End of the first half of the semester- party in Lisboa!!!

What a whirlwind week!! Here is the recount:

Monday:

12:30am: arrived back at my house from Paris to find Mamá and Jenny asleep. I quietly unpacked and made myself some cereal for dinner, then got on the computer and skyped with my mom and dad....
2:30am: finally went to sleep after skyping with mom and dad... haha!!

Monday morning at 9:20am I had my oral final exam for my conversation class... needless to say I hadn't spoken Spanish or even brought my study materials with me to France... so I got up early and got to school at 9am to prepare for my exam... then I get to school and socialize and don't study... then it's magically my turn... so I quickly flip through my coursepack and walk into Jonathan's office- the first question he asks me is (in Spanish of course) how my weekend was- perfect!! My oral exam was talking about my Parisian adventure! He did ask me which movie character was my favorite in one of the Spanish movies we watched. Pretty legit. I will say, from my description there the class sounds like a joke- HARDLY. I personally think Jonathan loves loading on the homework, but it's okay, I mean I have learned a lot from him. Best thing about this class being over- no more 8:30am classes!!!!!!!!!!!!! Next week, our classes start at 10:00am for the rest of the semester!!!!!!! Anyway, after my final for Jonathan's class, I was done for the day, so I just hung out at the school until my Sevillanas class at 1:30pm. That was basically my day.

Tuesday:

We worked on our final video projects for Jonathan's class the entire class period. Later, I had my oral exam with Stratattack (Dr. Stratton's nickname- along with DStrat) which went well too! Hooray! For the rest of the day, I worked on my video project.

These are some of my Spanish friends when we were filming the video project!
I went to my practica at the kids school and utilized the teacher- Óscar for an interview about La Vida Nocturna Sevillana. After my practica it started storming, so lucky me got to walk back to my apartment in the pouring down rain and then I continued on to Nervion Plaza to interview Miguel for the video. Bree came with me and videoed and after Bree left to go eat Miguel came with me to buy ketchup because our dinner was tortilla española and it's necessary to eat with ketchup. Miguel was appalled that I use ketchup with tortilla española (but he's also Spanish and thinks that their food has taste- HA) It's always fun to hang out with Miguel or Lina because it's only Spanish with them, it's amazing how easy it is to communicate now! Miguel told me to buy his favorite kind of ketchup- even though the bottle looked like a motor oil bottle... haha! It ended up being pretty good ketchup! After the supermarket, I went with Miguel to get more contact solution. He was wearing his glasses because he ran out of solution, so now I know that you have to buy contact solution at the farmacia and not at the grocery store.

Wednesday:

Final video projects due and then done!!!!! After class Jenny and Katie and I went up to the roof of the school and sunbathed! It was so fabulous! I can't wait until it's actually warm enough to hang out on the roof and not have to wear a jacket!! We decided to celebrate the end of the semester by going to TGI Friday's in Nervion Plaza and then after that we all ran to the school, did Pilates and then ran back to our homes! I would say it was a successful Wednesday.

Thursday:

7am off to Hotel Sevilla Center to catch the bus to Lisboa! SO EARLY. Jenny and I made it to the bus. Usually we get there right on time, but this time we got there 15 minutes early and waited outside in the rain for the buses to get there. When we started loading the bus, we had to know which bus was DStrats and which one was Dirty Doug's because I avoid being with Dirty Doug at all cost!!! (Douglas Inglis is the center director/history teacher) I slept the majority of the way there which was great. 3 hours in to the 6 hour drive the bus drivers lawfully have to have a 45 minute break- how insane! On our 24 hour bus ride to the Gator Bowl for Goin' Band a couple years ago... we stopped for an hour...once? maybe 2 times? The other 3 stops were for quick bathroom breaks. Definitely different here. We arrived in Lisboa and were dropped off in the hotel where we had 1 hour to drop off our stuff and get situated before embarking on our journey to the Belem Tower. This was a really neat tower. According to Douglas the tower was once in the middle of the river, but the earthquake made most of the land cave in and now it's on the bank.
It was raining, extremely windy, and foggy when we were there, so taking pictures without hair in the face and actually being able to see the background was a bit difficult, but other than that, it was a really neat sight! From the top, you could see Cristo Rei and and the bridge really well! After the tower, we headed to Jeronimos Monastery which was a beautiful place! The sun started to come out while were there and the wind died down, so we were finally getting some good weather!! I like to give fun facts about each trip, but it's really hard to remember what Douglas says when we are there- especially 4 days later and since I'm not in the history class... I don't actually have to know anything about the places... I just like to know because I'm actually interested in European history and sad that I never had the chance to take a class over the subject. I think I remember Douglas saying that a difference between this monastery and the monastery La Rabida from a previous trip, is that this monastery never had outsiders come visit. The monks who lived in Jeronimos never left the quarters, there were only certain areas of the monastery that had contact with the outside world. How weird!!

This is by the fountain in the center of the monastery.
After we were done with these places we were dropped off at the center of the city to walk around the shops and stuff for a while. After, we figured out how to use the metro (that was fun trying to find where a metro station was.. when you only know English and Spanish and these people only know Portuguese) and about an hour later we were back at the hotel! Douglas told us about a Brazilian steakhouse (FOGO DE CHAO BUT CHEAPER!!!!!) and we all went and feasted. I was extremely excited because my house mom hardly EVER feeds us meat. Needless to say, I ate my fill of meat. After dinner I didn't want to do anything but lay there and digest, so that's what we did!

Friday:

Breakfast at the hotel= best breakfast I've had in a LONG time. Scrambled eggs, bacon, fruit salad, croissants, cereal, yogurt...I ate all of this. I was not about to let my opportunity to eat more than a cracker for breakfast pass. That is for sure. We left at 9:30am to go see Cristo Rei which is the gigantic fairly new statue of Christ looking over Lisbon from across the river.


That bridge crosses the river to Cristo Rei- it looks like I'm in San Francisco!

My friends and me- you can't see the bridge in the back, but it's there!
We went up to the top and got some really neat scenic pictures of Lisbon and then headed to the Oceanarium. We were all really excited for this- but it ended up being kinda lame... I've been to an aquarium before, I think it was in San Francisco, but it may have been in Sydney, Australia.. I don't know, but wherever that was, was definitely much cooler than this semi lame oceanarium!!



There was 1 big tank in the middle and then 3 habitats and some tanks with different fish. Not that awesome, I mean seeing the sharks was cool and stuff, but I was expecting more- especially with all the hype! We moseyed around there, at the end found most of our group just laying on the floor in one of the rooms with the fish... some people sleeping.... then we went outside to find that it was- surprise- RAINING! good thing my wonderful and amazing mommy decided to get me an adorable argyle umbrella and put it in my stocking this Christmas (it has certainly saved my life)!! We then found shelter in a nearby mall and ate a pizza from pizza hut. You have NO idea how badly I've been wanting pizza. I think our entire group had pizza and meat this weekend because we are deprived of these necessities in Sevilla. We walked around the mall to kill time because it was raining outside and we didn't want to go back to the hotel and sit there. We visited a modern art museum with interesting artifacts from the Beatles and other things, very modern, very interesting and best of all- free! After, we finally took the metro back to the hotel and then decided what we wanted to do for dinner. We talked to the front desk lady at the hotel and she gave us directions to a chinese restaurant- another food type that we don't eat in Sevilla. The front desk lady was so incredibly wrong in her directions or we didn't understand them because we wandered for an hour before finding a chinese retaurant that wasn't the one she suggested. The food ended up being great and relatively inexpensive, so we enjoyed ourselves and again, chowed down. We were all so tired that we went to sleep straight after dinner.

Saturday:

Woke up in time to make it down for breakfast because it was NOT worth missing. Feasted again. Then went back upstairs and back to sleep until we were going to meet at 1pm to go to Sintra, a nearby "fairytale town" which I had been excited about visiting since before the visit. Well, Dinglis decided to cancel the trip to Sintra because there was rain, so I was pretty bummed out. Instead we went to a restaurant and had interesting Portuguese food, I had Lasagna portuguese style, it was pretty good. Then we went back and got on the buses and went to the Ancient Art Museum which was pretty cool. I wasn't really into the paintings, but the artifacts were really neat! They have Japanese screens which depict when the Portuguese arrived in Japan and other vases and figures. After, we went to the center of the city and decided to try and visit the castle on top of the hill. We ventured to the bus stop and took it to the top of the hill (scariest bus ride of my life- fast, bumpy, no seats so I had to stand) to find out that the castle had JUST CLOSED. AND it started raining. Lisboa hates us. So, we perused the shops and then started our journey down the hill. Frustrated and wet as we were, we went back to the hotel and fell asleep. Then we woke up and changed to go out for dinner. We caught a cab to the docks and ate at this Italian restaurant- absolutely best food ever!! After we were walking up the docks and went to every single club on the strip. The people outside let all of us in for free (I'm assuming this is because they could tell we were foreign, most likely Americans, and figured we would spend $$$$$ (I wish I had the euro symbol!!) on many drinks (which we didn't!). It was so much fun! We were pretty early (11:30pm-midnightish), so the clubs weren't too crowded. In one of the clubs, this random Portuguese guy taught me how to dance some Portuguese dance... and then at the end of the 2nd time he danced with me, he dipped me... and I thought my head was going to hit the floor, it was interesting, but fun still! Then we got tired and went back to the hotel. It was a fun last night in Portugal!

Sunday:

Woke up for breakfast at 9 and then loaded the buses at 10am. I definitely slept the entire time home, so I got a good 6 hour nap. Then we got back to the house and like 8 people came over. The door buzzer was ringing like every 10 minutes. It was insane!! We had this delicious empananda thing that Mamá's daughter's husband made- it was tuna and egg and other stuff, but it was fabulous. I was scared at first... it was a good dinner! Then Jenny and some friends and I went to a bar to watch the USA/Canada hockey game. It was insane, there were like 50 Americans chanting USA over and over and like 4 Canadians. It was sad to see us get the silver, but still, we got the silver! It was fun to see the patriotism across the ocean- we were watching it on BBC sports and I'm definitely sure now that every country hates Americans. Oh well, I guess I'm used to it now haha!

Monday:

First day of new classes! This semester is going to be much harder than the first half. So much more homework. After class, I had Sevillanas and I'm starting to get the hang of it! Then Sylvia (the teacher) decided to have us do a dramatic dance... of course she chose me to dance with one of the guys in my class... it's such an AWKWARD dance.. very... provocative. Definitely having difficulty with it... haha!!! Oh well, it's an experience.. everyone was laughing and saying that I looked so dainty.. hahaa.... Well, I've caught up with my day today!

I hope you've enjoyed the recount of my week!

Love,
Merick :)