing a cute striped car babygrow, which I gave to him. I can't wait to meet him at Christmas!

I'm off on a little road trip to Vitoria on Friday, as I need to pick up some documents from someone there, so I hope to be able to spend a bit of time shopping, relaxing on the beach and eating a delicious lunch. I'm definitely going to be taking advantage of the chance to get some nice photos, so fingers crossed I'll be sharing those with you at the weekend.

Hope you're all well!