A Few Things

It's a beautiful Saturday afternoon! I woke up not too long ago (so shoot me! I had a late night! which I will talk about in a bit) and thought I would update on what is going on and thing I have noticed.

First off, I wanted to write about the Portuguese. I thought that knowing Spanish and having taken 2 classes at the UofA would have put me and my Portuguese at a pretty decent level, somewhere like intermediate right? I mean, I can read it and write it pretty well but speaking has always been the most difficult part. And I heard Portugal portuguese is very different accent wise, but I never thought it would be this different!
So I have started to figure out the differences.
First off, when you have an 's' in or at the end of a word, you slush it together. Example: Santos (my barrio) is pronounced San-tush. Super. So a lot of the time they will be blabbering away and all I hear is this: SHSHshs vusudhSHS SHshSH. you get the idea.
The tonality is also very similar to Russian (this is what my new Portuguese friend Joni told me). So compared to Brazilian portuguese, the accent is a lot harsher sounding.
Also in Brazilian you would pronounce a word like noite (night) as noiche. Here they say Noit. so it sounds kinda more French?
All of this is making me tired just thinking about it and trying to explain it, haha.

So what else? Well...

In any big city its typical to see beggars on the street. In Buenos Aires, the beggars in the subway would often be trying to sell you things, little books, hair clips, etc, and often were children. One time, we even saw some live performers acting in the middle of the train. Here, so far I have noticed that all of the beggars in the subway are blind. I was riding around the other day and I came across not one but THREE blind beggars, shouting in the subway asking for ajuda por favor! Interesting..

All of the cabs here are an offwhite color and Mercedes Benz. Ballin'! So far I have only taken one once so far, but they are just as crazy as in any other city, yelling out the window and taking the tiny corners at high speeds. Its also nice there is a queue of cabs right down the street from my apt, since I live quite close to a bunch of bars and such. So hopefully I won't have to do much cab searching at night!

Last night I met up with the girl I was going to be renting a room from until the embassy apartment was ready (which turned out unneccesary but she seems really nice). So went to Baixa Chiado, one of the best places to go out at night (and not that far from where I live). There were all sorts of people out and abut, old and young, getting coffees, going to bars, walking around, shopping, etc. We went to a café that is famous for coffees, and had some bicas. Bicas is the word they use for a tiney tiny espresso shot which they usially mix with sugar and drink all the time. From there we went to a nearby bar that overlooked the city and the Rio Tejo. The weather was a bit cool but beautiful. I tried the Portuguese beer, Superboch, and we chatted til going to meet some of Joni's friends at a restaurant nearby. So far all the people I have met are super nice and really want to try to communicate with me. We had a fun evening, chatting and going to a couple of bars near my house. I ended up being a block away around 330 and decided to call it a night before the group headed to another club. There will be plenty of time for that! haha

Today I have been pretty worthless, but I am going to dinner with this woman Dana and her friend, who both work at the embassy. Exciting to finally get to know some embassy people! Again, they seem super friendly and more than happy to take me out with them.

Tomorrow I made plans with Katia's friend Patricia, (who has been so helpful and kind!), to see another part of the country outside Lisbon. She lives in Estoril, where apparently Europe's largest Casino resides. She said if it is nice we can go to the beach (score!) and I will get to know more people and see more things! I am planning on taking the train there, which is about 40 minutes or so, so I'll update on that and include pics soon!