I was so close to titling this "A Perfect Week on Public Transportation" until a Portuguese bus driver ruined my streak Sunday morning...but first:
Monday:
First Day of Class! On Mondays my first class isn't until 11:30, so I got to sleep in and gave myself plenty of time to get to the school. I've confidently got my bus route down now and seem to be settling into a routine (how strange for life to start becoming routine in such a pretty European town!)
As is typical of all first days of classes, the first period of each class is reserved for going over the syllabus and basic information about the class. What isn't typical, however, is having both periods of the same class on the same day! I have my first literature class before lunch and the second one afterwards. It certainly makes for a very busy afternoon as I also have both periods of my film class after lunch so I spend 3:30-8:30 in the same classroom with the same professor! He seems very nice, but I definitely use the breaks between classes to walk around so I don't go crazy sitting there for five hours! I'm sure most of you don't need a recap on my lecture about the Generation of 1898 authors, so I won't go into too much details about actual class, but it was a good first day! Our first film was a tad violent and gory (it was a critique of the Spanish prison system so I suppose it was necessary) but I think it'll be nice to end my Mondays watching a movie every week!
Tonight looked a little different from how my usual Monday will look as La Fund was offering the first of two flamenco classes! I grabbed a quick dinner with a friend after class (we found a small little place with chicken and fries nearby campus, which was a perfect light meal before we went back to dance) and made the walk back to the courtyard of La Fund. I was glad to see that most of the students had signed up for the class and was excited to try it out. We were learning an introductory form of flamenco, but the footwork was definitely a little tricky and I don't think anybody had the hand and feet movements synced up, but it was a fun time! I was somehow selected to help demonstrate a part with the teacher, so I'm grateful it was for the one section I actually knew what I was doing!
Tuesday:
My classes on Tuesday begin at 10:05 so I have to get up a bit earlier than Mondays and Wednesdays, but still nothing too early! At least by my standards—the Spaniards might disagree! Tuesdays are a lighter day too and only have three classes (since my Spanish speaking class has one period on Tuesdays and the other on Wednesdays). The day begins with an economics class focusing on Spain and eventually its entrance into the European Union, which definitely should be interesting! I then have a very long break before the second Econ class and my speaking class so I went with some friends to visit a nearby gelateria after lunch!
I absolutely love this Spanish conversation class so far since it mainly consists of us sharing stories on a certain topic with the group as the professor corrects our grammar and teaches us some new words and phrases, which should hopefully help the fluidity of my Spanish a bit!
I ventured out into the little collection of restaurants near the school once more after class for dinner before our second and final flamenco class. Although this time I was armed with a recommendation from my host mother to a pizza place she enjoys. It was good, but definitely bigger than our personal sizes back in the US
We finished our final flamenco lesson (sadly with much fewer people than yesterday—only 10 showed up today.) We all were still nowhere close to the teacher's example, but I found myself to be quite the expert at the "Golpe, Golpe, Y!" choreography, where we hit each foot on the ground and then lifted one leg to cross over the other. In addition to being very simple, it's remarkably fun to say!
Wednesday:
My classes start at 11:30 again on Wednesdays so I again got to sleep in a little later. Both periods of my Latin American Politics class are on Wednesdays as is the second period of my conversation class, where today we learned that the Spanish version of the phrase "It's a small world" is "El mundo es un pañuelo" which literally translates to "The world is a tissue!"
I was glad my evening was free tonight so I could return and have dinner with my host family. Ricardo was able to join us since he would be working the night shift at work, so it was nice to have all three of us there to eat the calimari Marivi had made for dinner.
Thursday:
Thursday's are my "day off" so not too much to report. I mostly spent the day working on homework (which seems likely to become pretty routine for Thursdays since according to the syllabi, I have at least 10 papers for my various classes this semester, not to mention all the tests and presentations.)
We did have a meeting in the middle of the day on travel safety so I had to make my way back to the school for lunch and what was hopefully one of our final meetings. The bus soon brought me back to homework and packing for my weekend travels, as well as more of Marivi's pisto for dinner (see last week's blog for an explanation of the dish.)
Friday:
We had to be at La Fund by 8:30 AM for the bus ride taking us to Madrid for the day! I made the mistake of not sleeping for the bus ride there, which made it a little harder to stay awake as a guide started talking about some of the buildings outside our windows—it also didn't help that I had walked around and seen the outside of most of these buildings the week before. But I did hear her say that Madrid is the number two biggest city in Europe for Broadway shows (behind London) so I think I'll have to make it back here for one of those.
Yet, we soon reached our final destination: The Royal Palace of Madrid, one of the largest palace's in Europe and what my grandma has dubbed "the prettiest interior of a building she's ever seen." She was certainly not wrong on that point! King Phillip V (King Louis XIV's grandson) moved from France to rule in Spain and found the current castle did not meet his French standards and seized the chance to build a new palace when a fire burned the old one down. We were unable to take pictures for most of the tour (and all of the aforementioned beautiful interior,) but here's a few we were allowed to get:
The university staff then took us to a Spanish tapas restaurant for lunch before giving us free time to explore the city. My friends and I walked around some more, visited La Reina Sofia to see Pablo Picasso's Guernica (which the art museum also did not let us take a picture of), and played cards in El Retiro Park. We wouldn't be returning to Toledo so we were just waiting out the time until our overnight bus to Lisbon!
Saturday:
The bus left Madrid around midnight and arrived in Portugal at 5:40 AM, almost an hour and a half earlier than expected. Not only did we lose some valuable sleep time, nothing was open. Once the metro opened around 6:30, we headed downtown. 7:00 must be the crack of dawn over here since there was nobody on the streets (which made for pretty views) and it took us a while to find a place to grab some breakfast. We eventually found a little bakery where I got a croissant and a Portuguese pastel de nata (custard pastry) which was quite good!
We then walked up several very steep streets (Is every European city built on a hill??) and arrived at a castle with amazing views of the city! We explored the area for a while and tried to find a restaurant for lunch on our way back down. The place we found advertised authentic Portuguese food, but unless Portuguese food is the same as the brunch places my sisters like to go to in California, I think the sign might have been a little outdated. Nevertheless, it was good and they had peanut butter (a rarity in Europe!)
Once our Airbnb was ready at 3:00, we desperately headed over there to shower and change before getting ready to go out for dinner. We stopped along the way to share a slice of Lisbon's famous chocolate cake, which must have been delicious since we finished it within minutes. Most dinner places were all booked or required a reservation, but we managed to find a pretty terrace restaurant where I ordered a Portuguese steak!
After dinner, we walked around some more, found a gelateria, and made it back to the Airbnb to watch the last five minutes of the Notre Dame game (which ended much better than last week's as evidenced by the contrast in our reactions) before promptly falling asleep.
Sunday:
One of my friends wanted to go to mass this morning so I agreed to go with her. We left at 9:45 with plenty of time to get to 10:30 mass, but then my public transportation curse struck again! We had been waiting at our bus stop when we realized a new bus stop had been put in around the corner which our bus had just passed We walked over to where he was stopped behind another bus and waved, but he just shook his head, refused to open the doors, and left us stranded without enough time to make it mass. We figured out another bus to take and managed to make it for the second half of the service at least. It was in Portuguese, of course, and apparently my year of Notre Dame masses didn't adequately prepare me for following along in a foreign language, but the church was gorgeous!
We were supposed to meet our friends at Belém Tower, but their tram had been delayed by a street dance apparently, so we grabbed some pastries as we waited and then walked over. It was a gorgeous spot to visit and just hearing the sounds of the ocean made for a relaxing end to the morning.
The rest of the day was spent at the National Tile Museum (Portugal is well known for its tiles taht adorn many buildings) and the city's aquarium—both of which were high priorities on two of the other group members' lists of things to do.
The evening was a tad stressful as some miscommunication caused us to miss a bus to our bus station, but we caught an Uber and arrived with plenty of time. It was a mostly sleepless night and we arrived at 6:40 Monday morning. A quick metro ride to a train to a bus brought me back to Toledo and now it's time to start the week again!
Final Thoughts (AKA details I forgot to add anywhere else):
All my classes are taught in Spanish which hasn't been too difficult so far! I can understand almost everything the professors are saying, just sometimes have difficulty responding—especially for complex thoughts—but hopefully the conversation class should help with that!
I was surprised by how well were able to get around Lisbon with our Spanish! It's similar enough to Portuguese to get by, but definitely with a much different pronunciation (my grandma and her Duolingo practice can attest to that!)
One vendor asked if I was Brazilian which I found to be quite funny as I was definitely not speaking Portuguese! There were several Brazilian themed restaurants and shops around Lisbon, likely since the Portuguese colonized Brazil.
Speaking of colonization, I was in Madrid for Mexican Independence Day which my dad and I were laughing about—it's like being in the UK for the 4th of July!
Portugal and Spain are annoyingly in different time zones since Francisco Franco wanted to be on the same time as Nazi Germany when he was in power, so we lost an hour of sleep coming back on the bus.
Lisbon is gorgeous so would definitely recommend if you get a chance to check it out! Didn't know much about it before coming so I mainly went along with the flow (highly unusual for me!) and it was a blast!
After posting last week's blog post I was able to join a FaceTime celebration for my dads birthday which was a perfect way to end the week:
Eu amo e sinto falta de todos vocês,
Bryce