Second part of winter break.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!
After returning to Viseu after Lisbon we spent a couple days on the DL. (Down Low) Relaxing. The package my parents sent me arrived and Sofia and I went to pick it up. Everything was there and intact! Thanks Mom and Dad! After a quick opening of the package we hopped in the car and set of for Madrid! After about four hours we were greeted by Madrid´s city-scape. On the way to our hotel (which was 5 stars) we passed under the two famous leaning towers in Madrid. It was late by the time we made it to the hotel so we hit the hay immediately to prepare ourselves for tomorrow. We woke up early and caught the bus right outside our hotel and made our way to The Musem of the Prado. (Museu del Prado) We waited in line for a while and then got our tickets and went on in. We started with seeing some masterpeice paintings and then some masterpeice sculpture. Next we went on a tour of the biggest malls in Madrid. I think the act of Mall touring has become a very portuguese thing. When I was in Lisbon, even though we were in a small suburb of Lisbon called Estoril, we went to the local mall to check it out. Other friends of mine here on exchange have noted the same phenomenon. I´m not a huge fan of shopping and thus was a little un-enthusiastic about the possibility that my first day in Madrid would be spent seeing the inside of giant shopping complexes. Well it turned out that after our mall blitz we would be going to see the center of town called La Puerta del Sol and Plaza Mayor. That was pretty cool and fun. We saw the whole spectrum as far as street performers go. We rested at the hotel for a little while and then went to a really cool restaurant that serves very typical food from Madrid. The madrid style food is like gourmet bar food, small sandwiches of steak and other things. The next day was gonna be big. We slept in and at about noon made our way to the royal palace. This was the first actual palace I had ever seen, the roayal family indeed still lives there and thus was closed to visitors. We looped around the outside of the behemoth house and then ducked into the adjacent cathedral. After walking around a little bit more we went to an argentinian steak house for lunch. That was good. Now we´ll fast-forward to the night of new years.
We left our hotel around 9:30 p.m. and went driving around to La Puerta del Sol. We parked our car in the hippest parking garage I have ever seen and did the last couple of blocks to the main square on foot. The real festivities wouldn´t start till later but there was no lack of people there getting an early start. There were street vendors selling various things that lit up, one of these such items was a pair of sunglasses with rims that had lights in them. An oxymoron. Think about it. There were also people selling mixed alcoholic drinks in the streets. We ducked into a café for a quick bite before we headed into the square to stake out our spots. Well, tons of things happened that night, music, lights, fireworks, countdowns, very much you see in New York´s Times Square. After the stroke of midnight the tradition is to eat twelve grapes and make a wish on each one, we had bought tins of grapes for each person and all ate them in time with the other million or so people who were downtown with us. Once everyone finished their grapes the crowd began to surge as people tried to leave the densely packed square. We were caught in a current of people and made our way back to our car. I probably saw more things during the walk back to the car than I had seen all day as far as interesting people doing interesting things goes. I was offered Marijuana multiple times, saw many fights and met a suprising amount of americans, all in the short walk to our car. Well, the distance was short but it took us well around an hour to make the trek. Someone should write a book on the behaviour of people in giant crowded situations.
The next day we left madrid and headed to salamanca to meet up with some friends for lunch. That was cool. And that´s all for now.

These days.

Last week went by really fast for me. Actually these last two whole months have just seemed to have flown by like a leer jet. I really feel like I just got here and grounded. It has started being more consistently colder here, most of the trees still have all there leaves but it is fall. Windy rainy days are the norm but these autumn days don´t exectly resemble the ones that are so recognizable in Ashland. A funny thing that happened last week was when the principle of our school supposedly called our subject (Visual Arts) a bunch of slackers. This greatly outraged our class and sent us to debating with our teachers over student rights and what have you. I think the main argument was that the visual arts students are ``Different´´ than normal alums and that we have our own way of doing things that should be perfectly acceptable and not be put to judgement against the other students in subject areas such as Chemistry and Economy. In one of the debates we had with our Portuguese teacher we managed to get ourselves in to a battle of put-downs with the staff saying ``So and so are rude and blah blah blah.´´ our teacher then responded to us with a question of who we thought were her best students. Of course we were put in the last place seat and after this I kind of lost interest. It´s not that this wasn´t a good opportunity for me to stand up for things I believe in or in any case to practice debating in a foreign language, I just simply felt like ``Come on, it´s obvious that this group of students doesn´t meet the expectations of the staff and the teaching community and it´s not at their fault, it´s us who need to change their perspective on us and this silly argument isn´t helping one bit!´´ Well the next day was Halloween and I went to a party at my parents language school. I carved three pumpkins in front of the students and part of my job was to explain, in english, what I was doing. It was really fun when I would show the kids the ``Guts´´ of the pumpkin and get all kinds of responses. After that we played games, ate candy and had a ``Monster fashion show,´´ which I got to host. The next day, Saturday, I went shopping for a winter coat because I didn´t bring mine from Ashland. I took it as an opportunity to replace that ratty old thing, and I only say that in the highest respect because I liked it so much, had it for so long, and put it through a lot of good hard use. That coat had a lot of character. Well, I went out to look around downtown for a good store that would have what I needed and found a cool store called ``ROX.´´ They were having a winter sale with a discount of like 20%. I ended up shopping for a while and got a pair of new shoes, a coat and a camera bag for under 40 euros. A pretty good deal here, but with the exchange rate and inflation and all that it probably cost me a good deal, but I don´t want to do the math because it would probably scare me. After that I wandered around and went in to some chinese shops. These chinese shops are everywhere and they are exactly what they sound like. No, they are not full of cool cultural chinese goods but contain almost every product imaginable at half the price and half the quality. After my adventure into the land of cheap goods I went to watch a soccer game. The game was between my brothers team and another team from my school. I saw a friend from school there who was rooting for the other team and gave him a hard time. The game turned out to resemble a massacre or a show-off match more than a game for sport. Afonso´s team scored six goals and won with the other team scoring a big fat whopping zero. When I saw my friend again after the game I held myself back from tormenting him further. (When I saw him on monday though, this was not the case.) Sunday was quite a day, we all woke up early, hopped in the car and set out for spain. We drove about an hour to the border over rugged hills capped in giant white wind turbines. Once we got to the border we had a small mishap with ``Velocity control´´ A.K.A. speeding, but that was really no problem at all. Almost instantly accross the border with Spain the land turns into what I would call grassy plains. One thing about the roads here is that along the sides there is always some old peice of history, whether it be an old stone wall or an abondoned old stone house it is always entertaining and interesting. It looks a lot like central Idaho if you´ve ever been there. The difference between Spain and Idaho is that here, every once in a while, you pass a walled village nested on top of one of the hills, surrounded by ancient olive trees over a lazy river. Images of Robin Hood come to mind. Our destination was Salamanca, one of these ancient cultured walled cities that had grown to be a large cultural and academic center in western Spain. As soon as we arrived we were cast in the shadow of the monolithic cathedral that dominates the Salamancan skyline. We ventured deeper into the city, ducked under walls and passed stone buildings. We parked in an underground parking garage and headed to the ``Plaza Mayor,´´ here we had lunch in a second story bar. This bar was probably the most amazing bar I´ve ever been in. As soon as we entered the cold air from outside gave way to a blast of merry heat. It was crowded in the bar and noisy. People were packed around a couple of tables, mostly standing, clutching drinks and small plates of food. We were seen by a waiter and lead into another section of the floor walled in paintings of old kings and suprisingly Don Quihote. We were treated to a plater of hard, salty bread that was really good and olives in oil and garlic. We ordered and chatted about our day. I got a giant sandwich with ham, lettuce, tomato, mayonaisse asparagus and other things that was really good. Sofia got soup, a steak with mushrooms that looked amazing, Afonso got a steak with rice and french fries, Kika got a steak with french fries and these really good ham and cheese balls that she gave to me, and Louis got a really good looking red chicken plate with rice and fries. After eating to our hearts delight we meandered through the citadel, took pictures and passed through a mall. One the way back to Portugal we stopped in one of the ancient walled cities to walk and have tea. That was really cool to see the city from the inside, all the small streets and bars. We saw one bar named ``Small´s,´´ that was cool. In the bar where we had tea the walls were lined with salted pigs legs. We stopped again to use the bathroom at a border stop store kind of deal and got some chocolate for the ride home. This stop was really cool because it looked out over a pasture with cows and horses. There was also a truck that pulled up beside us full of squeling pork the size of me. Well, we drove home in the dark and when we got home we had dinner and went to bed. The drive home was actually really cool to see all the city lights in the distance and the wind turbines blinking on the tops of the hills. Yesterday, Monday, I woke up and had a Filosofy test, it went well and I think I passed. We are playing Volleyball in P.E. now, that is really fun. Today I had a Portuguese test where we had to read a paper, answer questions on it, then write our own paper with our opinion on a quote. It was hard but I think I did well. Now I´m off to lunch. Até Já.