What an unexpected surprise it was to have met some of my former students at six o'clock in the morning at Lisbon airport. They were flying to Santa Maria island to carry out their on job training prior to becoming air traffic controllers, whilst Ana and I were on our way to preparing another English course for the local children, which would be starting the following day.
If some years ago I wouldn't be bothered by having to stop over along the way to where I was heading to, this time the short Ponta Delgada stop over at São Miguel island and particularly having to go through the check-in procedures over again did get on my nerves. I'm aware I was tired and not fully recovered from the hard week's work with still another busy week ahead ( ... or maybe I am just getting "older" ...)
Soon after having landed and even before having checked in at the local hotel we carried the whole training and artistic material into the classroom so as to select what would be required for the morning group, once I would be having another group in the afternoon.
The whole atmosphere of Santa Maria Airport Hotel where we were lodged at reminded me of Espargos Hotel in Sal island, Cape Verde, which must have certainly been strongly influenced by the presence of the Portuguese there in the past. I "felt at home" ..., which did change my mood.
I wandered around the Hotel premises taking photos of the so called simple things that somehow always make me feel happy ...
We drove to Anjos coastline and just lied in the sun by the natural swimming pools till late in the evening. We did meet quite a few people we hadn't seen for a while, which was something we knew would naturally happen as the fairly small island is partly "peopled" by colleagues of ours from the mainland who have been temporarily assigned to work at the International airport.
The early sunrise made me get up at six and as the morning classes wouldn't start but at nine and we were less than five minutes away from the Airport Centre I wandered around the hotel once more as if to let the local silence and smell be embedded in me ...
It's a pity pictures haven't captured the way I felt ... (I was beginning to feel good).
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