Chestnuts roasting on an open street corner

(a whole box of pasteis! Aren't they pretty?)

My apologies, readers, for a prolonged absence from the portublog. My immune system decided to play copycat with the US economy and crashed for about a week, so I've been hibernating in my room and sleeping like nobody's business. As a result, my weekend was a complete blur of nothingness and I don't have chock-full days of experiences to recount. The blur continued until yesterday when I finally felt more like a human being than a wet noodle, and today I finally got things back on track with a visit to the pastelaria and a Portuguese lesson from Senhor Tall, who, by the way, has no teeth. I'm not sure I mentioned that.

Last week we celebrated Nuno's birthday with a homemade cake and this week we weren't able to get out of class for Columbus Day. Completely uncalled for. As Eduardo put it, we are at Point A. (Columbus sailed the ocean blue from Lisbon, Portugal) Why shouldn't we celebrate?

The sun is setting outside my window and it feels like a good time to relax and reflect on my first month here. It hasn't quite been anything close to what I expected. Pictures and guide books do not do Portugal justice. Sure, they can direct you to the best pastries, but they can't capture the taste or the sheer happiness that accompanies each bite. They can't capture the shades of the sunset or the hundreds of different smells that waft by with each step. Vendors recently started setting up small carts where they roast chestnuts right on the street under your nose. A euro or two gets you a paper cone of hot salted nuts that warm your hands while you walk. Granted, it was 75 degrees today (fahrenheit. i fail at celsius) But I can just imagine how great those chestnuts will be in a month when, if ever, it gets cold.

This is really just an interim post to address my prolonged absence from the face of the planet. This weekend we are attempting to visit Coimbra, just two hours north of Lisbon, for a brief two days. I will, quite literally, keep you posted. In the meantime, a few honorable mentions:

• Last week we went to see Burn After Reading with our Brazilian friends at a cinema near the dorm. Although we've been busy immersing ourselves in truly unique European and Portuguese experiences (or again, at least attempting to) going to a movie was in and of itself a different experience. The movies are mostly in English with Portuguese subtitles, so we enjoyed our native language. It was cool to read the subtitles though and realize that I do understand some Portuguese. It was also really interesting to note the split-second lapse in laughter or the use of truly American (and vulgar) terms that we then had to translate. That entire movie is one giant reel of vulgarity and utter confusion; I can't imagine how difficult it must have been for the translators to make it coherent in a different language and substitute all the American slang with Portuguese slang. We also ate Magnum bars in theater, which of course was awesome. Ice cream just isn't as big a deal at American movie theaters. I love Magnum bars.
  
• Another specialty shop to add to my list of favorites is the lantern shop. Not just a lighting shop, but a shop that makes and sells oversized lanterns and lighting fixtures. These things are half as tall as I am, and the shop stretches from its front on one major street, to the back. When the back door is open on the small alleyway, which it often is, you can watch the artisans work surrounded by a forest of sorts of hanging lamps. And you can see all the way through to the front of the shop, which lies on a major street. These things are so big that even if I purchased one I would not be able to carry it onto the airplane.
  
• My cousin Daniel is coming to visit on Sunday. I am very, very, very excited.
• I have a new favorite pastry. Obviously nothing compares to pastel de nata but in the savory pastry line, I have discovered pao com chourico. Literally, bread with chourico sausage. It is deeeeelicious. Senhor Tall has taken to saying "Pao com chourico?" whenever we walk in, which is usually spot on. Unless it's afternoon, in which case he correctly assumes we are there to lanche and brings us pasteis de nata instead. Also, iced tea limao. I don't really drink iced tea at home but here I can't seem to go more than a day or two without it. Probably the caffeine more than anything (yikes!) but it is delicious and so unbelievably thirst-quenching after walking around in the sunshine. I wish all Portuguese food tasted more like pastries. Instead it tastes like codfish, the offishal food of this country (for some reason I cannot understand.)
• If you haven't guessed, I'm not a huge fan of codfish.
  
• Tuesday night we celebrated a friend's birthday and went to Bairro Alto for Indian food and dancing. It was a great night. After being stuck inside all weekend with a miserable cold, it was nice to get some fresh air and be with friends. It's amazing to me that even on a Tuesday night Bairro Alto is full of people just enjoying life. Forget going to work. That's soooo un-Portuguese to worry about something so serious. I think these are probably the same people we see heading to work on the metro at 10 or 11 in the morning, leisurely reading the paper as they saunter in two or three hours after what might be considered the official start of the day. What a great country. I wish Americans weren't so serious all the time, or didn't have as much to worry and get stressed about. It's going to be so hard going back to that lifetsyle in the United States.
• Last week we went on two field trips for art history, visiting the Torre de Belem, St. Jeronimo's monastery, the Lisbon cathedral and the Castelo de Sao Jorge. The return trip to the castelo was cool because we got a special presentation with the Camara Escura--a giant periscope that reflects a 360panorama real-time view of the city into this giant white bowl. Our guide gave us a 25-minute tour via the camara, and we could see people wandering around in Baixa-Chiado and cars crossing the bridge. (Lisbon has a giant Golden Gate Bridge-like bridge that looks pretty much exactly like the GGB in San Francisco. copycats) It was a neat way to see the city. I thought it would be something of a waste of time since we've already been to so many of the places he showed us, but that's just proof that a closed mind gets you nowhere. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I would talk more about the Torre de Belem and the monastery etc., but I am revisiting these places when Daniel comes so I will do a more complete post with pictures later. I have this amazing ability to always forget my camera on the days when we go on visits for art history. It's really, really, REALLY cool to have a class in the city rather than in the classroom. If all learning was done this way I doubt people would ever want to skip class. I understand that theory and background is important for really understanding a subject but after being outside in the beautiful Lisbon sunshine, it's difficult to get inspired to learn or pay attention inside a tiny, cramped classroom with no air condition or circulation.
  

As some of the novelty of the city wears off I'm finding that I have a much better sense of where I fit. After a month, I started to get a tiny bit worried that the daily routine of going to class and doing homework would eventually overcome the excitement that even the smallest things hold here. And worse, since I've adjusted to the city and being in Europe and living with the Portuguese people's lenient attitude towards everything, I worried that I was getting too complacent and falling into a pattern of general tiredness and all too often, saying "Well, we've been to so many pastelarias, I don't really feel like walking across town to try a new one. It's so much easier to just go home..."

No, this is not how I want to spend the rest of my semester. I once wrote a poem:

"If everything in life was perfect, my, wouldn't imperfect be missed?"

This is sort of like Lisbon in reverse. Last week I was sick, things weren't as wonderful as they'd been, and I was really missing being able to just enjoy life here. So now that I'm feeling better, I have snapped back into the attitude of not wanting to just go home and take a nap, or just sit around with friends rather than be out in the city with them. It's nice to feel like I'm back on track, with a great weekend to look forward to instead of pajamas and Sudafed. Having that "imperfect" reminded me just how fantastic and perfect it is to live here. And yes, I am sure that eventually I will get sick of every day being so wonderful and exciting. But for the time being, I can't imagine life without pasteis, relaxation, stresslessness, sunshine and Lisboetas. (the people of Lisbon)

So, interim post-turned-actual-post aside, this weekend looks to be full of an excursion to Coimbra, a return trip to Sintra with Daniel, and all-around enjoyment of life. Stay tuned faithful readers.

Here's some Portuguese to learn in the meantime:

Tem uma mesa para dois?
(Do you have a table for two?)