Portugal and catching up...

So these past few weeks have been a little bit crazy with actually trying to get things figured out with school and getting going in my classes. I have however been managing some successes on both of those fronts I think. My K classes continue to be very simple (a welcome fact) my university classes however are slightly more nightmarish. I do at this point feel reasonably comfortable in my Ecosistemas y paisaje class which is surprising mildly but again a welcome surprise. The biggest surprise however is how difficult my Introductory Spanish geography class is. The first thing that needs to be expressed about this is that for the first two weeks of class we were convinced that the professor wasn't ever going to come, and we even started to joke about how if he just never showed up until the end of the drop period, we were just gonna draw maps and tell our program directors that we didn't know what to do so we taught ourselves spanish geography. So finally though the last day of class before the drop period ended he finally arrived, and let me just say that this was not a pleasant surprise. For the first day of class, our prof. read out loud the 27 themes that would be covered in the class over the course of the year. Sounds easy enough, but when Chris Alex and I left that classroom our unanimous sentiment was that we had all just taken an oral exam final to a class that we had not attended for an entire semester. It was utterly impossible to understand what this man was trying to say. Our favorite was when he would start off the theme title clearly and then as though he had just been taunting us end it with "f;ha9egraouwbaour" or something equally intelligible. Anyways hopefully, it will improve and if not then at least we are all in it together....

As for the trip to Portugal, this weekend Joe, Chris, Drew and I managed to put together an extraordinarily last second trip to Costa da Caparica a small beach town just outside of Lisbon. By just outside of Lisbon I mean over an hour of public transport so although Drew and Joe decided to go into town for one day Chris and I opted for the staying at the beach and going surfing route and hence did not really get to see Lisbon at all other than from the buses. The trip there was a fairly long affair about 7 hours with a little over an hour layover in Badajoz but overall an uneventful bit of traveling until we reached Lisbon. Once there, we got off of the bus and walked down the stairs into the terminal. At this point we had no idea what we needed to do in order to get where we needed to be so we figured that the best thing to do would be to find an information desk. However, before we were able to really even start to look for one, a man carrying a bag came sprinting across the terminal and the next thing we knew a police man with nightstick drawn, was wrestling the bag from the man, who managed to wriggle out of the bags straps and run off. At this point the only response that any of us had was dumbfound looks of mild terror and a sudden feeling of extreme attachment toward our bags. After that, we managed to find a closed information desk and then finally asked one of the bus drivers who was incredibly helpful and was able to point us basically right to our hostel.

The hostel, once we finally arrived was amazing. A swimming pool, tennis court, a room to ourselves, just a few of the things listed among the high points of the place itself. So we settled in and went out to try to find some food. That first night we went out to a bar on the beach called "Da Wave" where it happened to be reggae night, with reggae music, as the DJ was constantly reminding us over the very loud speakers. However, despite being very loud and in many ways comical, it was really the perfect chill sort of atmosphere that we all had been looking for after our long day. The next two days went by in a flurry of walking into town walking to the beach surfing for hours on end in beautiful waves, and less beautiful waves but actually managing to surf, as in standing on the board for more than just milliseconds. By the end of it all I was very sunburned as we couldn't find room in the weekends budget for suntan lotion, and chaffed all over from the board, beat up by the waves, and feet cut up by the shells and rocks, but all in all it was an incredibly wonderful relaxing and yet completely exhausting weekend.

On the last night we played some cards and then decided to go to bed early since we were all beat. We had already decided that we needed to wake up at 7 in order to pack and eat and make it to the bus before it left at 7:50. So Drew and Chris set their alarms and we all go to bed. The morning comes with the sound of Drew's alarm and we all slowly get up and start to pack up our stuff. Eventually Chris and I went downstairs and we asked the man at the desk if we could have the breakfast that we had specially arranged for him to have ready for us, but he didn't have anything set up. He questioned us about the time that we were supposed to have been getting breakfast a couple of times but finally he opened it up and we managed to scarf down some food and took some with us and booked it out the door. We were a few minutes behind our scheduled timeline at this point and therefore Chris and Drew decided to jog ahead in hopes that they would be able to at least hold the bus until Joe and I who were walking quite briskly (since we both had more bags to carry) could get there behind them. We eventually lost sight of them and were quickly closing in on the departure time for our bus so we continued to pick up the pace. We kept on seeing buses coming by and we were really starting to worry about whether or not we might miss it. Suddenly Joe looks across the field beside us and realized that we had missed the turn and that he saw our bus coming up to the stop and therefore yells "This way!! We need to hurry!!" and proceeds to sprint out into this dark field and I have no choice but to follow him. I too take off every second just waiting to break an ankle in the completely unlit field (since the sun was strangely still not up yet at almost 8 in the morning) but finally we made it across and up to the bus stop where Drew and Chris were waiting for us. All of us were now sweating and panting as the two of them had run almost a mile, and then the two of us had sprinted at least 200 yards, but the good news was that we hadn't missed the bus. So as we sat there recovering from our runs and awaiting the bus that was now 10 minutes late, Chris's phone starts going off. We all look at Chris, and he looks to Drew and asks, "Did you factor in the time change?" Drew's responded with a sorrowful drop of the head and one word "Dammit..." We had all ran and sprinted to catch the bus one hour earlier than we had needed to explaining all sorts of things from the confusion of the hostel manager to the lack of sun. Luckily we were able to catch earlier buses into the main station and then sit there without any problems, but it was still a rather hilarious start to the morning.
The picture is the aftermath of the process getting to the central station...