Portugal and then some

Hey everybody, I'm home from Portugal and am starting to get back into the swing of things. Last week was tests, tests, tests. I ended up having 6 tests and my oral expression dialog in 4 days, along with regular classes. I also finally got a backpack, a nice red and grey one, from the Corte Ingles. That store is ridiculously huge; one could live in a Corte Ingles and wouldn't have to leave for anything. I'm not complaining this time though, since I got a pack. On the way out of the building I was telling a story to Kari, so she was looking at me. Unfortunately, at that same moment one of the security posts in the door way decided to jump out in front of her, so out of the corner of my eye I saw her run full-on into the post and heard a loud thud. Thankfully she was fine, and just couldn't stop laughing, even though it left a mark on the side of her face for a few days. The price to pay for finding a pack I guess. A couple of us Americans have gotten involved in a Bible study with some of the University students, so we've met twice so far (meeting again tomorrow). It's nice to be involved in a study again, even if there is a language barrier. Not knowing a lot of the specific words makes it kinda hard to go deep sometimes, but I have faith that God will teach us what we need to hear.

After all of the testing, I met up with Elizabeth, Steven, Kim, Brittany, and Liana (all from UW-Stevens Point) at the train station around 10, and then we caught a train to Madrid (my first time on a train), and got to the Madrid station around midnight. From the station we took the metro over to the airport, where we camped out for the night/morning. While we were waiting there we ran into some other students from our school who were flying out of Madrid as well, so they camped with us for the night. I ended up getting an hour of sleep (the tiles aren't the most comfortable things I've ever slept on), and then our flight left around 6 AM. The flight was uneventful, I slept for another hour and woke up shortly before landing. After taking a bus to a stop near our hotel we wandered around for a little while before we found it. When we got there, we found out that we couldn't check in until 2 PM, and it was around 8 (Portugal is in a different time zone, so we gained an hour on our way over). Thankfully they had a place to store our bags, so we put all of our stuff and got organized. We stopped by a shop next door and bought these passes that gave us free access to any tram, metro, bus, or elevator in Lisbon for 24 hours. We walked around for a bit, and tried to find a beach. I think we might have found a small one, but some people were filming a movie there so we couldn't go on it. As we were walking along, we actually had people try to sell us drugs! They would just walk past us and hold out their hands and offer it to us and we were just like what in the world? Why are they trying to sell it to us of all people? I think over the whole weekend that happened 6 or 7 times. Eventually we hopped on a metro and went to the Gulbenkian art museum, where they had works by artists such as Monet, Manet, Rembrandt, and others. After walking through the museum we explored the gardens around the outside, and we actually all fell asleep for a while sitting on a hill in the sun. It was so nice out, the temperatures were in the 70s while we were there. Once everyone was awake again we took the metro to the other side of town to go to this big aquarium where they had a huge tank in the middle and four smaller tanks (with different environments), as well as a ton of even smaller tanks with specific species. Overall it was a pretty cool place; they had some really interesting looking fish there, the kind that you hope you'll never run into in the wild. After that we walked around a little bit more, and then tried to head back to the hotel. We got some groceries, and then got lost. We had no idea where we were going, and eventually asked for directions (something we did a lot that weekend). Once we were able to find someone who could speak a language that we could understand (none of us knew any Portuguese) we were able to find our way home. We ate, and just chilled in one of the rooms before heading off to bed.

After 10 hours of sleep we finally got up and got ready for the day. We got our passes renewed at the store, and headed to the coast, where we caught a ferry to a town really close by. Once there (after struggling to figure out the metros there and getting some help from a lady who lived there) we bought a pass for the metro and took it to go see a 100 foot tall statue of Jesus on a 200 foot tall platform. It is so big you can see it from Lisbon. After getting off at the wrong stop at first we found our way over to the statue and got some really nice pictures. From the statue we also had a great view of the 25 de Abril bridge (see the second picture), a bridge that looks like the Golden Gate bridge, except bigger. After checking out both of those we got some ice cream, and then decided to find a beach since we had heard there were some good ones nearby. We ended up walking around for at least an hour and a half through various barrios before giving up and taking the ferry back over to Lisbon. Once we were back we took a train along the coast to a different part of Lisbon, where we visited the Mosteiro dos Jeronimos (a monastery where Vasco da Gama is buried). From the monastery we thought we could see the tower of Belem, the icon of the city, so we walked over to the tower, only to realize that it was actually a different tower. After taking some pictures of the other tower we saw the real tower of Belem further down the coast, so we headed over there, only to find that it had just closed. However, in front of the tower there was a little sand; we finally found a beach! A few of our group put their feet in, but I decided to just stick my hand in because it was so cold. We took the train back and jumped on the metro, only to find out that when Elizabeth had renewed her pass the guy had messed up and given her the wrong one, so she had run out of times she could use her card, and you needed them to get out of the metro. When it was time to get out, I swiped my card and she went through ahead of me. We didn't move fast enough though, and I ended up making it about half way through before the plastic gates tried to close on me, so I had to squeeze through them, ouch! We went and ate at a restaurant, and then headed back to the hotel to play cards and hang out before heading to bed.

Sunday we got up and tried to find our way to the aqueduct in town, but failed, so then we tried to find our way to the airport. After half an hour of failed attempts to find a bus that would take us to the airport we finally just got taxis to take us there (my first time in a taxi). We found our terminal and settled in to wait, when I noticed that the guys sitting next to me were talking in English, so I started talking with them and found out that they were from the states and were studying at a university near Madrid. The plane ride was fine until close to the end, when we ran into a bunch of turbulence. In case you didn't know, I don't like heights, and related to that, don't like flying, so that part was less than fun for me. Let's just say I had a death grip on my arm rests. We landed safely though, and took the metro back to the train station, where we ran into some more people from our school while waiting for the train.

School again today, but our teachers were pretty laid back today so it wasn't bad. Katie J., a friend from school who's studying in Sweden, came down for a few days, so I got to see her today (and will probably some more this afternoon), so that was really cool. Other than that there's not that much going on this week, just some planning for spring break and hanging out today outside since it's so nice out. Hasta luego!