Pictures.

Here are some pictures (finally) of my adventures to and in portugal. Most of them were taken within two minutes walking distance of my house in Viseu. The rest are from Lisbon and New York.
Epic Mount Shasta.

The One and Only Famous Ray´s.

Crazy Times Square.

Afsers going to Portugal from the U.S. The oldest person in the picture was our counselor for the departure orientation. He was really cool and helpful.

Lisboa.





My neighborhood. Marzovelos.

A street near my house.




Me and my roommates at our orientation in Lisbon.

A building on my street.

My street.

A spot near my house.

Stuff.

So I´ve been sick for two days. It´s nothing much, just a sore throat, runny nose, stuffiness and aches. Today I had tennis lessons and felt fine most of the time. Louis is sick too. For lunch today we went to a really good italian restaurant, probably some of the best pizza I´ve ever had. One thing that I think is cool but haven´t written about is that there are a lot of roundabouts here, of course this is europe and that is the norm, but a really cool thing about a particular roundabout here in Viseu is that there is a parking garage under it. All surface traffic flows as it would normally but there are these holes in the ground that you can drive down into right under the road and down the circle is the parking garage. It is all lit naturally because the cieling is the roundabout and has windows. I thought this was really smart, A: because even in this size of a city and with all these cars on these tiny roads there is no traffic, I think this is due to the roundabouts, and B: The garage litterally takes up no area like traditional parking garages in cities in the states allowing a bunch of people to park their cars in the center of the city. A funny thing that happened to me this week was in Geometry class; a student was late and knocked on the door to be let in. Since I sit next to the door I simply turned the handle and the student came in. Well when my teacher saw this he wasn´t happy. He grabbed the student (somewhat gently) by the arm and led him out of the classroom, closed the door on him then turned to me. I was really confused at this point and just stared blankly at the door. My teacher leans with both hands on my desk and says in broken english ``Who is the boss.´´ Well I knew what he ment and responded ``Tu, claro.(You, of course)´´ to be polite and not get chewed out in portuguese in front of the rest of the class. Then he turned and opened the door for the tardy student. Who came in looking just as confused as I had. Well, I can´t think of anything else for now but If I do I´ll write later. Questions comments? Até Já.

School.

So school has started and it´s going great. I can´t say I´m the best student I´ve ever been; in relationship to the states that is. I frequently don´t understand everything and find it hard to participate in portuguese. I still do my best and on occasion can formulate an answer and give my two cents. My success in school, however, lies not in tests and grades but in my relationship with my peers and the non-academic, yet equally as important, aspects and lessons I´m learning in school. This success is due greatly in part to all my peers in my term who have helped me and welcomed me as part of their class. But, there are two people who I feel have really been most selfless and generous in their support to me; and they are Dennis and Zita. These two have put up with many ´´Huh?´´s and ``What does that mean?´´s. They have worked tirelessly and been the most patient people with me in school thus far, and I would just like to publicly thank them for their efforts. Thanks, I really appreciate it. Anyways school is great, it is a place to be social and experience life in portugal. It occupies most of my time and really all my enegy is diverted towards school, but without it I fear I would find myself with little to do. Well thats all for now, I would really appreciate any questions or comments that you have or if you want or if you have the time!

Amazing Day.

Today was so sick! I woke up around nine and went to watch an Urban Downhill Mountain Bike Race with my host father Louis. We watched practice runs for a while until we learned that the competition didn´t start until after two. This worked out perfectly as we had to attend a luncheon with my Grandma around one. We headed home to get ready and pick up the rest of the family and headed literally across the street to a five-star hotel-spa-restaurant. There they had the best buffet I have ever seen and we indulged ourselves until we could hardly walk. After that it was back to the racecourse for me and Louis. We watched the race until it ended at around six. This Urban Downhill business is some of the craziest, gnarliest riding I have ever seen. And some of the most poetic. The riders started in a church courtyard older than the United States, dropped down massive stairsets and wove through closely-nit granite buildings and skidded over rough cobble stone pathways. I didn´t have my camera and am very bummed I couldn´t document it. Louis had his phone and we got some videos and pictures. I´m sure if you wanted you could google it and find some info/pictures. Just type in Viseu Urban Downhill or something. Oh, and the hotel we had lunch at is called Hotel Monebelo and it is litterally across the street from our house.

More on life.

Today I recieved my school schedule. The school system here in Portugal is very different from ours in the U.S. in many ways. First one must pick a study area, these include but are not limited to Visual Art, Social Economics, Sciences, Languages etc. I chose Art becuase I think that would be the area in which I would exceed the most without a full grasp of the language. Within the chosen study area there are still recquired classes; i.e. P.E. , Portuguese, philosophy, etc. and elected classes; Languages, mathematics etc. I chose English for my elected class because I still need English credit in the States. My schedule is very much, I imagine, like a college schedule; I have classes some days, some classes are longer than others, I get out of school at various times in the week and have a two hour long lunch. School will start at 8:25 every day, lucky for me because if I had to get up earlier or later on certain days I would surely find myself in a splendid state of dissaray and perpetual confusion. One thing that I find difficult and particularly annoying about this college-esque schedule is that every other day I´m not let out until after 6:30 in the evening! Not so lucky for my brother Afonso. Some days he has classes in the mornings only, other days he starts after noon. And too what time he gets out on those days I haven´t the foggiest. Another interesting thing about life around school here is that the local convenience stores carry the textbooks needed for classes. I´m not sure if they only stock them this time of year or what, but after recieving my schedule Afonso, Sofia and I went accross the street to this small hole-in-the-wall shop to look for schoolbooks. Another snippit about life here in Portugal that caught my eye is the energy efficiency of everything. It has nothing to do with school but there are no rules to my blog. It´s not that the Portuguese are specifically attentive to Global climate change or anything; it´s just that life doesn´t require them to have the biggest cars or what have you. My frequent drives and walks arond town are always under the constant looming presence of electricity generating windmills in the hills around Viseu. The toilets here even have two flushes, one for small loads and a bigger one for... Well you guessed it. There is also no central heating or air conditioning, each room has it´s own small thermostat used only when need be. All this makes life no less luxurious at all and now in fact I can´t imagine it any other way. I also helped my sister Kika paint her new desk today. We painted it pink. My Portuguese is no longer non-existent but it still has a long way to go before becoming very useful. I also bought a sweet new pair of shoes, sort of like indoor soccer shoes, very euro and stylish. Eating is a pleasant activity here in more ways than one. The food is of course delicious and most meals are eaten as a family. If you´ve read or seen the Lord of The Rings trilogy you can picture our diet here like that. Bread and cheese, chocolate milk and fruit for breakfast. A full meal for lunch with soup and salad. Snack and coffee sometime mid-afternoon. And a big meal for dinner at around eight. We also have a little dog here named Lisa. I like her even though she is about the size of Rocket´s head. I will also be playing tennis, rather learning to play tennis, while I´m here. Every Saturday from ten till noon Afonso, Kika and I will have lessons. Thats all for now. Questions, comments jsut leave me a note.

First days in Portugal!

I am officially in Portugal! I live in a town called Viseu, south-east of OPorto in the heart of Portugal . Viseu is very metropolitan and quite intricate. I really like it here and, after only two days, feel right at home. Today I went for a bike ride by myself around town and got a sense of the place. I´m glad to say that I found my way home safely and didn´t get lost at all.
As far as traveling goes my journey here to Portugal was oneiric. From Ashland I drove with my Dad to San-Francisco where we stayed a night with some friends. The next morning we flew to New York where a departure orientation was held. In New York my father and I met David Soo (my uncle) for some pizza at the famous and original ``Ray´s Pizzeria.´´ After a very filling meal of three quarters-inch thick pizza David gave me and my father a tour of New York. Now, normally to see all New York has to offer (I.E. Times-Square, Statue of Liberty, etc.,) you need a professional tour guide or all day; my Dad and I had neither and we still were able to see everything worthwhile with the guidance of David. The next day I said goodbye to my Dad and headed to the orientation. There I met around 120 exchange students to-be, over half of which were going to Italy, and made twice as many friends as I could afford (saying good-bye took almost all day!) After the orientation all of the kids bound to Portugal from the states (There are 11 of us in total of which I am the only boy) were herded onto a bus and shuttled to Newark International Airport. We boarded our direct flight to Lisbon no problem and were off. At least we thought; it so happened all the runways were so busy that we had to taxi for over an hour. The flight itself was fine, we had dinner, snacks and talked about our experiences so far and what is to come. We arrived in Lisbon at 6-ish in the morning (it wasn´t a twelve hour flight but the time change makes it seem so), spent a couple hours in a customs line and finally saw the light of day for the first time in Portugal at 8 o´clock. Some AFS staff were there to meet us and put us on yet another bus. We had the opportunity to drive through much of Lisboa on the way to the hostel where we stayed for the arrival orientation. Lisboa is a very picturesque city, very much like San-Francisco; bridge and all. This orientation was designed to give in-bound students to Portugal from all around the world a chance to meet each other and to learn about Portugal and AFS. Our hostel was located on a hill opposite Lisboa and provided postcard views of the entire bay from every room. The arrival orientation was really cool, I shared a small room with three other boys my age, two from Argentina and one from Switzerland. I became good friends with everyone at the orientation and will hopefully see them while I am here. On the last day of the orientation my Mae Sofia and my Pai Louis came to pick me up. It took about two hours to drive back to Viseu and I got a chance to see more of Lisboa and of the country.