First part of Winter Break.

I went down to Lisbon for christmas. My sister, Avo and I were picked up by my host uncle´s Chauffer and Mercedes in Viseu, we then drove down to lisbon. We dropped all our stuff off at the hotel, snacked, and then I hopped on a train and went to meet up with Sebi! We hung out and met up with our Mexican pal Tlaloc. I had some trouble with the train schedule but all was well. The next day the fam and I went to walk around Estoril. We had lunch and all and then I went for a swim at the hotel pool, OUTSIDE!!! The day before christmas! We then went to have christmas eve dinner with Sofia´s family. This is the most important part of the holiday. We hung out and then had dinner. The tradition is to eat Cod-fish and turkey. After dinner was dessert of all kinds of baked goods. Sugary donut like pastries. The next day we walked around again and then had lunch back at Sofia´s family´s house and the left. On the way home we stopped at an old castle town called Obidos. The whole town is tricked out for christmas. There were all kinds of things there from Christmas tree row (a street lined with christmas trees) to fake sledding to zip-lines. The whole set up reminded me of the country fair with people dressed up, booths, the smell of good food, fun, laughs, all set in an epic location. This whole shindig was set up in a circle around the base of an old giant castle. It was memorable. Here are some pictures.

Even 30 Skype post

Hey, this is my 30th post! woohoo! yoohoo! Yippy! Hi-HAY! Yippy yai-yay! Just kidding, the most important thing is that I just downloaded Skype. For those of you who don´t know what Skype is, it´s a type of free internet phone. You can call from computer to computer, just like a phone, for free (microphone/speakers or headseat needed). You can also chat(instant messenger style), and hold video confrences (webcam needed). All these functions can be excecuted with up to 25 people. I thought this would be a great way to communicate a little more personally. You can also call regular phones from Skype for a small fee, yet still cheaper than regular phone to phone. I think Skype is quite the new technological revolutionary deal that is helping people connect all over the world. You can download Skype for free at Skype.com. And believe me it´s easy. Oh, and my skype name is Bssmall (2 s´ and 2 l´s). So add me if/when you have it! That´s all for now, and I look forward to talking with you!

Weekend in Lisbon and Foz do Arelho

So, I have soo much to say, I hope I can do my weekend justice. Here it goes. Last wednesday my friend from argentina called me and asked me if I wanted to stay with him in lisbon for the weekend. We decided that it would be better if I skipped school friday and we would take an extra day to see the city. So thursday night I hopped on a bus in viseu and was off. I arrived in lisbon 4 hours later at 10 pm. Usually the trip isn´t that long but the bus stopped through coimbra and other places and I thought it was really cool to see them. I was greeted by sebi and his host mom at the bus station and after some sleepy hellos we headed to the house. Sebi´s house is located in one of the best neighborhoods in lisbon, the same one with all the embassies and old monuments. The first night we hung out and talked and after a quick bite to eat we went to bed. We woke up early the next morning to get a jump start on the city. We did the usual morning routine (shower, food) in record time and were out the door. The weather was perfect. It was the day after some rain but the sun was smiling down upon us. Windy but great. We walked a couple of blocks down to a train station were we bought tickets from a cool machine and waited for our train. A couple of trains passed before ours, but when it came we were ready and got on easily. We rode the train all the way into the city and then changed onto a metro. We got off the metro in downtown lisbon. It was really cool, the metros in lisbon are really clean and nice, with art all in the stations and the walls are white tiles with arching ceilings. When you exit the station in downtown lisbon you are greeted with views of the castle of saint jorge and the cathedral. Well, we headed through the shopping district, passed under a big famous arch/clock tower, saw the square of commerce and headed up through the narrow labyrinth of streets to the cathedral. The cathedral is really really cool and really really old. The coolest thing about it is that it was built over an old muslim center that was built over an ancient roman city. So you have three layers of history sorrounded by modern lisbon. SO COOL!!!!!!! after that we headed up to the castle that dominates lisbon with its ever vigilante, ancient eye. As we worked our way up the hill to where the castle is situated we passed another ancient roman site that was once a theater capable of holding over 4,000 spectators. This ruin was so cool as it was a giant chunk cut out of the lisbon hillside. We got up to the castle and realized we needed to buy tickets to get in. We waited in line talking in portugeuse and when we got up to the counter we showed our portuguese student cards and our lisbon metro tickets and got in for free! The castle was probably my favorite thing, it is just this amazingly beautiful old castle with cannons and everything overlooking the whole of lisbon with a view stretching out to the ocean. WAAAY COOL. After running around the castle for some time we rolled back on down to the city center where we climbed up this famous tower constructed by eifel or a student of his. We walked all the way up to the top, even though there were elavators (they cost 4 euros to use) and soaked in the amazing view from yet another amazing vantage point. This time we could see back to the castle from whence we came and could see our next destination: The ruins of (ah, can´t remember) some epic name that sounds like it belongs in the Lord of the rings. We went there and were so stoked to find that is was waay more than either of us expected to see. The ruin is of an old cathedral that was nearly completely destroyed in the earthquake/tsunami/fire lisbon experienced long ago. It is really cool because the ground is all grass now but the walls and the arches supporting the giant vaulted cieling are still there, but nothing else, it reminded me of the great hall in Hogwarts with a magic cieling. The walls are really cool too, especially on the outside with all the old architecture. In the back of the ruins is a small restored museum with relics from all over the world including mummies from peru and everything. After this we left to go have lunch and see the biggest christmas tree in all of europe. We walked up the avenue of liberty and caught the metro at the top. We took the metro back down to the city center where we met an electric, a kind of trolley famous in lisbon, that took us to Belem. Belem is one of the most beautiful city places I have ever encountered in my lifetime. Belem is the name of the area in lisbon where the ocean meets the river and the land is all low and green. There is a really famous pastry shop that we eventually went to, a giant monastary, the tower of belem which is a unesco world heritage site, the monument of discoveries (commemorating all of portugals history in navigation) and the cultural center of Belem which is a very pretty building that does everything from the fine arts to school trips. First we went to the monastary but were dissapointed to find it closed for the night. We meandered through the beautiful park until the Monument of discoveries. This monument is sooo cool, it is a giant white marble statue with carvings of all the great portuguese explorers. It is probably 5-6 stories high and has an elevator in the middle of it that allows you to go to the very top. We did this and when we got to the top were greeted by (according to yahoo.com) the biggest moon of the year. It was like that because that was the time when the moon was closest to the earth in it´s orbit. But yeah it was sensational. After that we tried to get into the tower of Belem but again were dissapointed to find that its doors were shut and it´s windows dark. By this time we were exhausted so we went to get something to eat in a nearby cafe. After a quick bite we walked back to sebi´s house, tired and happy. We rested for a good while and then decided to go get dinner with some of our other exchange friends from lisbon. Me and sebi hopped on a bus and we all met up in a big mall about 20 min. away from sebi´s house. We met up with two other guys and went to find some dinner. We stopped at a pizza place and sat and ate and laughed so hard for quite a while. After that one of our friends had to go home so we decided what to do next. We went to the movie theater in the mall to buy some popcorn (the sweet kind is really popular here) and ended up buying the biggest box we could. After that we adventured around the mall for a while with our popcorn until we just couldn´t take it anymore and when all the stores closed we left. We got home and I was able to meet the rest of sebi´s family, we relaxed for a while and, as the clock struck midnight, were suprised by sebi´s parents who came to give me a birthday present. I didn´t think that I had told them it was my birthday and I sure wasn´t expecting anything from them, but I was presented with a polo and a t-shirt from sebi´s host fathers winery/vineyard. I was very suprised and thankful. After that is was sleep. The next morning (my birthday) we woke up, showered and headed to catch our bus to the AFS lunch. We took a taxi to the big bus station and quickly found our bus and our seats. We still had pocorn left and some candy from the night before that we brought with us for the drive. Just before it was time to go, two last passengers got on the bus and started looking for seats. As they neared the back of the bus, where me and sebi were seated, we recognized them as fellow afsers and invited them to come sit with us. It was such a coincidence. It just happened to be the two students from greenland, one of which was mine and sebis room mate at the last orientation. During the ride we ate and laughed and slept until we arrived at our destination. When we got off the bus it was raining and cold. We still werent all the way to where we needed to be, so we hired a taxi and were on our way. Our final destination was Foz Do Arelho, a beach town famous for it´s beauty and restaurants. It reminded me a lot of the oregon coast with the dunes, the wind and the rain, and the city nestled in a cove sorrouned by cliffs. We were the first ones there and decided to take our time and go on a walk down on the beach. We explored all around the dunes and the rocks and sebi got hit by a wave. His pants were soaked and he ended up being wet, but not entirely misserable, for the rest of the day. I found some great rocks, only like the kind you find in oregon, and then we were met by some more students. The lunch was great; just a lot of friends laughing, telling stories and merry making. AFS payed for everything and even gave us all santa hats. I was sung happy birthday by everyone and just had a genuine time. Sebi and I hitched a ride back to lisbon with another family and, exhausted once again, were thankful to be home. We were greeted at the door by all of sebi´s family and more, that day there was a big soccer game on tv and a lot of people came over to watch, and I was grabbed and sung to once again. This time there was a cake and we all just had another great time. Sunday was great too. Sebi slept in a little longer while I made pancakes from scratch for everyone so say thank you. I was told they were the best pancakes that anyone of them had ever eaten! After a good breakfast went out to tour belem once more. First we went to the tower of Belem where we went all around the old fortress and admired it´s beauty. After that we got in to the monastary and saw the tomb of Vasco da gama. There is another world history museum there and we saw tons of stuff from all over the world, including more mummies and ancient roman artifacts like some of the first gold jewelry in the world. It was really cool. We made a stop at the famous Belem pastry house and bought some pastries for me to bring back to viseu. We were then picked up by sebi´s parents and brothers and treated to lunch. We went to the famous beach at Guincho where we ate at a well known seafood restaurant. I saw a plate there that cost over 140 euros, some sort of lobster I think. After a great meal we went to see the beach and the old fort, take pictures and be blasted by gale force winds. When we just couldn´t take it anymore we all took shelter in the car and went on a tour of the high-class beach towns. We saw the biggest casino in Europe and much more. We arrived back at the house at the perfect time, I packed and we headed out to the bus station. I took the pastries and was off. When I got home it was late and I was asleep before my head hit the pillow. I had a pretty much normal week, I recieved almost all of my grades from the first period and it´s looking like I´m going to do more than just pass! School ended for me yesterday and now I´m just looking forward to a great christmas break! More later, if I remember any details or anything.

Early Happy Holidays!

I just wanted to say thanks for everything! I don´t think I dedicated a post to thanksgiving so this one will be for that and early holidays! I´m thankful for everything in my life that has brought me to where I am. All the random things happening in every aspect of every miniscule part of what we call existence. I have so, so, so many people to thank that this post would be twice as long as my last one! :) So I´m just gonna say you know who you are! (that means YOU!) Happy Holidays to all, and this is just a leader-inner post to the holiday season! Até já from here in Portugal!

Greve.

I had so many words floating around in my head over what to title this post, but the one I chose seemed to me to be the most appropriate. Greve in Portuguese means ``Strike,´´ the kind that happens when peoples rights are abused not like all you baseball fans were thinking. (Sorry to get your hopes up.) This word has kind of been the theme to my week and has hardly been off the lips of any person in Viseu, let alone Portugal for that matter, for the past while. Before I go into detail about the issues under scrutiny or my opinions on them I´ll tell you a little bit about my week. For starters this week has all been really rainy and dark, I guess you could say dank but in the literal sense. Gloomy. This hasn´t really helped anyones attitudes towards anything let alone the Greve. The cold wind and rain has kept most of us homebound and has even pushed Afonso to sickness. I´m always doing my best to stay healthy and I hope none of my Oregon toughness (cough cough) has worn off yet. Like you know if you read my last post I didn´t have school on Monday due to a holiday, Tuesday was normal and I only had two classes. That was the day of the whole visa shinanigans. I woke up wednesday morning to the incessant buzzing of my alarm clock and climbed out of bed in the darkness that stays with us even until 7:30 a.m. I was expecting nothing less (or more) than a normal day at school that morning as I ate breakfast and started my commute (A.K.A. The ten-minute freezing morning hell dash to school.) I´m just kidding it´s not that bad. (But still cold.) When I arrived at school I found the parking lot looking surprisingly empty and the classrooms strangely dark. The main gate of the school was still open though, so I went on ahead and entered. When I found the classroom in which my first lesson was to be held I encountered a small group of students and asked what was going on. They said today all the teachers would be going on strike to counter the Ministry. Our teacher however, was not on strike and would be coming to class. Well he did, class was fine and the final bell rang as normal; little did I know that this was the end of what was left of the normality of my week. I went to the room where my next class was to be held and upon arrival finding no one, I went to go look for some answers. I ventured down to the school bar where I met some of the other kids from my term and asked what was going on. They said that apparently all of our teachers were in support of the strike and that school was over for us today. So all my friends were planing to just hang out down in the school for the rest of the day until the buses came to take them home. I headed home myself and then back to school and then home again just kind of passing in this onslaught of confusion that was plagueing everyone affliliated with our school. During one of my passes I noticed a poster, or a canvas rather, covered in spraypaint displaying all sorts of things about the Ministry and how bad it is and that tommorow (today, the 4th of December) we students were going to do something about it! And how you might ask? The letters G.R.E.V.E. were painted in big, bright red at the bottom. When I saw this I had mixed emotions. Maybe now is a good time to explain the situation. The teachers are protesting because they feel they are being ``Militarized´´ by the Ministry, I.E. stricter regulations, schedules, testes etc. I guess kind of like N.C.L.B. and they feel like they need to be left alone, teach what they want, and get paid more. Of course this has recieved a lot of the media´s attention and when various student groups from around the country gave their support to the teachers they (the students) were given a lot of attention as well. The students have been feeling the pressure of the Ministry´s rule for a long time, and, riding this new wave of publicity and unrest they are doing things they would never have done before. GREVE! Sure protesting is the easiest and most fun way of getting your point across, (I mean what teenage student is gonna turn down ditching school for a day and causing chaos in the streets, the romanticity and rebelious attitude behind idea of anarchy is an appealing one.) but the sacrifice your going to make is looking like an idiot and that´s not worth risking. It can also be said that teens have organizational problems, besides keeping rooms clean, and this (rioting) is easier than putting in the effort to organize and really effectively inspire change. I personally think that we (students) have much more power than we realize, after all we are the future of the world wether we or anyone else likes it or not. There are much more realistic threats or comprimises that could be made instead of refusing our education. How do we expect to make things better if we can´t write laws to change them etc.? I think we have to show how smart we really are in ways that don´t prove the opposite, otherwise we will be labeled hypocrites and never taken seriously. This remindes me of a quote by Friedrich Nietzsche ``Whoever aims publicly at great things and at length perceives secretly that he is too weak to achieve them, has usually also insufficient strength to renounce his aims publicly, and then inevitably becomes a hypocrite.´´
The students basically have three main points that frankly are right (or wrong) enough to deserve some serious attention and tweakage, and they used this strike and media coverage to get that attention. I think an all out strike is not the right way to come about change, but I´ll get to that later. Anyway, the three points of the students are as follows: 1. End this regime of faults. A fault is like an absence but you can fault if you don´t have the materials neccessary for class, if you are more than 10 min. late or if you just don´t come. These are are equal in the eye of the ministry. 2. How free is public school when each student is required to pay over 35 euros for each textbook in each class. and 3. Us students just work to damn hard for you, school is hard and it should be easier and WAH WAH WAH. (one of the points I don´t agree with.) One of the main arguments the students have been making is that they are not manipulated and that they are smart. One thing that makes me sick is just how cool they all think they are. They make these big old spray-painted banners, block of the school gates not letting in teachers or staff members (the whole time it´s raining and freezing cold), yelling, screaming and chanting all these things. And that´s not even the beginning. So that´s just were I´ll start. I woke up early again this morning, more tired than yesterday, dressed and prepared for school. I knew the strike would be happening but I thought that since it was only a STUDENT strike I could still go to class as I had no intention of participating in the hell-raising. When I got to school the scene was much as it was the day before, empty parking lot, dark windows, gloom.Dank. Now, when I come to school the way I walk from my house puts me in the back of the school, far off the main street. I can usually just pop in a side gate and head straight to class or to the social areas or whatever. Like yesterday the back gate was locked so I made my way up to the front of the school. When I got there I was greeted by a literal mob of well over a thousand students chanting, screaming and generally being like the steriotypical protest. There were signs, megafones and, the main attraction of the show, the media. The students I think succeeded in other areas than making fools of themselves, they used their own desire, the media, to document them making fools of themselves. There were media personnel all over this juicy student rebellion and they didn´t hesitate to go so far as to climb up on walls to get a good angle. (This just made everyone more excited and led to a sort of symbiotic relationship,if you will, with the media.) I quickly found my classmates and we got down to business; which was doing exactly the opposite: nothing.(So smart.) We hung out there watching the cars pass on the streets, the people inside showing looks of anything from support or unintrest, to disgust or to even documenting the event with digital cameras and cell phones. Ahh, technology. Every so often the crowd would start surging and the yells would become louder, whistles would blow and all the reporters would run with their cameras at the ready to see what was happening this time. If you´ve ever been to Halloween or New Years (or any holiday worth getting drunk over) on the Plaza in downtown Ashland you can picture it a lot like that, whenever a lightsaber is raised, a countdown started, the cops drive by, or someone stumbles and finds themselves at the top of the drinking fountain a huge roar of un-comprehensible noise raises from the crowd. As I talked with more people and began to try and educate myself about this manifestation I quickly realized that probably 90% of all the people there didn´t know exactly why they were. Most of the people new it was a demonstration/protest for something(props on figuring out that brainbuster) let alone that it was student lead. Those who did know a little about the motives of the deal only knew the three sentences written all around them on the big spray-painted banners and that they were here to fight the ministry and for their rights as students and people too! One thing I do know now is that 100% of those people were rightly stoked to have a day off of school! The more I tried talking with people and debating ideas about our soon to become riot, the more I was shut out. Just before I was going to go home to do some research and get some answers something changed. A group of students was standing there with big signs spelling out the word ROSSIO, which is the center of town. That´s when the avalanche started. People started fooding through the city park that divides our school campus from downtown and pooling up in front of the city hall. Traffic screached to a stop as the river of angry students washed by churning and spitting as if the threat of being run over wasn´t an object. I followed reluctantly seeing that there was no way I could get in to school. I actually took a quick break and got a snack too, a lancheira. I think other people had the same idea at this time but instead went to buy beer, eggs and ciggarettes. (all leagal and all perfectly appropriate to help the student cause!) When I got back the now riot was moving towards the other section of the city hall up across the street. This other new city hall building doesn´t have a plaza in front of it, so the mass simply halted in the street outside. Once again traffic came, with screaching brakes and near misses, to a halt. This is when the Police came. At first they were just there to aid in the flow of traffic around the nearly 2,000 strong body of students but then decided to bring in a van force to keep things under control. The street was blocked off and the students were trapped with a whole street to themselves. Aided by beer and ciggaretes the fuming student machine began drawing more attention than ever before, with a final blow eggs were sent soaring at the windows and white washed walls of the city hall. Of course the Police didn´t like this and didn´t let it last long. Like a bunch of ashes after a fireworks display the students started to disperse and blow away. I too returned home and saw that our actions had truly not gone unnoticed and that the national news T.V. station was already broadcasting the story for everyone to see. (Or laught at.) Well, I think that´s all I have about that. I think we´re lucky in the stats, or maybe just in Ashland, to have such dedicated teachers and such rational, smart students. (o.k. maybe just in Ashland.) Thanks, and any questions or comments would help fill in some of the blanks here (for me and you!), clarify and all that. Até Já.

Visa renewal.

So today I went to renew my visa and apparently all the stuff I had (which was everything AFS told me I needed) was only a small fraction of what was really needed. We need to have our house inspected and all these tax forms and stuff. Well, I´m working on setting up a Skype account and you can have conference call with up to 25 people all for free. I´ll post the info when I´m done.