Portugal 2008

I am blogging from an Internet place in Portugal! Thursday night my friend Maureen and I flew into Lisboa. Friday morning we rented a car and drove up to Porto. We stayed there till Sunday morning and spent Sunday in Viana do Castelo. Today we drove to Braga (where I am now)...and we still have a whole week of adventures left! We plan to drive back down to Southern Portugal, stopping in Óbidos, Nazaré, Sintra, and Cascáis on the way. On the Southern coast we'll stay in Tavira and Lagos, and then explore Lisboa before heading home! Phew! It sounds crazy, but has actually been very laid-back and relaxed so far. The only part that wasn't too relaxed was today when I told Maureen to get over one lane to the left and it turned out to be a two lane road (not one way like all the rest) and an oncoming car almost hit us. Oops. No problem, though. We both had our baseball caps on so it was pretty obvious that we were silly foreigners. Other than that incident, things have been going swimmingly with the driving. Maureen drives and parallel parks like a pro and I navigate. We're both very easy-going so we don't fight or get stressed out. ;)

Here are some highlights from our trip so far:
Thursday
-taking 45 minutes to find our first hotel that was three miles from the airport...yeah, the navigator had some problems in Lisboa

-a very rough night of sleep due to something loud buzzing every so often and drunk people knocking on our door at 3am (If you ever go to Lisboa, don't stay at Residencial Solar!)

-learning Portuguese with the CD of musical chants I bought

Friday
-accidentally driving through the automatic pass lane at the first toll, not getting a ticket, and then having to pay a lot because we didn't have a ticket...live and learn

-a good night of sleep!

Saturday
-lots of fun exploring Porto by foot in rain, wind, and sun

-seeing The Sound of Music in Portuguese! It was awesome! Good singers, great set, AND they put random subtitles in digital above the stage in English! (Are they called SUBtitles if they are ABOVE the stage?) The funny thing about the subtitles is that sometimes they would just say really obvious things like "The nuns sing." ...thanks, we got that.

Sunday
-joining the locals to eat at a café on a terrace while watching a Palm Sunday procession

-eating Pizza Hut and watching the movie Michael Clayton in English (yes, it was an All-American night...aside from the intermission in the middle of the movie...??? we didn't get it, either)

Monday
-commenting that it looked nice out and then driving to Braga in pouring rain

-an AWESOME cathedral and grounds way up on a mountain

-HAIL!!!!

-meeting a nice older man at the cathedral on the mountain, seeing him again before we drove back down, and then running into him again in the cathedral in Braga...coincidence?? He offered to show us around, so we toured the city with him and then went for tea and a pastry. He was really nice and taught us more Portuguese. :) By the way, my pastry was "bean"...it was good though. I don't get the whole bean thing here...they were selling them as snacks in plastic bags yesterday, too...like the big white kidney type beans...

That's about it! I don't have pictures because I forgot my cable to hook my camera up. :(

The Perfect Weekend (Text)

Every once in a while you have a perfect weekend...it's sunny and warm so you play hard, you pray hard, and you thank God for your life. That was my weekend. Saturday I taught my "Spanish kids", played a great tennis match in the Spanish sun with my new friend Guille, went back to the park to pray, planned my upcoming trip to Portugal with Maureen, and went to an incredible Greek restaurant for dinner with friends. On Sunday I went to church and took my Spanish roommate, Ana, along! We stayed for a delicious potluck and then went for a walk in a gorgeous park. Later I went to Liz's house to catch up over some eyebrow maintenance, and then ran with Julie in Retiro. It was balmy out even after dark!

The neatest thing about Sunday was that Ana really enjoyed the protestant church service. Ana is catholic, like most Spanish people, and didn't know anything about protestantism, like most Spanish people. The singing at the beginning of the service brought tears to her eyes, she loved how we all seemed like a family, and she was really surprised that there were no images or icons in the church. It was cool having her there and seeing my church through her eyes. Oh, and to add to the perfection of the weekend, we sang all my favorite songs on Sunday! :)

Check out the pictures below! Oh, and did I mention that it had to be at least 70 out? But don't get too jealous, it was cold today.

The Perfect Weekend