Here are some crosswords that Sol and I have worked on for the past few hours. They are both our grade level words. We have to thank Mr Burton who assigned "word work" for Sol, and one of the suggested activities to use the words was to make up a crossword. I decided to do have some word work crossword fun, too! It was kind of fun. Rather than keep you guys in suspense, the answers for both of the puzzles are at the bottom. But try your best to solve it first. Only if you are desperate can you look. Don't be desperate. Have fun. *To get to the answer key, hit the Read More link... **

The coronavirus has pretty much changed the whole direction of this trip. We’ve been stuck inside for the past two months and we’re going to be leaving in a week. By this time I think that we would have been through Barcelona and Turin and many other wonderful places. Sadly, we’ve just seen Portugal and we cannot visit other countries. 

We’re contemplating staying where we are, Ponte da Barca, as we’re enjoying our prolonged two-month stay, or biking back down to Lisboa to get the most out of this trip. If we chose to stay here, we would have to take the train down to Lisboa when the time came instead of biking. When you bike you can experience the trip much more as you are going much, much slower. We’re leaving on June 13th from Lisboa’s airport back home, so that gives us six and a half weeks of Portugal. I want to stay here because there is a  nice necklace that I would like to get if the stores reopen, but I would also like to bike down the coast to Lisboa. 

If we decide to bike down south, which I think is going to happen, I would like to go shopping in El Corte Ingles.  El Corte Ingles is an amazing mall in downtown Lisboa. I need to go there to get some new shoes as my shoes have holes in them from playing so much football. I also am wishing not to get the coronavirus, that would be atrocious. Not getting the coronavirus is my top wish. I love cities so I would love to see more cities on the way down. We’re not allowed to go to Porto because there are so many cases there. Another one of my wishes on the way back to Lisboa is to not go up many uphills.

This concludes my blog on some of the things I want and don’t want to do on the way back to Lisboa. Our choices are either train or bike.

Inspired by friends who mentioned the existence of Rose Quartz caves in Portugal, the boys and I went on an Earth Day excursion to try and find one of these.
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Internet research showed the existence of a Rose Quartz quarry within a 10km radius from where are currently staying. It also happened to be the site where in 1917 Mary made her appearance. Magical coincidence? 

When we arrived at the designated place for the Rose Quartz Quarry, there was unfortunately none to be found. Instead we found a Quartz Museum, but due to COVID-19, that was closed.

We continued to bike up the mountain to see if we would have better luck. This is where we found Mary towering above a church (Santuário de Nossa Senhora da Paz in Barral), mounted on a huge block of crystals: 

We took a break and created an altar for our offerings to Mother Mary and Mother Earth:

Disappointed not to have found a crystal cave, we went back down to the site of the Quartz Museum. This is built near the site of Mary's apparition in 1917. A small shrine temple has been erected. Its walls embedded with large crystals and surrounded by large statues of Jesus, the Holy Spirit and an Angel mounted on huge blocks of crystals. Beautiful species of large rosy white crystals placed in the surrounding gardens. 

Though the boys were disappointed not to be able to do their own crystal hunting in a cave, we all enjoyed the treat to be back on our bikes again and to take in scents and sights of the beautiful natural environment of northern Portugal. We hope to continue to travel and explore other parts of Portugal on our bikes in May. 

A difference from a month ago is that the roses have come into bloom. Most Portuguese gardens have rose bushes in many different shades and colours. We brought one wild rose home for our home altar and added it to our daily Oracle message created by the same sweet friend who suggested the Rose Quartz Caves.  So grateful for her suggestion and for the friends who helped me locate this so close to our home, for these were perfect messages and explorations for Earth Day: 

​Hello everyone. Welcome to the next instalment of Lief and Sol's quarantine series, where we try to engage and delight you. Here goes.

So, we have a third show on the blog, this time it is focused on photography. We have many different styles of photography, we have more art focused and also everyday life photography. The theme was a general 'At Home and in your Yard'. We enjoyed receiving all your entries, and we were treated this week to a thunder and lightning show, allowing us to practice our lightning photography. We won't share our secret about how we got these shots. Leave your best guess in the comments....

Let's get right into it.

Hi everybody thank you for giving your pieces to me to put on the art show. This was very fun. I liked your guys creations. I decided to do sweet first because I wanted to. I hope you guys enjoyed the food that you made. I hope everyone enjoys the show.

Here are some sweet things that people made. From dessert to performance art. 

Here are some savers things for you to look at. There's is even movie characters.

Artist: Noah Dadd 
Age: 11 months
Description: Showing the way the “art” changed over time.
And how one person might have a different “vision” of the work. 

Artist: Jennifer 
Age: 79 
Town: Tlell
Title: Food Number 1
Medium: Mushroom

Artist: Tracy Morton
Age: 48
Town: Ponte da Barca
Title: Shelter Olive Us

Thank you to all the contributors who made food. Happy Easter everyone!

This blog is about the skills and tricks that we have learned on this trip. We have ten skills to show you. Some of these were really hard to get and took us a long time. We are happy with the results, we took turns videotaping each other's skills. We hope that you guys enjoy!

There are surprising benefits of putting the four of us in a box in isolation for weeks on end. One of them is handwashing clothes. Since our house doesn't have a washing machine, Kiki has been washing our clothes by hand in an outdoor sink made for this purpose. Today, when Tracy asked the boys to start school, Kiki gave them the option of helping her instead of doing math. Day after day of math is getting to them. Sheesh!

As we're all stuck in quarantine, or most of us, I have decided to create an opportunity to keep us all busy (at least for a little while). I did some thinking for what to do, and since Sol and I we're doing a lot of art, I thought we could do an end-of-the-week art show. I talked about it with my family and then the idea popped up to include the whole school district on Haida Gwaii for an online exhibit. I thought that was too much work. We eventually came to the consensus that it would be family and friends only.  

We received many entries in many different media, ranging from animation, collages, drawing, painting and poetry to food arts and embroidery. I'm impressed with the great turnout. Contributing artist ages ranged from 11 months to 83 years old. Enjoy the show!

Thank you to all my friends and family for sharing all your art in this chaotic time. I still can't believe how many pieces we received, 36 in total. It was a fun and challenging project. I hope that this activity has kept you occupied for some time during quarantine. I hope nobody has the coronavirus and you're all doing well in your homes. 

Anyway, thanks again,
​Lief
P.S. If you enjoyed this, please consider contributing to Sol's Call for Food Art, to be exhibited next Saturday:

​Blog by Sol

​Things that I have been doing because of the Corona Virus

I have been doing.....

I have to do six pages of math and english and science and art.  

We have been playing soccer and we play three games. One game is where you have to 'meg' someone. The second game is where you have to have three people for it and pass two balls around. The third game is where Lief shoots on me with the ball. 

I have been making a huge house in minecraft. It has a soccer field in it. It has a library and an garden and the usual stuff in it too. It also has an outdoor soccer field too. It also has an indoor pool.  

I made a fruit salad with kiwi strawberry  and cinnamon.  

We have been doing treasure hunts and we hide money and the other person finds it with clues. 

We have been drawing 1 and 2 point perspective drawings. I drew a city and New York city and a bedroom and a house. You should look up1 and 2 point perspective on youtube.  

I have been watching movies and tv shows. I watched Brooklen nine nine, Mac Gyver, Flash and some other movies that I don't now the name.   

I have been eating breakfast, lunch, and supper. For breakfast I am eating crapes and oat meal. For lunch I have been eating grill cheese sandwiches, wraps, savery crapes and lots of other things. For dinner I have been eating pasta curry and lots of other stuff.   

P90X is a 1 hour exercise. It is really hard.

You sit on a chair by a heater and stay there. You will get warm.  

For drinking water you have to  grab a glass and put water in it and drink.

My dad got a new computer because he dropped his other computer too many times and now it is all glitched. It has a crack in it too.