School, Liaison, Orientation

Written March 9th.

I had my six-week orientation near Leiria from Friday February 26 to Sunday, February 28. I had to take the bus by myself to the orientation site and back home on Sunday. I have definitely improved my observation skills. When you can't understand anything, you do a lot of watching. All the students who are studying in Portugal for 6 months were there. There were four other Americans (besides myself), one girl from Chile, two girls from Costa Rica (they just arrived four weeks ago), and the four students from Argentina. There was also a boy from Thailand who had arrived late for the yearlong program and never got to go to an orientation so he was there as well. It was nice to see everyone again. All us Americans were relieved to actually be understood and to talk fast in English. Since the other students speak Spanish they have an easier time with the language. They said they could mostly understand what people say, it's just hard for them to say anything back because the accent and pronunciation is so different. The orientation leaders had to switch between speaking Spanish and English and some Portuguese so everyone could understand. We did lots of different activities and talked about how we could make the most out of the rest of our time in Portugal. One activity simulated our experiences. We divided up into three groups at three different tables and received instructions for a card game. Once the game started we couldn’t talk at all. The winner of each group had to move to another table. When the student from the other table started playing our game she was awful at it. Each table had a different game so trying to learn the new one was difficult without being able to communicate. Some students tried to help the new person, others just ignored them and some were just annoyed that they didn’t know the rules. It was a good metaphor for our experience here. It’s a whole new game, and we can’t play by our own rules. We have to learn the new rules and language in order to completely fit in. As Fernando Pessoa (a famous Portuguese poet) said, “Our language is our culture”. Once you know the language life is much easier. I still feel like I’m way behind with the language. It’s easier to read than to interpret what people are talking about. I have tutoring with my Portuguese teacher every Monday and it’s very useful. She brings workbooks meant for young children to learn Portuguese (rightly titled “SOS Portuguese”) and they help a lot. It’s funny how “American” some Portuguese people are. Her ring tone is Linkin Park and she said she and her daughter are addicted to Gossip Girl.

Thursday was “strike” day. This is when anyone who works for the government doesn’t go to work. Most of the teachers still went to my school though. I didn’t have Psychology because the teacher was striking but I still had PE and Sociology. In PE, a rugby instructor came in and taught us how to play. We each had belts that had two flags attached by Velcro. If a person from the opposite team ripped your flag off, you had to stop and pass the ball. We played with four players on a team. The object is to get the ball to your end zone, basically like soccer, but you throw and catch instead of passing and kicking. I somehow made an amazing fake and miraculously got past all four players on the opposing team to score my team a point. It was definitely the most fun I’ve had in PE class. Thursday also happened to be a rain free day! The sun was out and it was 60 degrees outside.

On Friday, the Psychology teacher did not show up again so we didn’t have class. Instead I went with my friends and we looked in some shops. It was pouring and some of the small streets were flooded. Everyone keeps saying how this much rain is not normal. There are iris’s that are already blooming here. They usually bloom at the end of April early May in NY. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned before, but there are no woods or forests around Santarem. I’m so use to looking out my window in NY and just seeing the Adirondack Mountains and the trees. There are trees here of course, just not a forest. You cannot fully appreciate what you have until you no longer have it.

Through the AFS program, each student gets a liaison, or counselor to talk to in their new home town. I just received the name of mine last week and Sunday she invited me over to lunch. I ended up staying for lunch and dinner and got back home around 11 pm (luckily my host family wasn't upset). My liaison is a woman, in her 50's. She has hosted 5 students before from all around the world. Her three grown children were there too. They live in Lisbon and drive up to Santarem about twice a month. I really liked getting another perspective of a Portuguese family. My host family is very nice, but I make sure everything is neat and organized. My liaison's apartment felt lived in. It was so nice to be able to do things like helping out setting the table and cleaning up. At my host family, the maid does it and it's so strange for me. I went back to Portas de Sol with her son and his wife because his wife had never seen it. It was neat to see all the water. It looked like a huge lake, where all the water is covering the vineyards. We went to see Shutter Island at the movies later and we ate dinner around 9:30. They had vegetables with every meal. My host family only eats vegetables sometimes and I've been craving them. I feel like I've just been eating tons of bread.

At school, I finally received my student card. It's basically like a credit card. You have to beep it to a sensor every morning to activate it. Then you can buy school supplies or test papers in the school store or food at the "bar" as they call it. They have the most delicious croissants and sweet rolls. The rolls have baked coconut on top and their so good to make a a ham and cheese sandwich.

I have another class trip to Lisbon on Friday. Hopefully it won't rain!

Food!

Written February 25. The past week it has rained everyday here. We have to take a different road to school because the road we usually take has over 3 feet of water on it. It is normal for the fields to flood during the winter, but usually it doesn’t rain for a week straight like it has this week. One village, near where I live, is completely surrounded by water and the only way to get to access the town is by boat. Firefighters bring supplies and food to the village everyday via motorboat.

I went to the movies here last weekend with my host family. The movies at the cinema are all Hollywood films so they are in English with Portuguese subtitles. Halfway through the movie, the movie stopped and the screen flashed “Interval”. In their theaters, they have a ten-minute intermission break. After ten minutes the movie resumes right where it left off. My friends and I are excited for Alice in Wonderland so when it comes out March 4 we will hopefully get to see it. After the film, we went to a sushi restaurant for dinner. Yes they have sushi in Portugal! I hadn’t had sushi for a very long time and I forgot how good it was. I think we need a sushi restaurant in Lowville…

Speaking of food… Portuguese food is very rich, but it’s all fantastic. My family buys fresh bread every other day at least. For breakfast I usually have a roll or a croissant. We always have thick white bread for lunch with a very hard crust and soft center. My family has a cheese platter they set out during lunch with at least 5 different cheeses at a time on it. I really like a type of soft goat cheese they eat. They also buy lots of Italian cheeses. My family has their own cook, a little woman who is shorter than me and probably around 70 years old. She tells my host mother what to buy every week and she prepares lunch and dinner everyday except Sunday and Saturday night. A traditional Portuguese fish is codfish. At the supermarket, the salted and dried codfish is laid out in huge piles. They have hundreds of ways to cook it. A common way is to boil the fresh codfish and serve it with hardboiled eggs and potatoes. Salt is used a lot in cooking. The cook has a huge container of salt by the stove and she reaches in and sprinkles in on everything. Instead of salad dressing, we have olive oil and three different types of salt on the lettuce. The Portuguese know how to cook pork. Every Monday, we have pork cooked about 6 different ways for lunch. They eat the ear and the brain of the pig too (I have politely declined those parts). In some instances, I have found that the policy of “Don’t ask Don’t tell” works well when trying new food. For example, I have had goose liver and pig kidney and they were much easier to try when I didn’t know what I was trying. The goose liver was in a creamed and put in a mold so it was easy to spread on bread. It was okay at first, but the after taste had me scrambling for a piece of plain bread. Pig kidney has a weird texture (like a mushroom) and a different taste. The first time I had it I had to concentrate on chewing and swallowing. The cook makes the most delicious sauces to put on all the meat she prepares. Her pot roast is par to none. For dinner we always start off with a soup, have a main meal, then have fruit for dessert. I never realized how delicious mangos were until I had a ripe one here. Portuguese pastries are mouth watering! They have a traditional pastry that has a crust of phyllo dough and is filled with sweet custard. The Pasteleria’s display their pastries in their front windows and they make me drool just to pass them. They sell cakes and sugared rolls, filled donuts and much more. In Portugal, all their stores are very specialized. The supermarkets have all different types of food and basic necessities like shampoo, toilet paper and some makeup. All the pharmacies in Portugal are exactly the same. They all have a green sign shaped in a cross that lights up outside each store. To get my contact solution, instead of just going to the supermarket like I would at home, I had to go to an eyeglasses store to purchase it.

I go to Leiria tomorrow for an AFS orientation. Leiria is about an hour North of Santarem and right on the coast. It will be great to see the other American exchange students that I came over with. We have been keeping in contact with each other through email and facebook comparing our schools and new life. I can’t wait to speak English fast again when I’m there! We are staying right on the beach, but I don’t think we will go swimming. We are supposed to bring a dish from our country, but we can’t cook anything there so I’m going to make some chocolate chip cookies today. The other Americans and I were trying to come up with American dishes and all we could think of were desserts like brownies and apple pie. One of the guys can’t cook so he’s making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I joked that I should just go to McDonalds and buy some cheeseburgers.

Bull Fighting Training

Written on February 15, 2010.

On Saturday, after running errands with the family in Santarem, we ended up watching some bull fighting training. We pulled up to a small arena on a back street in the small town in which my host family lives. The concrete arena was about the fourth of a soccer field. The walls were more than ten feet high. There was a platform around the outside of the arena where men were standing, watching the events below. There was were stands where some girls were sitting googling at the guys below. There were about twenty guys between the ages of 18-40 (mostly younger guys) clustered in the arena. The arena was muddy; in some spots the dirty water was over six inches deep. My host father explained that they train for bull fighting about twice a month. They use wild cows to train, which are gentler than bulls (or suppose to be). There were about four concrete barricades set up around the arena close to the wall. There was just enough space between the barricade and wall to fit a body and about four could fit shoulder to shoulder behind the barricade. The men clustered behind them and then a door was opened and the wild cow charged into the arena. It's hide was flanked with dried mud. The cow stood there confused in the light for a second before charging at its first victim. The men yelled to get it to change directions. They continued to distract the bull and tire it out.

The men train to "catch the bull". In bull fights, after the bull is stabbed and run down a group of guys have the difficult task of catching the animal. In the arena, one man stood in front and a group stood a few feet behind him in a single file line. The man in front yelled and the cow charged. Instead of fleeing, the man took the cow's impact fully in the stomach and grabbed it by the horns. The horns are wrapped in leather so the are a little less lethal, though they can still cause damage. The men in the group grabbed the cow and got it under their control. Once they had control, they set it lose and another group stepped up to practice catching the cow. Many guys were pushed to the muddy earth by the cow, rolled on by the animal, and basically trampled. Every time they got right back up and continued on trying to tackle the animal. Bull fighting starts after Easter so they only have a few more times to practice before encountering the real wild bull in the arena surrounded by anxious spectators. My host brother said he never wanted to be a bull fighter, because of the danger. Many men end up with permanent injuries from bull fighting. My host father said guys can start training at age 15. But little kids can also "bull" fight. He showed me a book of bull fighting and there were pictures of seven year olds catching calves. Watching was interesting, but I'm not going to have the urge to get in an arena with a wild bull to grab it by the horns anytime soon.

The Power of Teamwork

I apologize for not posting in a while. I forgot my blogger password then my internet was sketchy. This was written on February 12.

On Wednesday my class had a big history test. History class was the last class that day. I had two periods of Portuguese class before. Usually on Wednesday I also have Sociology, but I had Sociology in place of Portuguese on Monday (The teachers switched times). So I had over three hours of Portuguese class on Wednesday. During the class, students were frantically skimming their history books and trying to get in some last minute cramming. Some of them mentioned that they wanted to get the test postponed. I thought the kids were kidding, but they said they could try to. During the break before history class, the entire class waited outside the teachers office for our history teacher. Our history teacher is very intimidating so the girls pushed the guys closest to the door. The teacher came out and a brave student explained that they weren't ready for the test and they needed more time to study. She looked really angry and said something in Portuguese to the class. A kid translated for me and the teacher said if we found a free classroom next Thursday, we could take the test then. Three minutes later, we had a room reserved from 5:00 to 6:30 p.m. I explained to the class that at my old school, if we had a test planned, we would take it on the day it was scheduled. Though, we never tried confronting the teacher before class started with every student from the class, not that I'm encouraging any deviant behavior... Teachers are a lot more flexible here. They don't assign much homework. I only have Sociology homework this week. But students have to study a lot more. Tests count for a large percentage of student's grades. Only my Psychology and Sociology tests have multiple choice questions along with many short answer questions. History tests have documents that you have to use to write essays (similar to DBQ essays). Students have to buy their own testing paper for every test that they purchase at the Papelaria in the school.

I do not have school on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday next week because it's Carnival. It's celebrated forty days before Easter, right before the start of Lent. People dress up and have parties. In Brazil it a much more important holiday. Here it just means no school and hanging out with friends. Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, is having many concerts over Carnival. Singer Joss Stone will be performing in Lisbon along with other bands. Happy Carnival!

Exploring Santarem

The construction on the school is still underway, but they have started repainting the outside of the school. The new color is a very bright mustard hue. All the kids think it's atrocious. The school is positioned at the top of a plateau that overlooks the river, fields, and smaller towns. Driving to school every morning from the valley it looks like a gold building on top of a cliff. The bell rings around 8:30 every morning. A lady comes to unlock the classroom doors and the kids slowly trickle in. There are no morning announcements or any announcements. I don't think the school has an intercom. There is very little school spirit at the school mostly because there aren't sports teams. If you want to play a sport you have to join a club in the city.

Speaking of the city, Santarem; I had a chance to explore it today. After school, I went with my friend to the mall and had lunch. We met up with three more of her friends and went shopping at the mall. Some stores were really expensive and I have to make sure to convert the Portuguese currency (euros) amount to dollars so I didn't end up spending $50 on a t-shirt. Portugal doesn't have any American chain stores like American Eagle or Hollister, but they have their own chain clothing stores. Two of my favorites were Bershka and Stradivarius. Almost 80% of girls here wear hiking boots and skinny jeans, which I think is an odd fashion trend. The others wear sneakers or converse or boots (like leather boots or Uggs). They wear lots of sweaters since it's so cold in school. The guys wear hiking boots too, but sneakers as well. They wear t-shirts, polos, plaid shirts and jeans.

We left the mall and walked down to the center of Santarem where all the streets are made of cobble stones and the walls are covered with mosaics. Shops line the streets on either side. The streets are very narrow; they can fit about one small European car and there are sidewalks on each side of the street. We looked at some more clothing and jewelry stores. They took me to Portas do Sol Park. It was on the edge of one of the three cliffs and overlooked the Tagus River and the agricultural area. Santarem use to have a wall surrounding it. The wall in the park was restored and you could overlook the wall to glimpse the magnificent views below. The train tracks follow the winding river and occasionally a train would speed along the laid path. The vineyards spread across the land, the smaller villages are white specks in the distance, the roads snake through the green fields leading to the villages. I took pictures of buildings and mosaics and random doors, which my friends thought was funny. I was explaining the contrast it had from rural NY. I had to meet my host sister at 6:30 so we had to speed walk back to get my backpack from my friends apartment. We made our way along the cobble stone streets as the sun was setting. Weaving around parked cars and dodging pedestrians and moving vehicles on the narrow streets we made the trek back. It was dark when we reached the apartment building. The street lights and car lights flickered, lighting up the city. There were no clouds so the glimmered in the sapphire sky. A good end to a busy day!

Thursdays are definitely my favorite day of the school week! So I arrived at school about five minutes before the bell rang. My host brother went off with his friends so I decided to head up to my classroom. As I rounded the corner to the stairs, I saw a huge furry creature at the end of the hall. It was half waddling, half scampering as it plowed into the doorway of the office. I couldn't tell what it was at first. It was about the size of a small corgi dog and it had all different colored fur. As it disappeared into the office I realized it was a very fat cat. I asked one of my classmates and they explained that the school had two cats that lived there. There use to be a dog too, but now it's fertilizing dandelions (if you get what I mean). I think the cats use to be strays then someone fed them and they stayed. Personally, I think a cow would look lovely in the courtyard at my old high school.

In Psychology, we talked about hippies. The guys were eager to explain what American music artists influenced the era. In gym we played volleyball. I was so ecstatic that I didn't have to play before I left my other high school because playing volleyball usually consisted of me ducking and apologizing for missing the spiring orb that was coming crashing towards my head. Well I haven't improved much, though I tried not to duck. We joined with another class so I got to sit out with some other girls for the last few minutes. They proceeded to sing at the top of their lungs any song that popped into their heads. It was hysterical when the gym teacher started dancing. The kids bring their gym clothes in every gym day. There is a lady who takes their student card and in return gives them a key for a locker to use during class. The locker room is much smaller than at my old school, with only one row of lockers and three shower sections where we change. Even though it's warmer here than NY (around 50 degrees), the school is colder. Really, I'm not kidding, I know how cold my old school can be. But they have no central heating in the school so everyone just keeps their jackets on. Some kids even wear gloves in class. I can't wait for April when it'll be much warmer. In Sociology we finished watching The Constant Gardener and started The Dead Poets Society.

After school, my host mother picked me and my host brother up and we went out for lunch in Santarem. After we went to the heart of Santarem where all the shops are. I got the rest of my school books and got to window shop. The road around the shops is made of cobblestones and there are mosaics on many of the shop walls. We stopped at my favorite shop, the Pasteleria for croissants and rolls. We also went food shopping before heading home. My history teacher let me take home and finish my test that we took on Wednesday. After translating the question on the internet, I realized I wrote some completely different answers so I have to fix that. I have a psychology test Monday. Now that I have the book, I need to start translating it. I predict lots of studying for the weekend...

You expect us to Run?

Sunday I went to church with my family. I asked them what time church started and they replied noon, so I asked what time we would leave and they replied noon. That's Portugal for you! Promptness isn't always a concern. Students wander into class 10 minutes late and teachers hardly blink. Monday was the longest day of school. Who ever thought of these 1 hour 40 minute classes obviously never sat through one before. I can say I have perfected doodling in all my margins. Too bad I'm not in art. I had Psychology, History, and Portuguese. In Psychology we actually talk about the same things that I learned in the JCC class I took my junior year. We talked about some of the same experiments that I studied last year so I can understand some discussion. History was okay, but Portuguese was hopeless. All they do is read long poems and discuss them for 100 minutes.... I thought the class was never going to end! Today's classes were better because I had PE to break up listening to random words. I did research for my project in my first class then headed off to PE. It was freezing outside and inside today, but we went outside to run. I truly believe I was the only person who kept running for the whole 10-15 minutes we were outside. The guys here are girlier than the girls I joke with my friends and they agree. 3 out of the 5 guys in my class have compact mirrors and they check their reflection in any reflective surface possible, including the car windows as we headed back in the school after our run. The guys couldn't believe I didn't know any of Portugal's soccer stars. I had to explain that America was all about football, basketball and baseball. Soccer is a religion here and you can definitely tell by how good all the guys are at playing soccer. For the remainder of the class, we played soccer with another class and all the guys have amazing footwork skills. Tomorrow I have a mini History test that I think is about the Soviets spreading communism... at least that's what I hope it's on. I don't have any of my course books yet, so it's kind of hard to study, but there's always the internet.