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Blog Entry for 10-12-10/Lisbon, Portugal
Bon Dia…. Okay I’m not sure how to spell it but that is “good day” in Portuguese. I’ll talk about that in a little. Since last week, many things have been going on here in Spain. Most of the things that have been going on have been school related. This past week I finished two of my classes. I finished Spanish Conversation and Advanced Grammar. I haven’t gotten the official report, but I can say with some certainty that I made A’s in both of them! My Spanish Internship class lasts the duration of the semester so I’ll still be doing stuff for it into December. For my conversation class, we had a final culture project and an oral exam to complete the class. My oral exam went very well, and I was very pleased with my grade. The final culture project was a short video conducted in Spanish with your group. In my group we had three people, and our video was called “Un Día en Sevilla.” It was a funny video about our experiences here in Spain, and about some difficulties we have had while being here. We tried to make it funny, and I think it turned out pretty well. My group and I started out a little rough I think, but we came together really well in the end. I’ll put a link to the video if you would like to watch it. We ended up winning the award for the best video in the class, and we each won a figuring of one of the famous sites here in Seville, La Giralda. For my grammar class, we had a difficult test over what we had studied these past weeks. I do not know my grade on that test yet, but I can say that it was quite difficult so we will just have to wait and see.
Tomorrow morning I’ll be starting two new classes: Spanish Life and Culture and Spanish Literature. I’m very excited about the new classes. We will not be focusing so much on language anymore but will be treating it more as a regular class that’s in Spanish. I am pretty worried about the literature class as any kinds of reading intensive subjects are not my strong points. I’ve spoken with the instructor, and she feels that I should do fine in the class as long as I put in the time. As for the Spanish Life and Culture class, I’m not sure what to expect. I think the class could really cover a wide range of things so I will just have to wait and see what comes of it.
Just earlier today I was in Lisbon, Portugal. Lisbon is the capital of Portugal and a city of around 2 million inhabitants. I left for Lisbon last Friday morning early in the rain with my school on a charter bus. My good friend Elliott came with us and several other additions came along with us, so the bus was pretty dang full. Lisbon is about 6 hours from Seville counting one pretty long bathroom/rest stop. We had nasty weather pretty much the whole way there, but the bus ride wasn’t too bad. When we got to Lisbon we first went and saw several sites. We saw a Geronomite (not sure about spelling on this at all, sorry) Monastery that was very impressive. The Geronomites that lived at this place were among the first people to copy the bible and translate it to Latin. It was a place of great knowledge in past times and the Geronomites that lived there often offered knowledge and advice to the king of the time. The chapel that was attached to the monastery was also very beautiful and had the tomb of Vasco de Gama. I’m sure you all remember hearing that name TONS of time back in 7th grade history class. Well de Gama was the man that pretty much established the first trade route to India.
That night we ate at a Brazilian meat house. I’m not sure exactly what you call the places, but we have them in the USA also. We had all you can eat meats and salad. It was really great food; we also had green wine which is typical Lisbon. The next day we went to an aquarium that was constructed as part of the World’s Fair of 1998. (I’m not sure about the year, I think that is correct) It was awesome there. We saw tons of different types of marine life. Elliott and I decided we wanted to see a whale though…. After that, we rode a “ski lift” style thing across part of the World Fair set up, and it dropped us off in another section. We ended up taking the metro back towards our hotel. On the way back, we stopped at a really big mall, Vasco de Gama is the name of the mall if I remember right. Our director had told us that the biggest mall in Europe was there in Lisbon, but Elliott and I are not sure if that was the right one or not. We had some time to go to the downtown area and walk around that afternoon. I decided that Lisbon is a really beautiful city that I would love to visit again. Honestly, I wish they spoke Spanish there so I could be doing study abroad there. It really was a great city and pretty much everyone had the same feeling.
The next day we went to Cristo Rei, Christ the King. It is a big statue that mimics the huge statue of Jesus Christ in Rio de Janerio. I paid the fee to ride to the top and the view from atop was amazing. I’ll be putting pictures on the internet soon so you can see them too. There is also a big bridge in Lisbon that was made by the same people that created the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco so it looks very similar. I isn’t far from the Christ statue so I have some pictures of that too. After that we went to a city just outside Lisbon that is called Sintra. Sintra is in the mountains and is where many of the rich from Lisbon built huge houses for the Summers. There are many things there to see such as palaces, castells, and gardens. Elliott and I only had time to walk around and see the Castell of the Mores which we both really really enjoyed. It was windy and pretty cold on top of the mountain where the castell was, but it was well worth it. The site is still under excavation so there is still much to be discovered there. The palace there was an impressive site from the castell, and I have some pictures of it. It looks like something out of a story book. From the castell, Elliott and I walked down some nature trails all the way back to the town. It was a long trail, but it was stunning. The next day was today J. We were on the bus for most of today it feels and that concluded our trip to Lisbon. So until next time…. Adiós Amigos
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