Lisbon, Portugal

Hola!

Let’s see, updates, updates, updates.

I went to Lisbon, Portugal this weekend.

I know absolutely no Portuguese. And, for the record, before someone mentions it: Portuguese does have elements of Spanish. But you know what it’s like when someone reads a word in English and pronounces the vowels oddly or emphasises the wrong syllable and you have no idea what they’re trying to say? It’s like that. Except it’s Portuguese phonetics.

The receptionist promised me a five-minute Portuguese lesson. He lied. Though he did give me a map and the phone number of the hotel and promised to get us all back safely if the taxi drivers couldn’t figure out where to take us.

Anyway. Some highlights.

Gigantic, intricate, beautiful, poorly lit cathedrals are, as I’m sure you know or suspect, quite plentiful in Europe. For that matter, so are fountains. We saw both.

What stuck out in my mind from Santa Maria Maior de Lisboa (the cathedral) was the ceiling, or rather, the description the tour guide gave about it. She mentioned that it was designed like a spider’s web. The round stones at every intersection of the arcs that worked together to create the web-like design supported the ceiling and it would crumble without them.

It was a beautiful day for the most part and the city’s “feminine” coloring, as my tour guide described it, was well complimented. The buildings are all painted in hues of light pink and yellow and other pastel shades. It reminded a bit of Candyland, actually.

During our free afternoon, we wandered into the Colombo Mall, which is the largest mall in Europe. It’s really freaking huge. I’m not too sure how much of it I saw, as I was too overwhelmed by the short amount of time and sheer number of stores to explore too much. (That and I’m doing my best to hold out on shopping too much until Morocco). *Side note: Word tried to autocorrect “I’m” in that statement to “I are” and I was mildly horrified.

We also found a lovely little Pasteleria with patient workers and delectable, inexpensive coffee and pastries. The view in the windows was mouthwatering. The confectionaries were stacked up in their respective sections in the kind of luring display you see in pictured in magazines. You know somewhere is good when the locals are two and three deep at the counter waiting to order.

All in all, it was a good trip. I promise I’ll try to post pictures of something soon. Also, I’ll make myself write about school soon, as I’ve hardly mentioned academics and I want to reassure you that I’m actually studying.

I hope you’re all having a great time running around wherever you are in the world!

Love,

Natalie

Cadiz

Hola!

I’ve decided to save classes for when they start to get more intense and instead talk about flashy, exciting things. Last night was Carnaval de Cadiz. It’s a gigantic carnival (as the only slightly different Spanish spelling would imply) that’s held yearly in Cadiz and I had the pleasure of spending several hours gallivanting about the gaudiness and glitz (oh, the alliteration!).

Having known about the event for weeks, I came up with and created my costume the day of the event (in very characteristically me fashion). My decision was primarily based on the fact that in certain conditions—humidity, lack of conditioner, the aid of a teasing comb, etc—my hair has the potential to be humorously and horrifyingly large. This in mind, I decided to be a sort of glam version of Medusa. I found a strapless, green dress at H&M for 10€, used green and black eyeliner to make snakes coming off my eyes (alas, lacking the make-up expertise of Kelsey), and tousled my hair until it looked downright ‘80’s. Voila!

The bus ride was an entertaining starter to the main attraction. A bus full of Avatars and cowfolk and butterflies and other worldly beings (including, much to my chagrin, another Medusa) all standing and mingling and dancing to music that topped the U.S. charts about two years ago. My suspicions are that this is a rather unsafe manner of conduct on a bus, but we made the hour and a half trips with no casualties (save for me falling into Avatar on a rough turn). We also found about 50 Waldos all traveling on the same bus.

Cadiz was craziness and cold. The initial walk to the main party was bitterly cold, but the body heat of thousands of people made the crowds much warmer. We walked in trailing a group of drumming clowns and from there met a variety of interesting characters. The whole crowd was a collection of colorful Geishas, rowdy conquistadors, scandalous religious figures, and leggy bugs.  I was surprised by the number of American pop culture costumes, like the Jabberwockies from ABDC and the cast of Futurama. A lot of people, like the first group we talked to, didn’t wear recognizable costumes, but random components that made them into things like cow-pig-vampires.

The city itself was full of pastel-colored, official-looking buildings and winding cobble stone streets. They had strung up colored lights with jester faces and “Carnaval de Cadiz” glowing in them. However beautiful the city might be normally, in all the revelry, the streets resembled the floors of a frat house, with rivulets of liquor and urine running through the stone’s cracks and bottles and trash shoved into piles against walls.

For several hours we just wandered around, befriending bumblebees and a clown who opened everyone’s bottles with his teeth. Of course, creeps ran rampant, emboldened by masks and inebriation, but most encounters were short lived because of the mass and constant movement of the crowd.

It was an absolute blast and a half, but by the end of the night, we were ready to head home to our lovely Sevilla and sleep soundly.

Since then, I’ve managed to find my way into some more entertaining situations, but I’ll detail those another time (probably soon so that I don’t forget).

Anyway, I hope you’re all well and still having your own exciting adventures (perhaps in the snow?)

Love,

Natalie

Here's a decent shot of my make-up (as decent as can be with photobooth and a poorly lit room)

Gibraltar

Hola!

So, I haven’t updated in a bit. I think I’ll write a bit on Gibraltar for now and save the first week of classes for a little later (as not to overwhelm you too much, you lovely people).

There is exactly one creepy hostel and one potentially non-existent (as we never actually saw it) motel on the island of Gibraltar. Consequently, we stayed in the nearby Spanish town of La Linea de Concepcion in a nice, quiet hostel. The walk from La Linea to Gibraltar is only about 15 minutes, so it’s very conveniently located.

Things you may not know about Gibraltar, or, rather, things that I didn’t realize until they confronted me:

1. Gibraltar is a 15-minute walk away and you legitimately just need to show that you’re in possession of a passport (you don’t even need to show the picture) to get into the country. However, it is, in fact, a small British island in just about every way. Being used to Spanish eating schedules, we looked for a place to eat at 10pm. After wandering to several restaurants where the cooks had gone home, we found somewhere with a late night menu. However, as most of the restaurants become bar/nightclubs after 10pm or so, there was a pretty rowdy crowd all around us.

2. The only path to get into Gibraltar has a landing strip running across it. If you’re thinking, “why, how very characteristically European to be so space efficient and, yet, simultaneously so horridly inconvenient,” you and I are on the same page. When planes fly in (which happens fairly frequently), they close down the one means of exiting and entering, trapping you on Gibraltar for at least 15 minutes per plane (which isn’t too bad unless you have to get to your hostel in time and two planes are landing). 

Those were the two big points. Oh! Also, Gibraltar takes several kinds of currency: Euros, pounds, and dollars (just for kicks, I suppose, as I can’t imagine it’s too handy to wander around in Europe-let alone a really tiny island off the coast of Spain-with large amounts of American money).

And Gibraltar most certainly is small. MJ, one of our well-loved directors, said that after two hours in Gibraltar, you’ve seen Gibraltar. In fact, the tour of anything interesting to see on the island takes approximately 1.5 hours. However, it’s a pretty fun 1.5 hours. The monkeys are terrifically adorable and the babies are particularly endearing. I couldn’t help but continuously snaps pictures of them doing things that are completely and totally mundane in the monkey world (like eating orange slices and sitting still) because they were so darn cute while doing them. They also climbed one of my friends and sat on her shoulder/head.

Other than that there were some caves and tunnels in the rock. Fun fact: There are more roads in the rock than there are on the rest of the island. Overall, it was a good trip (besides the part where I lost the little receipt to get me home and had to buy a new ticket, but I’m just going to roll with stuff like that).

Anyway, hope all is well wherever you are and that you're having adventures of your own!

Love,
Natalie

I thought this little guy was pretty entertaining.

Culture Shock and Chocolate

Hola!

So, I pretty much officially hit the wall that is the common study abroad phenomenon known as "culture shock." It wasn’t so much the change of routines, behavioral difference, or noticeable lack of green things in my diet. More than that, it was the intense frustration over my inability to convey my thoughts coherently or understand what other people were trying to tell me when speaking informally.

My host family is full of lovely people who might very well think that I only smile, nod, and make 5-word sentences. My roommate happens to be fluent in Spanish thanks to her Peruvian family and, subsequently, can keep up fairly well with the flow of conversation. I, however, struggle to overcome the Sevillano habit of dropping then ends of words that can make sentences sound like one continuous word. Often, this leaves me at a dead standstill trying to merge into a conversation paced, at times, above my response-speed capacity.

However, after hitting said wall (and taking a nice long nap and eating chocolate and whining to friends), I started moving beyond it. At the preemptive suggestion of Pitt’s study abroad office, I’ve been doing things and running around to get over it and, lo and behold, have started feeling more proficient in Spanish (and better). Today, I explained to the sales woman at the Mac store that my friend had the two-year Apple Care plan so she could get a new charger. I also informed my host dad that Punxsutawney Phil is from Pennsylvania when it came on the news; explaining further than many places in PA have names derived from Indian tribes.

It’s funny, you don’t think about how these silly little conversations will be the hardest part of speaking another language. I can debate about whether we should grant amnesty to illegal immigrants in the U.S. with relative ease, but it can be hard to chitchat about fashion and music. Classroom Spanish leaves you with vast academic abilities and the conversational vernacular of a fourth grader, but I’m picking it up pretty quickly. Even going so far as to overcome my surprising nervousness about talking in Spanish (which is surprising because, as I'm sure you know, I love talking in English).

On another note, I got my shoe back from Toledo. I had left one of my favorite heels there and only discovered that its mate was sadly single when I got to Sevilla. My roommate called and specified “black” and “high heel.” It took a week and ten euros just to get the hotel to send me my “shoe,” which, at first, was someone else’s brown flat, fitting neither of our descriptors. Fortunately, after several more calls, we got my black heels back together, ready to run around the city. I’m pretty sure no one but me thought I could pair them again, but the true love between a good pair of shoes knows no obstacle.

Also, the entirety of my program, which is really only nine people, is addicted to chocolate. Milka? Delicious. Milka Choco-swing? A scrumptiously sinful s’more-like combination that I’d highly recommend. There are just so many kinds of crazy chocolates here. My host sister told me that a really common snack for kids is having bread and chocolate like a sandwich. I’m pretty sure everyone here would be 300lbs if not for the tremendous amount of walking.

Okay, I’ve rambled long enough. Hope you’re all doing well and still enjoying my nonsense.

Love,

Natalie