Hi All. As promised, this is one of the blog entries after a bit of an absence. I finally put aside some time today to write because I know that it would be almost impossible to update you on everything that has happened to date. I started writing this blog on 9/26/08. I think it prudent to mention that I don’t have internet where I live in Spain so I need to go to internet cafés to upload my blogs. I usually write my blog entries as word documents and upload them at a later date.
On 9/26 I went to the University of Sevilla orientation. Before Orientation, the other students who were going to be taking classes at the U de S and I met Marisa the student Liaison who showed us where our classes would be. This was a great help because the US was a tobacco factory in a previous life and is huge. To give a comparison one wing of the University is comparison to the whole science block ( SC wing) at Sacred Heart and I have personally counted at least 8 of these sections. Once she showed us our class room locations we went to a board room within US and we welcomed into the program and then invited to have breakfast. I took some pics and if I can find them, I will put up of the Board Room. After the orientation, I returned home to pack for another weekend in Portugal this time Lagos. As soon as I reached home, I got a call from Discover Sevilla, a great company that works with study abroad schools to organize trips. They found flights to Paris for my sister and myself at a price that was lower than what we were finding on our own. So we rushed down to the centro to book the flights. While there we were looking for another location to go during the long weekend that we have in October and we were lucky enough to get the last 2 seats on their trip to Venice, Italy.
We were home in time for lunch and finished packing. Our house mom Carmina stocked us up on sandwiches, fruit for our journey. We were running late for our bus to Lagos so we took a bus, tram and taxi to get to Plaza de Armas in time for the bus with 7 minutes to spare.
The trip to Largos was long about 6/7 hrs and I felt that once we crossed over into Portugal I felt like they stopped at every town between Huelva and Lagos. When we got off the bus in Lagos it was dark out we walked until got a taxi that dropped us off to the hostel. I was just so exhausted cause of the early and full day, lack of siesta and long journey. Once settled in I just took a shower and went into bed to relax.
My roommates at the hostel were two cool women Nadja ( Nadia) and Devon. Devon is from Canada living in England. She has been travelling between Spain and Portugal for the last 2 months and was leaving that weekend to return to England in order to prepare for her new job in Korea as an ESL teacher. As the Spaniards say Que Guay !!!
Nadja is super duper cool and I was really awed by her. In her early forties from Lichtenstein and She was on her second world pilgrimage. She is also fluent in French, German, Italian, English and the dialect from her country that is a mix of French and German that she suggested that I don’t even bother to try to learn. She is also comfortable speaking Portuguese and Spanish and she never went higher than high school. In the 1990’s she spent 3.5 years walking around Aisa,Africa and Europe and yes I said WALKING !!! and when we met up she had ended her second pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela and Fatima. She started from outside her door in Lichtenstein to the Swiss border, took a bus through Switzerland and started walking through Italy, France and Spain. In Spain, she did the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela and then continued down to coastline to the second place of pilgrimage to Fatima. After Fatima she walked the coast to Lagos where our lives intersected for a few brief days.
She later emailed my sis letting her know that she planned to walk through Andalucía to take a ferry to Morocco to pass the winter in warmer climes. She has a trunk full of diaries at home and I encouraged her to write a book. Hell I was even ready to offer to write it for her after hearing what little I did of her travels.
Lagos itself is such a cute town, small and tourist orientated you don’t need to speak Portuguese to be understood here. The beaches are gorgeous and are filled with caves that are amazing to explore. Again pictures will be attached!!
After the weekend in Lagos school started bright and early Monday. Monday was a relatively easy day for me although I had class until 9pm. The second day of school was harder. I was in 3 classes one after the other with hardly time to breathe between classes. One class would end at 1pm and another start at 1pm ..It was awful I walked out of the 2nd class half way through I was just feeling so overwhelmed and tired and hungry. I went to the school bar got food and tried to relax a bit. Then I went to the next class. Instead of going to my last class of the day, I went to ICS to talk to the director of academic affairs and dropped 3 classes so that from the next week I would not have this experience again.
PICTURE TIME !!!!!!
1. / 2. - Pictures I took when I was in the Orientation. 3. Sis and I in Lagos, Portugal. 4. Me on a cliff in Portugal sporting moda style ( style that's 'in') in Europe . 5./6.7. Are of the Grutas of Lagos 8. Is on this cool statue that was in a park and 9. Is a pic I had a friend take of my first day of School. Just carrying on a tradition that started from Kindergarten .
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Posted by: Villavacations | June 21, 2010 at 06:57 AM