Today was an intense day. I had a final this afternoon that I didn't feel prepared for so that was sort of hanging over me all day. And yesterday I had a final that prevented me from studying all day for today's test and you get the idea. This morning we had a festa with all of the Americans (all 11 of us) in Portuguese. We combined the beginner and advanced classes and ate chocolate salami (no meat involved) pastel de nata and sandwiches and quickly relapsed into speaking English. After the festa in my literature class my professor, who had professed last week that we shouldn't skip class Tuesday because he had a surprise for us, gave us all organic bourbon vanilla chocolate from this specialty shop downtown and it was muito delicious. It gave me a much needed energy boost to go to the flea market and do some souvenir hunting. I was supposed to go Saturday morning but the pouring rain and gusting wind made the outdoor market a less appealing option than staying in my PJs and going back to sleep.
I scored big at the flea market and this one couple liked me so much they gave me a free vintage shot glass that has a picture of birds and flying plums on it. Exactly when plums learned to fly is beyond me but it was another great example of Portuguese people being extremely nice and so receptive to my mangling of the Portuguese language.
No electrico (on the tram) on the way back, two men started yelling at each other in Portuguese and one of them stood up looking like he was about to hit the other man, who was very old, and the tram driver stopped the tram in the middle of the street and jumped up to break up the potential fight. I unfortunately have no idea what they were yelling about but everybody on the tram got very involved and this one woman, who I had thought was crazy because she was talking to herself the entire time, stands up and makes some gesture at the men, grabs her friend from the front of the tram and gets off. I realized that she wasn't talking to herself the whole time but I was really confused because we were sitting at the back of the tram and her friend was at the front but her voice wasn't any louder than a normal face-to-face conversation. Muito bizarre. Then I studied and went to take my test and now I feel a huge sense of relief that I have only two papers left to write and then I'm finished with all my work.
Why do I bother writing this? First, because the incident on the tram was hilarious/frightening. Second, because yesterday my Brazilian friends left and I was extremely sad all day so it was nice today to be back in some kind of a routine even though the dorm is unspeakably lonely without my group. To remedy this, we are going to a fado club tonight. Fado is traditional Portuguese music and it's very intense. It's the one really touristy thing I figured I would do here that I haven't done yet so the last week seems like as good a time as any to squeeze it in. I have just three days left and then Saturday morning I fly home. It's an occasion that feels like it calls for some kind of final blog post or something but I just don't think I have it in me. And I think I'd rather spend the time walking around the city visiting my favorite places and soaking up as much of the Portuguese sun as possible before heading home.
So if I don't make it back to Portublog before I make it back to the states, boas festas and thanks for letting me share my experiences.
OH! And before I forget...a neat little discovery. The really big expensive grocery store near my dorm has a whole fresh cheese section that I only recently began indulging in because of expense and overwhelming pastry addiction. Yesterday I couldn't decide what kind of cheese to get and that's when I discovered dun dun dun......a cheese sampler!! Instead of a whole wheel or a half wheel of one kind of cheese, I got smaller half-wheels of four different kinds, all still individually wrapped so I can enjoy them separately and cut them myself and everything! And that's when I realized that I felt extremely uncultured because I couldn't figure out how I was supposed to cut some of them with my Chinese store butter knife. A discovery that would've been great to make three months ago but a great one nonetheless.
Tchau tchau os meus amigos! Ate logo (literally)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment