By Cassie Roy | Observer Contributor
Image courtesy of Nicole Chavez
Azores, Portugal is a beautiful island filled with massive hydrangeas and friendly stray cats. This is where Nicole Chaves, a student at Mount Wachusett Community College, visited to see family for ten days over the summer. This is her second year attending the Mount and she is currently majoring in Liberal Arts and Sciences.
The trip was Chaves’s high school graduation present from her family. It was the first time she went out of the country to see where her father grew up and visit her cousins, distant cousins, an aunt, and her father’s childhood friends. She travelled there with her mother, father, and older sister Danielle.
The island Azores is made up of small villages surrounded by hills and deep valleys; all these villages are color coordinated. For example, in the village she stayed in, the houses were for the most part, white and green, which was their color scheme. Not all houses comply with the color scheme rule but for the most part all of the houses will be the same colors.
While staying on this island, Chaves and her family hiked many of the 100+ trails that wind through the thick forests. During these hikes, they walked past huge cliffs, near waterfalls, and ran into goats, stray cats and dogs, and a lot of friendly cows.
Thanks to the overabundance of farm life on the island, the meat is always fresh and tender. Fruit and vegetables grow wild so they are all organic; they don’t use harmful chemicals or pesticides on the crops like we do here in the U.S. Even the milk is better in Azores. Chaves described the milk as creamy and thick; it doesn’t need to be refrigerated until it has been opened. Their diets in Portugal is naturally better than ours in the U.S because of how easy it is to find local and fresh meats and fruits and vegetables.
After arriving home in late August, Chaves decided to keep in touch with her aunt and some of her cousins that she had grown close to over the two weeks that she was there. She does this mainly through texting and calling, considering all of her family members are closer to her father’s age or older, which ruled out social media.
During the interview Chaves noted that the biggest difference from life here in the U.S and life in Portugal is the people. She described them as a very laid back, relaxed people; they acted as if they had all the time in the world. The other differences were the landscapes, especially the colors.
She said, “while on the hikes, the colors are more vibrant in all directions, oceans, greenery, flowers, just colors everywhere.”
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