Study Abroad 2017: Week 11: Nov. 13th-19th (Lisbon, Portugal)

Hello everyone! Can you believe it is Thanksgiving week already??? That is crazy to me. I am going to miss being with my family very much but I am excited because I am going with my friend MJ to Rome and hopefully we will find a good turkey (or Italian) meal there.

I appreciate being healthy so much more after I have been super sick. I finally felt better this week and could do things again. My stomach is still pretty sensitive but my doctor emailed me with some advice and I’m hoping that will help. So, Sevilla has become very cold during the nights and in the mornings so I decided I should invest in some sweats and a cute European jacket. I was on a mission this week. Monday, my roommate and I spent three hours at the mall and we came out empty handed (except we did buy snacks because supermercados are my weakness). Oh, I also purchased some sweat pants to sleep in because I no longer can wear shorts to bed due to the freezing (50 degree) nights. I wore my new PJ pants to dinner and told my host mom I got them to sleep in and she goes, “Oo, tu culo parece muy bien en esos pantolones. ¿Los compraste para salir o para dormir?” (Oo, your butt looks good in these pants…did you buy them to go out or to sleep in?) She’s not afraid to say what she thinks… Okay, so on Tuesday, Carly and I were going to go shopping downtown but we went to study at Starbucks (I know, I know) first and it ended up getting too late. Pause—I just love Tuesday mornings. I’m not always a fan of having to wake up early on a day where I don’t have class until noon, but it is worth it every time. I got to work with a new group of kids along with the group that I have been with the last 4 weeks or so and they are seriously the cutest. All of them warm my heart. So Wednesday, I went to a different mall area than on Monday and found one soft sweater but I still didn’t find a coat that I liked. I was determined to wait to buy one until I found just the right one. On Thursday, I had tutoring in the morning and then class and then I was feeling sleepy and ended up taking a 2-hour nap. Thursdays are great because they are practically Fridays since I don’t have class on Fridays. P.S. When I have a 40-hour/week job, 5 days a week, I might struggle… Ahem, so it was pretty late when I woke up from my siesta but there are these cute boutique-type shops in my neighborhood. I told myself it’d feel good to get out of the house and so I just went exploring by myself. I walked into one of the stores and saw a lot of great sweaters, which was also on my “to-buy” list. I touched them and they were super soft—even better. See, there’s a lot of great stores like H&M, Zara, Pull&Bear, Bershka, Stradivarius, etc. that have cheap sweaters but the thing is, everyone goes there and buys sweaters/clothes from there and then we go to class and everyone has the same sweater on. Therefore, I was feeling good about this decision to try somewhere “unique.” I found the coat section and immediately spotted a grey, longer, soft, coat with a zipper and hood. That is exactly what I wanted. They only had one size in the grey and I tried it on and loved it except it was too tight in the shoulders. They had a red one that was a size bigger and I thought, why not? I’m trying to add more red to my wardrobe right? I tried it on and it was like Cinderella! The shoe (coat) fit PERFECTLY!! I had accomplished my mission. I was so happy. So, this little adventure was fabulous, not only because I found the perfect coat but then… okay, well I was the only one in the store. There were three workers: two Chinese—an older lady and then a young guy—and a Spaniard about my age. I had called my mom in the store (cause all week-long I was sending her pics and asking her questions so I could pretend/act like she was shopping with me). And so of course I spoke in English to her and since it was quite quiet in that store, they overheard me. I was looking at some of the clothes when the Chinese man asked me “You speak English and Spanish together?” or something like that, which I didn’t quite understand at first. Then, I realized he was asking if I spoke both English and Spanish, which I liked that he was asking me that because normally when people hear us (Americans) speak in English, they just assume we don’t speak Spanish. He started asking me questions and translating to the Spaniard girl and I was like, well hey… I can talk in Spanish. So I was talking in Spanish to them and the Spaniard thought I was so smart since I was studying abroad and could speak English and Spanish (somewhat). I told her, “Mi español es muy malo.” (My Spanish is very bad) and she told me that it was really good which was kind of her. Both her and the Chinese boy were super nice and they had so many questions for me which I thought was adorable even though it made shopping difficult. It was worth it. I finally looked around some more and found another zip-up jacket just for around the apartment and an adorable/soft, long, dark green sweater to buy along with my coat. As I finished checking out, the Chinese guy asked me if I liked the earrings they had. There were some diamond ones and then some pearl ones. I told him I liked the pearl ones and thought he might try to get me to buy them but he goes, “Gift for you” and literally just hands them to me. I was so overwhelmed with their kindness. I told them bye but I definitely want to go back to that store before I leave. A little dangerous for my bank account, but I felt like I made some new friends and I just appreciated talking to them and I got a lot of clothes I wanted and then a pair of free earrings. It was a win-win-win situation!

Friday, we left for Lisboa (Lisbon), Portugal. This was our last trip with our ISA program…it blows my mind how fast it has gone. So, Lisbon was horrible. Remember how awful my last trip to Portugal was when we went to Albufeira? Hah, JUST KIDDING. Literally, I love Portugal. Albufeira (week 6 of my blog) was one of the best weekends of my life and Lisbon was definitely one of my favorites/probably my favorite trip with ISA. I have been to so many amazing places so it’s hard to choose but there is something about Portugal that I absolutely enjoy. I obviously can’t speak the language so that’s a downside, but it is quite similar to Spanish so, if I read it, I can usually translate it pretty well. Lisbon is about 4-5 hours from Seville, which isn’t too bad. So we took a bus there and arrived in the afternoon and were able to just walk around and explore the downtown part of the city. Cork is very common in Portugal. They have almost anything you could want made out of cork. We also found a Christmas store which made me excited to listen to Christmas music and see all the cities decorate their streets with lights as the holidays are rapidly approaching. There were stands with roasted chestnuts outside and we bought some to try and started singing “Roasting chestnuts on an open fire…” I was the only one who actually liked the roasted chestnuts, but hey—more for me! I refuse to listen to Christmas music until after Thanksgiving at least. So, a little later, we went on a walking tour of Lisbon. It is a very hilly city so we got our step-climbing goal in. We went to the top of the city where there used to be a castle and now it is just ruins but enough of it was intact that you could climb up the towers and walk around. Up there, we had a view of the entire city, including the sea and the bridge that looks exactly like the San Francisco bridge. We got to watch the sunset go down from the top of the castle towers…no big deal. We took millions of pictures, of course. That night we went to dinner at a Mexican restaurant. Okay, so I think another thing that added to this trip and made it so great was the fact that, since it is more towards the end of our program, we have found our “friend groups” and I have met some really awesome girls that I just love. My closest friends are all from different Universities than me of course, and so I realized during the weekend what my personal definition of study abroad is: where Kellie makes five new friends from five different states. Well, I’ve made more than five friends, don’t worry. But I hung out with these five girls this trip and it was so fun and I just was in my happy place every time I realized how blessed I was to have them in my life. Okay, sappy moment over…ahh so much to tell. Friday night after dinner, we got some ice-cream (of course) and then MJ’s friend had recommended this parking garage bar. Um, it was literally so cool. It was an actual parking garage where you arrive and go, “hm, guess I’m gonna park my car,” and you do, but wait… then you take the elevator to the fifth floor and bam, it’s this super cool bar that looks out over the city. It felt “hole-in-the-wall” and just sneaky. I felt like we had found a secret door…like Chronicles of Narnia maybe?! Where you walk through the wardrobe and then BAM, it’s a whole new world. Maybe I’m getting carried away, but hopefully you get my point—it was AWESOME. After that, we tried going to this other bar, but it wasn’t near as cool and it ended up being an empty bar that had horrible music (indie/folk/no words/bad). We wished we had ended the night with our cool parking garage bar, but hey…it was still a great night.

Saturday, we took the bus around the city and did a bus tour and we got to visit this massive church with a beautiful courtyard. The architecture of the buildings in Europe is so incredible. Then, we got to go up in this tower building that was literally on the water that had really cool views and then, afterwards, we took lots of pictures on the little “beach” area. Then, some friends had recommended taking a train to this city called Sintra because there is a colorful castle that’s pretty cool. Hint, hint, “pretty cool” is an understatement. It seemed like a lot of work to get there because we had to take the train to a different town, take a bus up to the top of the hill, and then either walk the rest of the way up or get a shuttle. But, OH. MY GOODNESS. It was seriously amazing. It reminded me of the castle that I went to with Amanda and Peter in Munich, Germany…but it was also very different from that. The hike up was so fun because the view just kept getting better and better. We were “oo-ing” and “ahh-ing” the entire way but then, when we actually arrived at the castle…words cannot do it justice. Photos will not even do it justice. But, just trust me—it was amazing. I’ll put some of my favorite photos in the blog at the bottom, but wow-zee. It was just breathtaking. We were in a castle on top of this mountain with this incredible view of the city on one side and the sea and nature on the other side. The “colorful castle” was actually colorful—it was painted stone grey, yellow, red, and had some purple tiles on it too. We had probably taken at least 100 photos just of the outside before we even went inside. Inside was cool because it was a more modern castle so I could actually picture a King and Queen living there. *Whistle high pitch to low pitch (like an impressed whistle)* The queen had a different room for pretty much everything. She had a green room, a tea room, bed room, parlor room, living room, study room, etc. Yeah, it was quite nice. So, after our jaws finally closed and we pulled ourselves together, we took our time exploring the palace and then right as we finished, the sun was setting. So, we watched the sunset from the top of the palace. *Jaw drop* And so, who wouldn’t like Portugal when you spend two nights in a row watching a beautiful sunset from a palace or a castle? We were all in love. Well, it got real chilly real fast so we made our way back down and then had an hour before our train back to Lisbon. Well, I hadn’t eaten since breakfast since there hadn’t been any restaurants without gluten, and so I went into this Chinese restaurant and was able to order some curry and rice to go. We had planned on getting a genuine Portuguese meal for dinner, but once I ordered some food, everyone else decided they were hungry too so we ended up getting a to-go order and then sitting outside (in the cold) of the Chinese restaurant eating our food. Good times… we are in Portugal where you can get all this really good cheap food, and we end up eating Mexican food one night and Chinese the next. Go us! No judging, people. All right, so then when we got back, we talked about doing a wine night in Carly and my room. Portugal apparently has some great wine so we all took a trip to the grocery store (I always have to go to a supermercado) and bought cheese, salami, prosciutto, wine, hard ciders, soda, bread, cuties (like a clementine), peanuts, and peanut M&M’s. Classy, right? Oh, and a deck of cards. Then, we went back to the hotel…turned on some music and feasted and were merry. Honestly, this was another one of my many favorite parts of the trip. I had so much fun, but our night doesn’t end there. At 1am, MJ and I decided since we were in Portugal, we should go out again. So… we did. We took a taxi to “Barrio Alto” which was a part of the city where night life is supposed to be great and the driver dropped us off at this place with a magnificent view of the city at night. We got to see lots of views of the city on this trip, apparently. All of them were worth it. We went to this bar and ended up meeting two American girls who were studying in Rome, Italy. It was ironic because MJ and I are going to Rome this week and we actually might meet up with them. That is just so cool to me…small world. They were so young! Both of them were 18 (so Freshmen in college) and this was their first semester in college. I’m afraid they’ll have a rude awakening when they go back for their second semester, but anyway. We stayed with them all night and had a really good time! We also met some very guapismo (handsome) men from New Zealand who were Rugby players. They were pretty dang muscular. MJ fell in love with their tour-guide who was Israeli. I talked to a guy for a while who had a jaw bone as a necklace. I tried to say I was from Australia, but that didn’t work out too well since they were from New Zealand (which I didn’t know at first, I’m not dumb). There were lots of cops around too and tons of people so, don’t worry, we were safe. MJ and I are convinced that all the cops in Portugal are babes. ¿Qué más? (What more?) Hmm, ohhh! Yes, so since we had started our night so late (or early?), the bars closed at 3am, which is way too early. We were bummed. Somos españoles. Estamos acostumbrados a bares abiertos hasta seis en la mañana. (We are Spaniards. We are used to bars being open until six in the morning.) Well, we finally got back at 4am and got in bed just in time to wake up at 8:30am.

Today, we visited a city called Évora in Portugal on our way back to Seville. Since it was Sunday and it was a pretty small town, there wasn’t much happening. But one thing that totally made my day was a “pep-band” sort of group that was dressed in suspenders and bowties, that was just walking around the city playing music for people. There was a group of kids that were walking behind them with sweatshirts on that said, “Just to make you smile” or something like that. It totally made me smile! We also got to see a chapel of bones which was really cool because, in Paris, all I wanted to do was see the catacombs, but we didn’t get the chance to, so this sort of made up for it. It fascinates me. Some people think it is creepy and morbid but I personally thought it was awesome. After that, we finally got a traditional Portuguese meal, so-to-speak, and then headed back to Seville. I am now home and not ready to go to classes tomorrow…but, that’s okay. Three-day week and then off to Rome!!!

P.S. Exciting news alert: I get to see my parents in a month from yesterday!!!!!