We left early Saturday morning and drove 6 hours to Lisbon. After making a stop at the hotel, we went to the monastery.
I know a lot of the buildings look alike, especially through pictures, but I figured I'd show a couple.
After the monastery, we went to the bay area to take pictures and hang out for a while.
There were sailboats everywhere! It was like something you would see in a movie. It made me want to sail around the bay of Lisbon all afternoon. :)
The bridge in this picture was built by the same company that built the Golden Gate Bridge - I'm sure you can't tell at all, ha. It was actually built 25 years after the GGB. This is the bridge that we entered into Lisbon on. When we left Lisbon we left on the second longest bridge in the world and the longest bridge in Europe. I didn't get a good picture of that one though. Behind the bridge in this picture, you can see the really tall statue - that is El Cristo Rey. On Sunday morning we went to the top of El Cristo Rey and had a fabulous view of the city!
Views from El Cristo Rey.
Here's some other Portugal landscape that we saw on our way out of town - I loved it!
Overall, Portugal was a pretty slow weekend. We did a lot of just hanging out together...not too much site-seeing. We were all so exhausted from the past week of stress and finals that I think it was just nice to relax and not do much. We had all of Sunday and Monday free to do what we wanted, and we did a lot of walking around and exploring the city. We went to a flea market and a cool look-out point. We also ate dinner (twice) at a Brazilian/Portuguese restaurant with all the different types of meat that are brought around on skewers. It was SO good and SO cheap compared to any restaurant similar to that in the States. Lisbon is home to the largest mall in Europe, but would anyone believe me when I said I didn't go? Ha. I didn't end up making it to the largest shopping mall in Europe. :( It was on the opposite side of town and was a little complicated to get to, but it is probably for the best that I DIDN'T make it there because now I actually have some money left to my name. :) The Portuguese language is not my favorite. It's very similar to Spanish when written out, but when it's spoken it sounds a lot more like German or Russian to me.
That's about it for Portugal. Life in Sevilla is still going strong! One of our final projects was to make a 7-10 minute (approx.) video corto (short video) in Spanish. Basically, we had to make a Spanish video over anything we wanted to, so my group did a Spanish rendition of the movie "Mean Girls." It was actually really fun making it and it turned out pretty cute! Last Friday, we had a showing of all of the videos from our entire class and, after watching all of them, the teachers voted on awards for best actor, best actress, best script and best movie. WE WON BEST MOVIE! Haha...it was pretty exciting for us, especially after all of the work we put into it, but it was also a big surprise to us! We each got a little Spanish "Oscar" - statues of the Giralda in Sevilla. I'm pretty sure each one of our statues has broken already, but it's the thought that counts. :) I will try to upload the video to the blog at some point. I'm still working on trying to get it on my Facebook for those of you that can see that. I'll keep y'all updated on it though!
Here's a shot of the river where we go hang out. I thought this picture gave a good idea as to what it's like. Last Friday, after class, we all went to the river and hung out all afternoon. It was SO warm! I was in a tank top, shorts and sandals in February!
Tomorrow night we are going to Carnival in Cádiz. It is basically one huge carnival that is similar to Halloween in the States because everyone dresses up. It should be quite an experience...I have heard you either love it or you hate it, so we'll have to see how it all plays out! I think it will be fun regardless. :)
We started our new classes on Wednesday after our trip to Portugal. Those are going well, but I can already tell I'm going to have a lot more homework because we have a lot of reading to do for these two classes (especially considering one of them is Spanish Literature). They should be good though...I'm just looking forward to learning more Spanish!
Yesterday, for our Life and Culture class, we went to the flea market in Sevilla. It is a small market that takes place every Thursday - El Mercadillo de Jueves. We were required to go with the class, find something we wanted and bargain the price down to 5 euros or less. It was definitely an experience - talk about some junk. There were all kinds of booths set up with everything from books and jewelry to hardware for cabinets and sticks tied together with some string. I found a watch I wanted for 3 euros...I tried to bargain it down to 2 euros, but the guy said it was "originally 5" so he couldn't give me any less than that (all in Spanish, of course), so I took the watch anyways - ha. I also got a red and black necklace (good for some Texas Tech game days!) for 1 euro...it was originally 2 - haha. Apparently I'm not the best bargain shopper, but the stuff was cheap to begin with! Then again, I can't say I had too much faith in that my watch would actually work, but I've been wearing it since I bought it and it's still ticking!
I guess that's about it. My parents will be in Sevilla in EXACTLY one week!!! I couldn't be more excited. My 21st birthday is in 11 days, my parents will be here soon, I'm living in Europe...life doesn't get much better than this! :)
Best wishes, thoughts and prayers to Texas!
Abrazos,
Paige
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