As férias já acabaram...

Férias are almost over. Just tomorrow left, and then it's back to school with all of us. ):
I barely had any time at home over this break! I was so busy that I don't have the time or energy to write down everything we did here, so it'll be a brief overview. After I got back from Porto I had three days off before we headed up north to see the Castles of the Interior! We spent the night in a town with walls around it in the shape of a star! On the way back south after seeing castles, we stopped in Minde to get Alexandra and then headed off to Lisboa again for Reyna's (another American) birthday outing. We went out in the Bairro Alto region of Lisboa, which has tons of bars and small streets that all look the same. Me and Alexandra caught a taxi and got to where we needed to be, all by ourselves :D this may not sound like a big deal, but there aren't really taxis in New Mexico OR Minde, so it was an accomplishment in Portuguese. All the American semester people were there, and it was nice to catch up and have some fun. The next morning, we went shopping in Lisboa and walked around downtown a little, while my host mom gave us some history on the buildings we passed. There was a huge earthquake and tsunami in Lisboa in 1755, followed by fires all over the downtown area, and so the streets and buildings were all rebuilt--the buildings in a Parisian style and the streets in easy-to-navigate squares. That afternoon we went back to Minde for Palm Sunday (there was a procession outside our house :D), and on Monday it was back to Lisboa for me and Rita, with my host Avô (grandma). We stayed for two nights, just seeing the city with her. We also went and saw The Adjustment Bureau and Red Riding Hood, two movies in two days! The Lisboa aquarium was my favorite part of that trip (: The day after we got back from that, we all (except João) went to Baleal, but it was raining and windy and miserable, so we spent most of our time inside.

Rode a horse - bareback!

Me and Alexandra in Lisboa

Today was Easter, so the morning was spent sleeping (on my part, nobody wakes me up here), cooking and cleaning. I tried "baba de camelo", which literally translates to "camel spit/drool". It really does look like slobber, but it tastes delicious!