Coimbra, new girl.

COIMBRA

Last saturday I went to Coimbra for the afternoon. I caught a ride down there with some teachers from Fun Languages (my host parents language school) who were heading down to attend a teaching seminar at the British Council. The drive wasn´t bad, about an hour and a half spent listening to teaching strategies and child-behaviour-control techniques being swapped by the new teachers. We arrived just in time for the seminar and as the teachers filed in, I was let loose. I had over two full hours to get my self lost (and then found) in Coimbra, the intellectual capital of Portugal. I started of with the botanical garden which is home to one of the worlds largest lillypads, I was so unfortunate however, to visit on a day when it is closed to the public. The garden was nice and displayed a wide array of plants from every corner of the globe. After my romp in the garden I marched up the tallest hill in Coimbra to where the University sits perched like an old wise owl overlooking the rio Mondego. I explored around the university for quite some time, reminding myself of Lara from the Golden Compass as I ducked around scholars and found little passages between ancient buildings.
Next my wandering lead me to the city park located above the downtown area. This park is home to some interesting modern art such as two giant metal rings enclosing groups of trees. More wandering, and then I met back up with the teaching team and we went to the local mall (see anterior posts) to look around and grab a quick bite to eat.

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NEW GIRL

This week we got a new exchange student from Boston in our school. She is with the same program that I am (afs) but she is only here for 6 months. It will be interesting to see the first part of someone elses experience from (my) the perspective of someone who has already been there and done that. She is doing well so far, (as far as I can tell) and I think will pick things up pretty quickly. She also has a blog and when I find out the address I´ll post it with something.
Well, that´s all for now. Xau

Fotos.

Here are some fotos of madrid, and lisbon, just some that I haven´t posted yet.

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.

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.

Saturday night.

It was a dark and stormy night (really), so we went to dinner at Louis´ brother Miguel´s house. We drove through the evening on the main freeway and just as the last bit of light dissapeared and the sky turned black and the fog engulfed us we turned off onto this small mountain road seemingly leading a lone windy path into the hills. After rounding some dark corners, illuminated only by the cars head lights that shot light which refracted off the fog sorrounding us in a bubble of grey light, we broke through the smoke thick fog and were presented with the view of a large valley speckled by the lights of of a hundred tiny houses. We wove our way down into the valley only to criss-cross our way back up the other side where we finally encountered our destination. As soon as we pulled into the driveway we were greeted with open arms and open umbrellas by Miguel. We entered the warm house to see a table set with all kinds of delicious things to eat. There was pizza(baked traditionally in a stone oven), these really good peas called Piu-Piu´s, and tons of other delights. We ate and merry-made and ate some more. And after eating and drinking as much as we could we had cake and other traditional portuguese desserts like chocolate salame. (not really salame but it´s like a chocolate roll thing, it´s really good.) After somemore hours we left and headed home. When we got back on the freeway we were met with snow! We slowed down and enjoyed it a bit. After that, comfy in the warm car, I fell asleep. This morning over breakfast we watched on T.V. and saw that our snow had made the national news. Cool. It´s still cold here and outside has been un-appetising lately. Até Já.

First part of weekend.

Actually I´ll start with Friday. I had extra classes Friday night because we didn´t have art on Monday so we needed to make it up on Friday. After that I went home, ate a quick dinner of Rice and Duck and dressed up to go to the theater! We all had tickets to go to the Teatro Viriato because Sofia and Louis donate there anually. The play we went to see was called The Café and it was probably the most bizzare spectacle I´ve ever seen. Don´t get me wrong, it was a spectacular peice of art, but as far as being even close to comprehensible... Well. I understood most of what was being said, all of it was in Portuguese of course. But the plot of the play was strenuous. I´ll start with describing the theater itself. Teatro Viriato is situated on the corner of a city block, part of a cluster of buildings. The corner it is on is rounded and the theater is shaped like a triangle with the corner facing the street rounded. The whole side is a group of windows and inside you can see three levels. Each level has a balcony looking out the window and sorrounding what looks like a giant column. On the bottom is ticket sales, second is a bar and the third level has entrances to the theater. This column is hollow and inside is the theater. On the floor (bottom level) of the chamber are a bunch of seats and the other levels around the edge on the inside have seats as well. The stage is situated just off the edge of the column. It is a really cool building. The stage was set up like a Coffee shop, it had tables and chairs and stuff. Around the edge of the stage were screens and cameras and props (Like fish tanks with little boats in them) and other random weird stuff. The actors would give all their monologues and soliloquies into a mic with a camera on top and the resulting images were then displayed on all of the screens around us. The script was about a Coffee shop next to a gambling parlour and the troubled gamblers who would go get coffee. I won´t say more incase any of you want to see the play. The whole time there was a narrator who would walk around the stage all serious and constantly changing costumes, the only words he would ever say were amounts of money and when anyone would start to say a price he would say it aloud for them. I dunno, it was really odd. I really liked it though. After the play I went straight home and fell asleep. Today (saturday) I woke up and had tennis. That was fine. On our way home from tennis it started snowing! More like slushing but it was great. I have been home the rest of the day as I am tired and the weather is just too cold and too wet to go out. :( Tonight we´re going to have dinner at Louis´ parents house. That´ll be cool. And then who knows? I don´t have school this Monday so we´ll see where I get to!

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!

Weekend.

So this last weekend was really fun. On saturday I woke up and had tennis as usual. After tennis I went home and took a quick shower, dressed up in my suit and headed to Fun Languages to do a presentation with one of the advanced classes. Only two students could show up that day (Out of about 8) but I did the presentation anyway. I started out talking about the states and where I´m from and then we moved into politics, the (post)election and the current global economic crises. I got to draw fun, un-accurate graphs on the white board and joke around about the dollar bill that was on the table, I said it was hardly worth their time to pcik it up! It was all in good fun and we all had a good time. After that I went home and prepared for a friend of mines birthday party that was to be that night. At about 7:30 I met up with another friend and we headed to the club where the Birthday party was going to be. The club is called City-ponto-come (pronounced City-point-com like a web address.) It is a big building with several dining rooms, a main dance floor and an upper level lounge. We first all met up in the lobby and were each given a card to buy things with. You use this card to buy whatever you want and then when you leave you pay the balance on your card (a good marketing strategy if you ask me). We all ate dinner together and chatted about whatever and then headed up to the lounge to play billiards. After about two hours of this a live-band began to play on the stage/dance floor and we all went to watch. I guess the band is pretty famous, they´re called ON A PLAIN and they are a portuguese chick rock band but the lyrics are all in english. It was pretty good and we all had fun. After that I went home with two other freinds and went to sleep. The next day (sunday) was rad. I woke up and made pancakes for everyone, ate my fill and took a shower. When I got out of the shower I was suprised to find another exchange student, Kaylah from Boston, waiting in out living room. Kaylah is with a different program than me and she lives about 20minutes by car away from Viseu. We don´t really see each other much, infact this was only the second time we had met. Well all of us, Sofia, Louis, Afonso, Kika, Amelia (My Grandma) and Ellen (an english teacher at Fun Languages who we met up with) went out to lunch at a Brazilian Rotisery grill. How this restaurant works is really cool, everyone sits around a big table and the cook brings out one giant skewer of meat at a time. All the meat is really, really good and done to your liking. You take however much meat you want off the skewer and then the waiter passes on to the next person. This cycle of bringing different meats continues until it is humanly impossible to eat any more and then you go for dessert. For the main meal I had all kinds of meat but one that really stuck in my mind were the most delicous (actually only) chicken hearts I have ever had. While being here I have also tried, like and continue to eat Rabbit, baby goat, entire roasted pig, octopus (not to uncommon) and other foods not un-heard of in the States but not necessarily normal. One food I´ve really acquired a taste for are Chestnuts or buckeys, here called castanhos. They are prepared in all types of ways and can accompany anything from seafood, goat to chocolate cake. They are also really good solo. Well after this intricate lunch followed by roasted bananas we went to a medeival town called Almeida (I´m sorry I can´t actually remember the name now, but I´m 99.99% sure thats right). This town is a really small restored medeival Portugues village that is open for tourists and the like on weekends. I don´t think anyone really lives there full time. The town is tucked away on the side of a small valley fairly distant from any major roadways or towns. Viseu is about 20-30 minutes by car. It is the most rustic (portuguese style rustic) place I have ever seen. The town actually has a really nice website about it and I´m sure it´d be easy to find with a quick google search if you are so inclined. After wandering the streets of this little settlement we headed back home. On monday I got my first big Philosophy test back and was stoked and shocked to see I got a 13 (out of 20 possible points)! This test was and the class is, of course, entirely in Portuguese, and me with out ever taking a formal Philosophy class prior to this one was very impressed. I´m also really looking forward to this next weekend as an AFS friend of mine is coming up from Lisbon to stay with me friday through sunday! Well, that´s all for now, Até Já!

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.

Photos.

The walled city.



Here are some Photos of Salamanca, school and stuff.

This is a fat birds nest on a church.


This is downtown Viseu.