First Day Home From Portugal

I woke up about 3:30 this morning with my mind swirling with creative ideas.  Clearly my subconscious is already hard at work processing all the things we saw and did in Portugal.  Having a relatively mindless travel day yesterday must have helped get things started - my mind didn't have to work too hard, even though my body was weary from the travel and all the seemingly endless waiting in line at various checkpoints.  I can't believe how much time you waste standing in line when you're flying, it is rather mindboggling.

I don't even know where to begin as far as blog posts go, there is so much to show and tell about my trip.  No, wait a minute, I do know where to begin - I will start by saying a few very important thank yous.

Thank you to Margarida, our hostess, for putting this workshop together, doing all the organizing, acting as tour guide and providing us with a lovely place to stay and a beautiful studio for making art.

Thank you to all of my fellow workshop attendees for coming along on this journey.  We really had an amazing group of people gathered together, I know I have made friends for life. 

Thank you to Taylor, for being such a good roommate. It's always a bit of a risk to sign up for something like this that involves sharing a room with a complete stranger for an entire week but lucky for me, I was paired up with someone whose company I enjoyed very much and we were able to share our personal space quite well.

Thank you to Laurie, Linda and Morag, my other flatmates, for being such enjoyable companions.  Especially Morag, who very kindly cooked breakfast for us each morning, whipping up bacon and eggs with great ease and culinary prowess.

But the biggest thank you of all has to go to Teesha and Tracy Moore, who are such wonderful people to learn from and spend time with.  I feel as if my journaling style has expanded and improved in a thousand different ways, just by being exposed to their amazing styles and techniques.  I can already see the difference in my own journal.  Outside of class, I enjoyed having the opportunity to just hanging around with these two fascinating people, getting to know them better, and being able to pick their brains about art and life in general.

Here's a picture of our incredible group on the first night (minus Morag, who arrived a couple of days later):

Photo courtesy of Margarida Alberty