"SIM" TO BALANCE

Oh, Remote Year. I can't believe we're halfway through the first month of what's already been an incredible time. Week two highlights include a lot of recovery and managing my FOMO. As Week 1 taught me, I've gotta slow the f down. I'm playing a long ass game of life and my liver was in the running for MVP. Poor guy. This week, I didn't do ALL of the things. But I still managed a lot. I took time for myself and learned the value of smaller groups over giant ones. It's awesome sometimes to hang out as a giant community, but dinner with 60 people twice a week is tough for me. I like to break out into smaller circles and really get to know people. And that's exactly what I did. So again, a bulleted break down of week two. I:

• Went to a few cafes to work.
• Drew stuff! Designed stuff! Wrote stuff! Worked, is what I'm saying. (And looked for work.)
• Had a bomb ass all you can eat sushi meal and had a Kirin Ichiban beer; this is HUGE considering the only beer I could find was basically Super Bock, the Bud Light of Portugal in a nutshell
• Bonded with another Lauren (Lauren's are always cool in my opinion) and took a day trip to Cascais
• On that day trip, we rented bikes and Lauren's bike pedal flew off in mile 6. A nice Portuguese man stopped and called our bike rental shop for us, in which we were rescued by Prince Charming aka some dude from the shop who brought her another bike.
• Saw one of the prettiest beaches I've ever seen; promptly sat my butt down and ordered a mojito. (One of the best mojitos I've ever. had.)

• Stared at the ocean with no distractions other than my surroundings (a few Portuguese families that I basically wanna be when I grow up.)
• Ate in a LOT. Ballin' on a budget.
• Proof of the previous bullet below. It ain't all Insta-worthy food photos. Cooked ground turkey and realized that the color of ground turkey, when cooked in Portugal, is pink. You can't really tell here but It never browns. I basically burned it. Is this the doings of the USA brainwashing us about the colors of food? It freaked us out but was really good. Still researching why the hell this happened.

• Didn't drink every day.
• Still drank wine some days. 

• Took a side trip to Porto! Separate post on that to come but here are some highlights within these highlights:

• Took the train for the first time out of the coolest train station ever.

• Drank port.
• Sang karaoke!
• Had a Francescina, a sandwich made famous in Porto and puts the descriptor of "smothered" to shame on any other meal in the US. 
• Walked a shit ton. Always.
• Had more sangria, obviously. 
• Had a codfish cake, finally. It wasn't bad. It had brie in the middle. MMMMM. 
• Saw an exhibit at a photography museum about failed relationships that involved a lot of nekkid photos. It was interesting, to say the least.
• Saw more cool churches! All gold errythang. 
• Accidentally got locked out of my SIM card in Porto, so that turned into "Where's the MEO store? Oh, up that HUGE ASS HILL? K cool." (My butt's getting so much exercise you guys.)
• Kissed a blow up doll. I don't know. 

• Ate the most amazing dinner at a hole in the wall place after stumbling upon it.
• Ate awesome brunch, also stumbled upon, for 5 EURO.
• Became an emoji.

• Took over a bar with a ton of RY people and danced our asses off. 
• Saw Fado (Famous Portuguese music) in the park.
• Had some deep talks with some awesome people. We're all SO VULNERABLE! FEELINGS! AHH!
• LMAO IRL. Never laughed so hard or so much ever. These folks are pretty damn funny. 
• Came back from our trip and ordered 8 pizzas with 14 other people who just really missed pizza. OBRIGADO, DOMINOS!
• Attempted to buy Ranch dressing for said pizza and accidentally bought MAYO UGH. #sosad 

More to come on separate excursions and thoughts and feelings and pictures and generally non-relevant things. 

Also, SIM means "yes" in Portuguese. Hence the post title. And the confusion on the fact that a restaurant wasn't called SIM Sushi when we told someone that, yes, we are going to this sushi place. Languages are hard, y'all.