Out of chronological order: AFS Portugal!

Thanks to facebook and good timing, I was able to go to AFS Portugal's first ever "national meeting of volunteers," an all-play, no-work two-day retreat. Eeeeearly Saturday morning, I got in a car with three girls I had never met before – but they were AFS volunteers, so of course we all had a good time the whole way there. And they taught me how to say "lighter" and "pocket knife" in Portuguese! The whole weekend was great – silly but fun activities, good conversation partners at meals, and lots of discussion about returnees as volunteers. Everyone was more than happy to speak English with me but also didn't mind when I tried to stumble through in Portuguese. I even spoke a mixture of those two and Norwegian with a guy who had done his AFS year in Norway – fun!

AFS is always a good time, of course, but those two days were an especially positive AFS experience, and I'm really excited to get involved with this group of people when I come back in the fall. Anyone out there who's thinking about doing AFS or has a kid who wants to go somewhere, I can absolutely recommend AFS Portugal and its fantastic volunteers – and I promise they didn't pay me anything to say that, except maybe friendliness.

I got a ride back with a girl from Porto and her parents and brother, who had decided to make a day of it and go out for lunch before they had to pick us up. On the way back, we stopped by the beach for a quick stroll, partly because it's there and partly because they weren't happy anymore with the beach they usually go to and were looking for a new one. These things just don't tend to happen in Wisconsin or Germany – "well, might as well pop on over to the beach, since we're right by it anyway" and "I don't really like this beach anymore – luckily there are a kajillion others, so let's go shop around."