Finished with School

On Saturday, June 5 the girls’ grandmother arrived. She lives in the US and came to visit. She insisted on taking us shopping and it was lots of fun, she was so sweet. This summer, my host family is going to the US to visit their relatives so hopefully I will see them all in August. I went to the agriculture fair in Santarém with my host sister and her friends. We arrived around 11 p.m. and left after 4 a.m. Mostly we just talked with friends and listened to a concert. The following day, Sunday, Carolina and I went to a bullfight in Santarém. They had six cavaleiros, one for each bull. We had to leave before it finished to see my youngest host sister perform her Spanish dancing at the agriculture fair.

Tuesday, June 8 was my last day of high school. In a way, I already felt like I had finished. The other students didn’t seem as excited about summer vacation. At my school in NY, I was use to kids running down the halls screaming on the last day. My classmates still have to take their national exams and won’t know if they’ve passed high school until July so maybe that was part of it. Almost half my class didn’t even attend the last class we had on Tuesday. I was glad to be done because I can travel more now.

The next day, Wednesday, I took a bus to Evora to visit Ari, one of the other American exchange students. I fell asleep and when I woke up I saw a sign that said Evora with an arrow. The bus went that way and pulled into a bus stop so I assumed we were there. I should have been paying more attention and realized that we were early (buses are never early to arrive here in Portugal). I ended up getting off at Montemor, a city a little north of Evora. It was only 20 minutes from Evora so Ari’s host mom picked me up, which was really nice of her. It definitely could have been worse though. One exchange student said they once got on the wrong bus and went to the northern tip of Portugal instead of going south. Ari showed me around Evora. It’s a much smaller city than Santarém. She took me to her favorite Pasteleria and we tried beijinhos (translates to kisses). They were small round orange sweets that had thin hard sugar covering a creamy melt-in-your-mouth custard/cream filling. I saw the Roman Temple of Diana again; we walked and saw the shops, a theater, and a park where there were peacocks. If you’ve never heard a peacock make noise, they sound exactly like Kevin from the movie Up, which I thought was hilarious. Luckily, I made all the right connections to get home.

These past few days, I’ve been unsuccessfully trying to slow down time and hanging out with friends in Santarém. Yesterday, a group of us watched the Portugal vs. Côte d’Ivoire World Cup soccer game at a café. Portugal has the best player in the world, Christiano Ronaldo, but they aren’t a very strong team as a whole. There was a group of people with Portuguese shirts in the café all watching, jumping up when it looked like we had a chance to score, groaning when the team didn’t make a pass. We have to play Brazil to move on past the first group and Brazil is a powerful team.

Today, Wednesday, June 16 I’m going to Geneva, Switzerland to visit a friend until Sunday, June 20. It is going to be fun to see more of Europe. When I come back I only have 6 more days before I leave, which is so sad!