First part

Friday morning: I woke up and went to school. I had english class. After english my class was instructed to meet my philosophy teacher at our local theater in and hour. We were to get there on our own, and as most of my coleagues can not yet drive, we set off on foot. The local theater, teatro viriato, is not that far from my school, about a mile, mile and a half tops. The walk there however is very interesting, we passed through the city park, downtown square, the narrow shop lined streets that sorround the cathedral that dominates our city and out the other side to our destination. We arrived about five minutes before our teacher and once everyone was ready we were shown in. With just enough trouble that you would expect from a giant crowd of teenagers we found our seats. The only thing I knew about the peice we were going to see was the title, and from that I could gather very little information. The something of the adolescente something, was what is was called. The lights went down and two men appeared on stage, after that the (for lack of a better word) art that flowed out in front of me on that stage was unlike anything I had ever experienced before. These two men, acrobats, poets, philosophers, musicians, did most a bit of everything and a little more. The ``Play´´ wove in and out of sense, changed languages (spanish, portuguese and english, all of which I could understand)flowed flawlessly from debates about Don Juan to akward reproductions of hit 80´s tunes. It was a sight, an experience, not to be described in words, but more, expressed, they were not putting on a play by reading us a script, these men were creating something that involved you as an audience member, that pulled you in, yet kept you out, in the reality that you were still an audience member, it was wicked cool.
After the play ended we were instructed to stay in the theater with my art teacher to make some sketches of the theater. The building is really cool, kind of like different sized cylinders inside one another. I finished this task with haste and was off to collect my things and begin my journey to lisbon.

Weekend of Ice!

,WOW, I really don´t know where to start. This weekend was just so much fun. Even though I didn´t even leave Viseu I felt like I did so many new things. Okay, so chronologilcally: Friday I had school, then after I went to make some photocopies,(really cool) and then I went to the bus station to pick up my friend Sebastian Lande, who is another AFS exchange student, at around 6. After we met up in the bus station we headed to go get a bite to eat. I know this really good café really close to the bus station that has these amazing things called Lancheiras, they are like these... I dunno, I guess you could call them pastries, with ham and cheese melted together on the inside. They are probably as big as a slice of pizza, the same shape too but they are semi-round and only one unit, not a slice of anything. They dough is done to perfection, a nice light brown, gooey on the inside and just crisp on the outside, the cheese and ham are layered together and moist and melty. They are so good and are only 1 euro and they really fill you up. Well, we took our Lancheiras and went and sat in the plaza and savored our delicious snack. After that I showed him the central city park and we headed home. After dinner we went to this really cool talent show at the local college. The college really reminds me of SOU in that it´s not super prestigious but it´s fun, has a heart and has good education. This talent show was a benifit for Autism and was packed, a really good sign. The first half of the show wasn´t all that spectacular, a bunch of music performances of mixed age groups, none of which would even compete at the AHS talent show. Then there was a little break with free food and drink, and then the second half. The second bit was infinitely better. There was an acoustic duo who performed, one guy with a classical guitar and the other guy with a traditional portuguese guitar. The portuguese guitar is reallt cool, it´s like a cross between a mandolin and a turtle. It has twelve strings and is shaped like a dome, and the neck is really cool with a hook like thing on top. Well this group was really cool and inspiring. The rest were ok but not really memorable, and then the grand finnally. A TUNA! No, not the fish. A tuna is a special kind of college music group with about 20-30 men all wearing big black cloaks and huge, black, wide brimmed hats with guitars, ukalelees, portuguese guitars, basses, flutes, you name it and a really important instrument:Tamborines. Well this tuna was called TUNADÃO (Dão is the region in which I live and where the college is) and apparently they won a tuna competition or something and are well known. Tunas can be found in colleges all over the Iberian peninsula and are the equivalent to pep-bands in America but really traditional and prestigious. Well, all the guys with instruments made a wide half-circle around the center of the stage and started singing and playing really loudly and boistrusly. Don´t get me wrong it was really good music and it definitely recquired skill but it sounded like someone gave instruments to a frat party and started singing the fight song. Now, this is what Tuna is but somehow it felt more full of art than beer if you catch my drift. As the music kept roaring you could feel a definite build up in the atmosphere of the place and then bam! The guys with Tamborines and flags blasted out into the middle of the stage and started, litterally, beating them selves with their instruments in time with the music. After a minute I realized they were dancing and was awestruck. The flag bearers where twirling away and the guys with Tamborines were doing acrobatics and throwing their instruments, and the whole time the music was blasting and everything fit perfectly together. It was really, really, really cool. Amazing, inspiring, what you want. This lasted till about 1 in the morning and then we headed home exhausted and passed out.
Saturday: On Saturday we woke up and made breakfast and then headed out on an epic bike loop of Viseu. We started with going to Fontelo, the biggest city park, then weaved through the narrow city streets to Sé (Central Cathedral area). There we saw that Sé was closed for about another hour and a half so we decided to head out and return later. After this we went around the town and saw all the monuments. We decided we didn´t want to take the bikes with us back to Sé so we ditched them at home and headed back. At Sé we went into the big main Cathedral and were let into the museum section for free, so we went all around and took pictures and admired the view and all the old stuff. After that we went to the Museum Grão Vasco where we saw all kinds of really cool art. Then we hit up the museum in the other church and headed to Forum (a mall in downtown Viseu). We grabbed a quick lunch in Forum and then we had to recharge Sebastian´s cell phone. After this it was really cold so we went home. For dinner we all went out to my favorite pizza restaurant Piazza Di Roma. We ate and merry made there until late and, after meeting up with some friends of Louis and Sofia´s, we all went home. Know before I say this next part let me tell you a little story. Or more, A History. I´ve never been one for sports video games, I dunno, something about them just doesn´t really appeal to me. What that is I´m not sure, or not willing to say risk offending all you sports enthusiasts out there, Kidding. Well, anyway, I´m just not that great at them and, I pride myself as being a lover of the finer things in life and, not to say that video games aren´t, but... So Afonso is really good at this one sports game called Pro Evolution Soccer and he plays it all the time and I would say he has mastered the art of domination in this particular video game. I dared play him once and found myslef sacrificing my players with red cards at the end of the game just to put a little hurt on Afonso´s, albeit virtual, team. I lost a whopping 8-0. After this I haven´t really gone near the game. Well, After dinner me and Sebi headed down to the basement for a game of Foosball, now Fooseball I have grown to like and would normally be down to play it but we were both really tired so I opted for something less arrousing (we tend to shout and jump around alot when we play Foosbal) and offered we play videogames instead. Sebastian was up for that and when he saw we had Pro Evolution Soccer he said we must play. I warned him of my pre-disposition and he said not to worry. Sure enough he wooped me hard the first game and sent me sneaking of like a dog with its tail between its legs. Sebastian felt bad after this slaughter so he offered to train me in the art of PES. After a couple matches of practice and explination I felt I was ready to test my skills in a real game. This time the score was a little more even and I think he ended up winning by only one point. (In hindsight I see he was going easy on me still) Afonso came down after not to long, and jumping at the opportunity to get out of the losers seat I suggested that Afonso play Sebi. It just so happens that the master (Afonso) was ``out of practice´´ and lost to Sebastian by one point in a sudden death shootout. The next couple of games Sebi continued to assert his dominance and I continued to slip lower in my seat. It was time for bed.
Sunday:Sunday we woke up late and headed straight to the farm for lunch. We ate well and I took Sebi on a tour of the place. We played more foosball and a round of ping-pong before leaving. Instead of returning home we were dropped of at the Palacio De Gelo or Ice Palace to walk around. This is one of the Biggest Shopping malls in all of Portugal and is a 10 minute walk from my house. I think it´s like six stories of sheer shopping madness. The Ice palace has a bunch of unique stores but there is one in particular that is really famous. The Minus 5 ice lounge. The Minus 5 ice lounge is a bar entirely carved out of ice. It costs 13 euros for 30 min. and the bar is kept at a chilling -12 degrees celsius. When Sebastian saw this he said we just had to do it, A because we are exchange students and we must take advantage of every experience and B he saw a show about this on tv and he said one time in his life he would go there and tell his grandchildren about it. So, we went in. I only had shorts on but they gave us full gear to survive in the sub-arctic tempuratures, JK. We had a blast and took well over a hundred pictures. After we went back around the mall and saw a for real Formula 1 racing car. After that we ran out of time and had to deliver Sebastian back to the bus station. We got on the bus and made it home fine and we are left with the memories (and ton of pictures) of a really worthwhile weekend!

Politics.

So I just realized I hadn´t posted anything over the presidential elections in the States. Here the elections were a huge deal, everyone was really supporting Obama but they all seemed really pessimistic to me. I think with him winning their views were changed. I watched some about it on t.v., talked about it with friends, family and teachers. I was happy when I heard Obama had won, even though it was the next morning! I would have had to stay up until 2am to have watched the whole thing and that wouldn´t have been a good idea as I had school the next day. I guess that kind of sums up how I felt about it. Not that it wasn´t historically, internationally and ridiculously important, I just new there wasn´t much for me to do and I would rather sleep than stay up with crossed fingers. Well, I don´t know if you´ve heard but here in Portugal the new Ministry of Education has been giving the teachers a hard time. The Ministry apparently assigned a whole bunch of pointless tasks to the teachers like grading one-another and filing stupid reports etc. The teachers really didn´t take kindly to this as they are busy enough already and think this is all utterly beurocratic and a waste of time. The Ministry of Education didn´t really have a good rep in the first place and was the subject of a lot of criticism. Well with these new assignments the teachers just kind of boiled over. There has been a lot of protests in the streets and a lot of hullabaloo over this in the news. Today our Portuguese teacher lectured over this and we got to the subject of teachers rights etc. One thing that she said that really stuck in my mind was, something like this; she said that she remembered last year, when the Ministry didn´t have a lot of power and didn´t assign a ton of lousy tasks, when she only had to work afternoons on some days and how she enjoyed waking up at nine every morning, going to get coffee, walking the dog and doing other things before having to go and teach. She also said that the majority of teachers here only teach as a ``Hobby´´ or ``Part-Time Job,´´ and that they don´t want to spend their out-of-school time correcting tests or doing things related to school. She said that now, with stricter scholastic regulations, she was waking up earlier and spending more of her free time evaluating students and doing other things pertaining to school and that is worth picketing for. Boo-Hoo. I always thought that the European countries had way more sophisticated schools and valued education at all costs, and that learning wasn´t about grades, money or jobs, but individual growth and inspiration and finding answers to lifes bigger questions etc. Now I dunno. I still have plenty of faith in the majority of the Portuguese people being bright and valuing education and all the values I previously listed but maybe the beurocratic motives of the government and teaching staff are askew. Maybe the Portugese Government very realistically wants to create more industry in Portugal and be a more competitive nation in the global economy because in the recent past Portugal hasn´t been this way. And by teaching kids directly for a profession is a good way to get a lot of them out into the cities working and putting Portugal ``on the map´´ economically speaking. But I think kids should be learning as much for future professions as for personal growth and understanding. I have always thought the goal of an education is not just for cranking out products efficiently or being machinelike in whatever area of work one may choose but equally in becoming an intellectual, conscience being. I think there is a lot of room for debate on this topic but I´ll leave it at this for now. I just want to add this to all the kids in Ashland at AHS, or anywhere in anyschool for that matter, that most of your teachers spend a good 80% (really rough estimate) of their week hours to support you in your journey through highschool. I remember last year hearing stories from Ms. Hernandez about how she spent all weekend grading our lousy (Joking) essays and how she wanted to inspire us with projects to better our community. It might be a lot of work from everyone but I feel it is really benificial to all. So be thankful for that I guess. Até Já.

Tidbits.

Today was interesting and full. I woke up at 8.25 for my first day of my new class: History of Portugal. I will only have this class once a week and it´s just for me to be able to learn a little more about Europe and Portugal and their relationships between the rest of the world. It went fine and I think it will be really cool. After that I had Art. Right now in Art we are practicing with ``China Paint´´ as the translation goes, it is a runny black paint that you use with an apparatus that resembles a scalple more than an art utensil. I keep slicing gashes into my paper and spilling ink everywhere, it is really frustrating. After that I had math and lunch, both went well. This week is another ``List´´ election, this time we are electing a list to be in charge of the senior class trip. It doesn´t really pertain to any of the other students but there is loud music and all the other perks (minus food) :( of the last elections. After lunch today I participated in the Math Olympics at my school. The questions on the test were really hard and I´m only somewhat confident of my answers. We´ll see how that goes. I hate that feeling when you know there´s something else to say but you just can´t remember. Oh well, maybe next time.

Discovering.

This last weekend I discovered the magic of a very special place here in Viseu. I´ll get to the details later but I think that´s a good opening sentence :) On Saturday I woke up early as usual and had tennis lessons with Afonso. I think I´m getting the hang of tennis and look forward to the lessons each week. After tennis I went home but still felt like being active so I hopped on a bike and went to explore one of the city parks. This park is named Fontelo and it´s slogan is ``Center of life,´´ justly so I think. Fontelo is situated just outside the heart of Viseu and provides some of the best views of the commanding cathedral ``Sé´´. I have been to this park before, but only to one section and that´s the soccer fields. Fontelo is home to four full size soccer fields complete with stadiums and the likes. Apparently the national team trained here for the EuroCup a while back. These stadiums are situated in the very front of the park right behind one of the last standing Roman gates of the city. I´ve been to the soccer fields to watch some of Afonso´s games which have all been very exciting. Next to the soccer stadiums there is a basketball/handball stadium, a tennis stadium, a building for squash and raquetball I think and a large picnic area set under rows of giant sicamores. All this is merely only about a third of what Fontelo has to offer. As I ventured deeper into the park I rode my bike up and down winding trails past special zones set up with excersise challenges called a ``Maintenance Circuit´´ as the translation goes. I also stopped at a bouldering boulder. For those of you who don´t know what bouldering is, it is a form of rock climbing where the climber never gets very high off the ground, does not use ropes, and generally tries to make lateral and technical maneuveres on the rock face. I was stoked when I found this feature, the boulder itself is really big and split in two, it has a lot of moss on it in some areas but other than that is good to climb. On one side the boulder even has steps carved into it to get up on the top an easy way, and on the tallest side has mounted clips for carabiners. After I left this spot I found a cool dry creekbed that lead to a waterfall and a pond with ducks and a swan. Then I found a bridge and a path that I followed to a little house in the park where I think the caretaker lives. The house was sorrounded by probably twenty brightly colored Peacock just roaming around, and there were probably about 4 more in the trees and on the roof of a small chapel across the path. I didn´t have my camera with me at this time and missed out on a great photo-op. After this the path lead to a playground, more excersise points, more boulders(which didn´t look as good as the first) and a lot of green space with trees and the likes. I think I will be spending a lot more time here as it provides me with a place to feel like I´m ``In the woods´´ and can really relax in a peaceful environment. After roaming the back of the park I headed up to the front to meet Louis to watch another of Afonso´s soccer matches. We tied 1-1 if I remember correctly. On sunday I woke up and made Chocolate Chip Pancakes for the whole family. That went well and I was tottally stuffed. Just as I was feeling like I could move after that behemoth of a breakfast Sofia informed me that we were heading over to Hotel Montebelo for the buffet. Well, after another meal (even though I didn´t/couldn´t eat as much as usaul) we headed home to make gifts for Christmas. We took shoe boxes and decorated them with christmas-ie things and put toys in them. These shoeboxes with toys will be given to an organization that will then distribute them to poor families on Christmas. After that I went to go see ``007 Quantom Of Solace´´ with Afonso and Louis. This is not a movie review blog (although I´m sure those exist) but I thought the new 007 fell instantly into the category of ``Sequal´´. And that concludes my weekend.

Days.

Abandoned Cinema.

The Old Center of the City. That is a statue of one of the old kings of Portugal and behind is an ancient cathedral.

Derilict Aristocrat.

Hole in the wall Tabern 18.

Cluster.

Old Gate.

Old Stairs.

An old house over the mouth of a parking garage.

This House is situated off of an alley way in the middle of the old center of Viseu, the amazing thing about this house is that to get to it you litterally have to walk through a maze of alley ways only about five maybe six feet wide for about three blocks. Two get the whole house in view, and actually I didn´t get it all, I had to put the zoom on my camera all the way out and hold it against the wall on the opposite side of the alley. Here is an attempt at a panorama.

These past few days have been great. On Saturday I woke up met a girl here in Viseu on exchange from Massachussettes, went to tennis, left tennis early and went on a tour of Viseu for Fun Languages (My parents language school) with the girl and english students from the school. We talked with the students in english and used the tour as the inspiration for discussion. It was fun but I had already seen all the monuments. After that I went on a run. I ran pretty far, I´ve been running semi-often because it´s good exercise, get´s me out of the house, and I can see a lot of things. I have been looking for a used road bike to buy and fix up so I can cruise around faster and farther than by foot and biking is good exercise. I´m not really willing to pay more than 1oo euros for one and a new bike would cost over 200. On top of that I haven´t even found a used one. But running has been fine, it´s harder to motivate myself to run than I think it would be to bike. Well after that I came home and prepared for dinner. We went out to a big restaurant outside of Viseu, it was very good and I ate more than I should have. By then I was really tired and just went to bed. Today I went out to Villa Nova, a town outside Viseu where my Grandmother lives. She owns a farm there that dates back to around the 1880´s. I think that is my favorite place I´ve been so far. There are three buildings, two of them houses and one of them an old traditional kitchen with a huge granite oven, that surround a courtyard with an ancient tree in the middle whose branches stretch over the entire courtyard. The courtyard opens out onto the farm on one side. The farm is more like a mix of yummy fruit and nut trees laced with fun little games and paths and what not. For example, there is one path that circum-navigates the entire property, it ducks and weaves between fig tree´s that are dripping with perfect figs, chestnut trees, and is almost always walled on once side by grapevines complete with fat juicy grapes; the path makes stops at little shelters housing games such as ping-pong and foosball. The farm also has it´s own soccer and vollyball field. Another part I really like about the farm is that their is a giant dog who lives there. I can´t remember his name but I think he is an Estrela. He is very nice and gentle, just like Rocket. I like him very much. Well I´m sure there are things I´ve forgotten and it annoys me, but oh well. I hope you enjoy the pictures and question´s and comments always spark my memory and such. Até Já.

Month.

As of today, October 3rd, I have been away from Ashland for a month and two days. I left Ashland on the first of September, F.Y.I. ;) I have been in Portugal since the 5th of September and with my family since the 7th. This is by 10 days the longest I´ve been away from Ashland. An interesting thing that happened to me today that reminded me of home happened when I was reading a book/atlas with my cousin and I wanted to show him my state. We flipped to the Western United States page and I went to put my finger on the general area of Ashland. Then stopped. Now realize this is a childs atlas and has every country in the world in it, along with little facts about each one. Well why I stopped my finger was because right at the spot I was about to put my finger was a dot, and that dot was labeled Ashland. Medford was next to it, and it even had Crescent City, Yreka and other small obscure towns that I was suprised to find in this childrens book. By the way, this picture is in my blog because I am experimenting with a new way to upload photos/videos and it is a good example of a very cool portuguese practice. No one here uses dryers. On nearly every building, minus offices, there are clothlines stretching all over them. School was fine today. I went walking through the old part of Viseu yesterday and got some pictures and had an amazing time. I´ll put them up soon.

These are truly the last days. (Albeit not the one's I expected)

Well, I have said it before and I'll say it again, "I am leaving soon!" It has been, for lack of a better word, interesting for me these last couple of days seeing as I am the last of the departing exchange students to leave. There are already at least 4 or 5 inbound exchange students here in Ashland that I know of and they are all doing very well. My friend Alex has been in Ecuador for a week already and is nothing less than explosively ecstatic about his experience (if you know Alex you know what I mean). I can only hope my first week in Portugal will compare to his seemingly flawless time. I am sure it will! It seems as though everyone is gearing up for something now. My friends and brother have been attending the Fresh Start program through the High School. My brother is attending as a first timer (incoming Freshman hence "Fresh Start") and my friends as upstanding role-models/counselors/helpers/friends etc. The rest of my comrades who are not taking part in this program seem to be even more busy with things such as sports, (water polo players and footballers are having two-a-days) end of the summer vacations (Wilderness Charter School Backpacking trip), or summer homework; which should have been finished by now but, as the rule of the stereo-types go, procrastinating teens will always put off summer homework until the last minute. As you may see this lack of companionship/time consuming tasks has/have lead me to feel somewhat abandoned and utterly alone. Save my beloved dog Rocket who lies sleeping at my feet as I stare at screens for hours upon end. Thus I have been filling my spare time with online gaming, t.v. and other brain-numbing anti-everything activities. Of course I am being somewhat facetious but (sadly) I find it difficult to really express myself otherwise. I have been keeping fairly busy with packing, working out itineraries and the likes that deal with my departure/exchange but as the saying goes "If we don't have large time consuming tasks to occupy us, our lives get filled with things that are meaningless, that are momentarily distracting but have no exalting possibilities." I edited that a little! ;)
On a lighter note I have said goodbye to most all my friends and am happily preparing for my time abroad. I am really very excited to be leaving so soon and there is nothing in the world that can crash my soaring spirits. The last few days have been just an end of the summer blues period where saying goodbye and lounging around/lack of motivation and activities have left me feeling frustrated, anxious and a little depressed; it's not how I expected to go out but there's proof of why we should hold no expectations, and I will take it as another life experience. My advice to you if you ever feel this way is to just get out; which I am about to do now. Learn from the past, live in the moment and be mindful of the future. My perception of time right now feels so skewed. The past seems so far away, as does the future and the present seems to drag along. Of course there is nothing and no-one to blame for this, not even myself this time, it is just another mystery that lies deep in the dark depths of human thought, emotion, and above all existence. I am excited to start traveling with my Dad. We leave Ashland on Monday, go to San Fransisco, stay a night there, fly to New York Tuesday, I stay there for Two nights for the departure orientation then fly to Lisbon/Lisboa in Portuguese on Thursday and I won't arrive there until Friday. Then I go to another orientation for inbound students until the 7th when I meet my host family and leave with them to my new home! After that it's school, adventure, experience and fun!