Hello lovely people 馃
I'm writing to you from sunny, chilly central Portugal. It's a very pleasant time of year, I am really enjoying the beautiful colours of autumn. The trees are turning yellow, orange and red and the air is so fresh!
I am very busy at the moment as I have just enrolled on an online breathwork teacher training, I am super excited to be able to share what I am learning and what I am passionate about.
I am really enjoying the course and learning lots behind the science of breathing at the moment.
A normal day for me starts with journaling, writing down the things I am grateful for and what I would like to achieve for the day.
Then I take my dog for a walk, then do my yoga and breathwork practice. Then its study time, after that I go to the pond and get into the cold water, which is so invigorating!! This is an amazing practice which I want to share with you and go into more detail about in another blog.
I have also just started a Thai massage course which I am also really happy about and I can't wait to start treating and helping people.
The other thing that is taking up quite a lot of my time is learning Portuguese, I have been here for nearly 2 years consistently now and I am not happy with my level of Portuguese so I decided to invest in one on one classes and I am so delighted with them and my teacher is really wonderful!
So as you can see I am quite busy...
What I wanted to share with you today though is what I mentioned on the 
Every year around this time we all get together for the olive harvest. It can be hard work but also very enjoyable.
It's a very sociable activity, very physical job but it feels good to move the body and to be outside in the fresh air. Its also super fun to climb in the trees and be playful!
There are different methods of picking olives but I will share with you the way we do it.
We first place the net under the tree carefully.
Then someone (usually my dad) uses a ladder to get up into the tree, he then prunes the tree using a saw, taking away any branches that aren't needed and this also encourages the tree to grow more branches with more olives.( Meanwhile the dogs play around us and the chickens and ducks are happily walking around us too. )
Then we pick the olives off the branches using our hands letting them just to drop onto the net.
We also pick the branches still remaining in the trees. We pick them just standing on the ground and reaching up into the tree or we use ladders or my personal favourite.. climbing into the tree.
When there are no remaining olives left and all the branches have been stripped we lift the net in such a way to collect all the olives together.
From there we lift the net and tip all of the olives into a bucket. If the playing dogs allow us!!
We then take the bucket to the olive sorter.
We pour the olives onto the olive sorter and separate the leaves from the olives.
The olives then get stored in water until we are ready to take them to the olive press.
It's tradition every year to take the olives to the press with the Donkey's. We set the donkeys up with their carts and load up the olives into the carts then we walk all together to the local press which is over 100 years old!
And from the press we get our beautiful fresh very delicious olive oil.. which I use for everything. I cook with it, use it on salads, use it on my skin...its super amazing!!
Olive oil is very versatile and very good for you. My favourite way to eat it is on its own with fresh bread Yummy yummy!!
Thanks for reading! See you next time, have a great weekend :)
