Rock in Rio!!!

Rock in Rio is a huge music festival in Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, which takes place the last two weekends in May. I went with my host sister and friends to Rock in Rio on Friday. We took the train to Lisbon and a metro to the park where Rock in Rio was held. There was a long line of people pouring out of the metro station, walking up to the entrance. We couldn’t take any food or liquids into the park and everyone had their bags checked. We finally made it to the entrance. The park was huge! There was a giant main stage in the center of a huge field. Right above the stage there was a giant zip line. People were zip lining over the crowd all through out the night. I thought it was pretty epic especially when there was a huge finale to a song and a person would zip across the screaming crowd. There were tons of food vendors, carnival rides, and smaller stages around. When we arrived, Mariza, a famous fado singer was performing. Fado is a traditional type of Portuguese music. Ivete Sangalo, a popular Brazilian singer, was on the main stage next. During these performances we walked around and took in all the sights. One stand was doing face painting so we got stripes of paint that glowed under mini black lights. We got free sunglasses from the Pepsi stand and free straw hats when we went on a ride. We were standing in line for a ride, similar to the tower of terror, when I heard my name. I turned around and saw Lily, one of the exchange students from America who came to Portugal for 6 months too. Over 50,000 people come to Rock in Rio everyday and we were lucky to bump into each other. She was with her host sister and another exchange student from the US who is on the year exchange program.

We walked back to find a good spot to watch John Mayer. The field around the stage filled up quickly. We were right on top of a hill looking down to the stage from the right side. There were people sitting down in front of us so we had a perfect view. John Mayer started singing at 10:00 p.m. and sang until 11:15. Let me just say, he is an insane guitar player. He switched guitars for every song. After the performance, the stage crew wheeled a huge box filled with guitars on the stage (there must have been over 30). There was a 30-minute break before Shakira took the stage. Fireworks lit up the sky and music played over the speakers. We sat down during the break and people took our original spots. I pushed my way forward to get some pictures when Shakira started singing but the music was loud so it didn’t matter that we couldn’t see. Shakira was amazing live and her song “She Wolf” was fantastic. We didn’t see the end of her performance because we decided to go to the huge tent blasting techno music that people were dancing too. The strobe lights were flashing and it was packed, but lots of fun. We left the park after 2 am and took the metro back to an apartment in Lisbon to spend the night. I was still really full of energy from the concerts and I think I got about 3 hours of sleep. My host mom picked us up in the morning and we went back to Santarèm for a half hour, just enough time to shower and repack. We drove to Evora and saw some of my host family’s relatives. It was my host sister’s birthday and we went go carting and hung out by the relative’s pool.

Before 8 p.m., my host sister and I put our party dresses and heels on and left to go to her cousins 18^th birthday party. Her cousin rented a building in the countryside outside of Evora for her party. We had dinner and there was a DJ outside so everyone danced under the stars. Portuguese like to party very very late so by the time we left it was after 5 a.m. We stayed at a friend’s house in Evora. As we walked up to the house, the morning chorus of birds was singing and the sky was getting lighter. We slept until 12:30 and the friend’s mom made us a huge lunch with soup, salad, lasagna, and fruit before we left. When we finally got back to Santarèm later that afternoon, I fell right asleep, waking up only to watch Glee with my host sisters and then fell back to bed. A very busy weekend, but it was so much fun!

Since school is almost over, this week is very packed with tests and projects to present. This weekend I have my “Good-Bye” Program in Coimbra. There are about 80 exchange students in Portugal from all around the world so they divided the group in half for the good-bye program. There are 35 students going to Coimbra and I think the rest are going to Braga. Ari is also going to Coimbra and some of the students from Argentina who arrived to Portugal in January. The other students are from the yearlong program and are from countries like Germany, Mexico, Italy, Norway, China and Turkey. I haven’t seen the other Americans since February so I’ll miss seeing them next weekend, but it will be fun to meet other exchange students since I’m the only one in Santarèm. Even though our plane departs to London, then NYC on June 26, we have to meet in Lisbon on June 25 for a “debriefing”. The host families aren’t allowed to see us to our plane. I don’t know how many of us would actually leave if they did come so it’s probably for the best. I can’t believe I only have five weeks left!