Izquierda a derecha?? Obrigado!

Went to Portugal this past weekend with my friend Scott. It is my favorite place so far. Its a beautiful city of about 240.000 people in Northern Portugal on the Atlantic coast, with the magestic River Douro cutting right through the heart of it to empty into the sea. On the north bank of the river is the most fantastic part of the city, with steep hills and cliffs next to the river, with narrow cobblestone streets and tiny sh0ps and apartments packed into every square inch of the hillside. There's a huge two level steel arch bridge that offers an incredible view from the top level, about 150-200 feet above the river (it runs from the top of the hill on one side to the top of the hill on the other). On the South Bank are more houses, a handful of stores by the riverside, and dozens of Port wine cellars.

Port wine is now my favourite thing in the world. Its wonderfully sweet because the fermentation is interrupted after only 2-3 days by pouring a special odorless, colourless, and tasteless, 75% ABV brandy into the wine (which is why the finished Port wine is about 20%). I bought two bottles, a Tawny and a Ruby, back to London with me. I shall try to make them last. We'll see. We sat on the beach Saturday and finished a whole bottle of the stuff. A big part of tourism in Porto is touring the wine cellars and tasting the wine, we took about 4 tours and tasted wine in about 7 different places, including some stores. Stayed with a kind gentle soul named Fernando, he's a retired statistician for the government. He was very hospitable, and made us soup, paid for some other special apple wine for us to taste, and had us try Portuguese Chorizo sausages that are set in front of you on the table-on fire. it was awesome.

The title phrase comes from the fact that we knew only a handful of Portuguese words, mostly jsut thank you (obrigado). Contrary to popular belief, Portuguese is not very like Spanish at all. Just a small percent of words are the same. Luckily for us, left and right are two of those words (izquierda and derecha). When we needed directions somewhere we got them by listening for those words.

When we arrived at the Porto airport some taxi driver came toward us and with a twinkle in his eye and hope in his whole face, asked us "Taxi??" .....I replied "no" calmly and shook my head, and he immediately threw up his hands in exhasperation and sighed quite audibly. he turned around on a dime and walked away looking dejected. I fear that our refusal was his last strike and he may have been fired for not getting any customers.

Greyhound Racing

I've been more busy the last few weeks than I was the first month or so. From here on out, I pretty much have plans nonstop most weekends, and hardly any free days left. I may take a sick day or two from my job, I can definately get away with it.

Tonight we went to see greyhound racing way down in South London. Its the working class area of town, sort of like the south side of Chicago where all the lazy sox fans live. It was pretty fun, I had a couple beers and ate way too many fries, I don't feel so hot. Its only because I had to skip dinner cause I didn't have time to eat it between my job and leaving for the track. At the track, all of us were yelling and screaming and getting really into it, and so were some other people, but you could tell the majority of other people there resented us loud young folk. Someone even heard another patron remark "Those stupid Americans are going to be annoying me all night". I'm sure we did, too. Most of us bet on the races, it only cost two pounds to pick the winner. On the first race, I put my money on dog number one, Kerr's Comet. He came through for me, I won eight or nine pounds and put two of it towards my next bet on the next race; there were races every fifteen minutes. After that, things didn't go so swimmingly for me. I lost every bet after that, including a nail-biting heart breaker where my pick lead up until the last 40 yards, coming out of the last turn. I was wimpering like a child as he got passed right before the finish line. That dog was something like 22:1 odds, it would have paid out nicely.

1000mph

That's the speed that the Bloodhound SSC is going to try to break in 2011, setting the world landspeed record. The bloobhound team is a client of my internship.

That's also the speed I feel like I've been going lately. Just got back from a long weekend, but an awesome one too. Went to Dublin, Ireland and Edinburgh, Scotland. In Dublin, took a tour of the Guinness Storehouse and stole some barley from the place (there was a huge mound, they had plenty) as a free souvenir. Also took a train 3 hours out into the Irish countryside (don't ask me where we went) to climb Croagh Patrick, a pretty famous mountain. It drizzled and the temperature was about 50 degrees. Doesn't sound bad, until you add in the 40-50 mile an hour winds that we had to deal with up there. We battled the elements for sure; there was a fleeting moment when I felt very cold and wet resting at the summit, and wondered if it would be worth enduring endless teasing for having been rescued on a mountain to call the chopper for a warm ride back to the bottom. We made it though, don't know how I didn't get hypothermia.

In Edinburgh only for a day, we went to bed early so we could get up early and get about 10 hours of tramping around the city in before our train took us back to London. Climbed a short bit to the top of Calton Hill, one of Britian's oldest parks and an excellent view of Edinburgh from all angles. Also saw the Edinburgh Castle, which is quite large and neat. I ate haggis, which will never happen again after learning what it's made of. Our second connecting train back to London apparently got lost somewhere, so we all sat confused in a Peterburgh (halfway there) train station until a coach bus came and got us, and got us into London around 0230. I got to bed at about 0315 last night, rather, this morning. Oh, the joys of the British rail system.

Weather

It hasn't rained quite as much as we all expected. I'd say it probably only has rained significantly one or two days a week whilst we've been here. It did rain today though; three of us went to Hyde Park to play ultimate frisbee and got caught in it. I decided to run back because I thought a little light rain was refreshing, but then it rained harder and hailed tiny pieces, and I got soaked. I can't wait for it to get warmer here, I'm tired of wearing my jacket. I need to visit Spain or Southern Italy soon and get me some warm sunshine and sandy beaches.

Four of our friends came up here this weekend to visit that are on the Central study abroad program in Spain, so we spent some time this weekend showing them around and whatnot.

A few of us are going to Ireland and Scotland this weekend. Since St. Patrick's Day is on Tuesday, I'm sure there will be celebrations for us to check out this weekend, so that is good timing. We are planning on celebratin St. Patty's day, climbing a mountain, and taking a tour of the Guinness factory. Then on Saturday we fly into Edinburgh, Scotland, and stay there for the next 24 hours. We don't have any plans in Edinburgh, we're just planning on wandering the city and seeing all the free touristy things to see.

I'm going to The Netherlands in two weekends, flying into Amsterdam and then we are taking a train right away to some other coastal town where we are staying with one of our friends' uncles' half-brother, or something of the sort. Either way, its a free place to crash.

Busy Bee

I'm on my lunch hour at my internship now, don't know if I've mentioned my job yet. Its at Mission-21, a small public relations company in central London.  Its pretty boring but okay, my coworkers are all cool.  This week should prove tiring indeed, as yesterday consisted of getting up for work at 0730, going at that all day until about 1730, rushing home to make a quick dinner before class at 1830, which ended at 2100 hours.  Then I had several things to take care of before going to bed, knowing that I wouldnt get much sleep as I had to get up at 0440 hours this morning to be at an event for my job.  So its noon here and I've been awake 8 hours.  The event was a tv broadcast of a youth science competition that takes place today; it was for a morning show and had to be filmed before hand so before sunrise it was. When I leave work again today at 1715 or so, I will again have just enough time to cook myself a dinner before a large group of us take off for our first British football (soccer) match, which won't get us back to Vandon House til about 2300 hours. I'm real tuckered out already but its pretty good fun.

Port Wine

We just got back from Switzerland this weekend. Last night all seven of us slept in the Geneva Airport. It was terrible. I got about 2 hours of "sleep" (more like just laying there with my eyes closed) from 2-4am, because it didn't get very quiet until about two and it started getting loud again at 4. We just hunkered down for the night in a little corner next to some expensive watch shop in the concourse on a cold, hard tile floor. We had five people attempting to share a blanket made for one. I am so tired and sore.

We got into Geneva, Switzerland Thursday night and then took a 2 hour train ride to Interlaken, the town we were staying in for the weekend. We stayed in our hostel that night because it was late and spend all day Friday in the Swiss Alps. They are amazing. I thought the mountain in Wales was cool, but it was a little baby hill next to the Alps. Everyone went skiing except for Kathryn and I, we thought it was too expensive and decided to just ride the cable car to the top and look around. We actually ended up higher on the mountain than the skiiers, so we've got that to brag about. The view from the peak we climbed to was incredible, there were mountains in every direction, some across a valley that was more than a mile wide and deep. Our peak was a little over 7000 feet. The next day we went to the other side of Interlaken (which means 'between lakes') to a lake and sat there for a while and ate our lunch. It was a very picturesque lake, surrounded immediately at its shores by vast snow-capped mountains. The water there is a wondrous shade of cool blue and pretty clear.

Both nights I was there, I spent some time at a Portuguese bar because the beer was cheap. The first night, I spent about an hour and a half having a couple beers and watching football (soccer) with a man named Jose. He told me all about Portugal, and was very nice. The wine made in Portugal, especially Port Wine from Porto, is the best he said. He kindly had the bartender (who did not speak any English; I had to have Jose order my drinks) to pour just the smallest amount of Port Wine into a glass for me to try. It was every bit as good as he said. Like he told me, it really is a taste I'll never forget.

I am doing well, eating good enough, and getting some sleep. Things are going swimmingly here; We have already been here more than 6 weeks. It is going too fast. Take care All.