Lagos...Spring Break '08!!!

This most recent week we had a holiday on Thursday and a holiday on Monday (today). For the long weekend I went with some of my friends to Lagos, Portugal. I didn't really know what to expect but had heard good things from other people I knew who had visited earlier. After surviving the miserable 6 1/2 hour bus ride there, we checked into our hostel which was called the Gold Coast. I was skeptical at first due to the fact that the hostel didn't even have a sign out front. Luckily, I was wrong, and the reason there was no sign yet was because the hostel was brand new. After quickly unpacking, we all threw on our bathing suits, grabbed our towels, and headed for the beaches.


Lagos is a very small town, and almost everyone there speaks English due to the fact that most of England and Australia comes here to vacation. It reminds me a lot of the Mexican beach towns which led us to all joke about being on spring break. It is a very touristy town, but I can't really complain because the food there was incredible.


Every morning we went to this small hole in the wall bar called The Odeon which served English style breakfast... hashbrowns, eggs, toast, bacon, pancakes; in fact all of this together was only 3 Euros and way better than anywhere I've had in the US.


The night life in Lagos consisted of a good meal for dinner and bar hopping for the rest of the night. The town is very small and you can easily walk from one end to the other in under 10 minutes. On Saturday night, I searched the whole town trying to find a bar with satellite playing the Texas/Oklahoma game. The problem was that at the same time the World Cup qualifying matches were being played, so all the bars around Lagos had these on. Luckily after an hour of searching I stumbled across an empty bar playing the Texas game. I went in and sat there by myself watching the game until half time when they suddenly switched the game to the Portugal/Sweden soccer game. I argued with the bar tender for a while about this... he kept telling me, "you're in Portugal right now, this is more important". First off, I was the only person in the bar and second everyone who worked at the bar was Australian, so I didn't understand why anyone would care as it was. I finally got to put the game back on, and I am so glad I got to see the rest. For those of you who didn't see the game, it was an instant classic with Texas pulling a come from behind victory. It is definitely a game I won't forget.

As for the rest of the time at Lagos, I went hiking through the cliffs by myself on one of the days that everyone was resting. I found some really cool secluded beaches and some great scenery.




Unfortunately, the sea was really rough so we couldn't rent kayaks to go exploring through the oceanic caves along the cliffs. I heard that it is a really cool excursion and hopefully I'll have another chance same day. We left Lagos on Sunday and had to suffer though a 7 1/2 hour bus ride back where we stopped in every town along the coast in Portugal picking up and dropping off passengers.

Traveling...and playing catchup

The last few weeks I have been very busy with traveling and school. I haven't had my computer with me, so my updates on the blog have been few and far between. Some very interesting things have been going on though, so I will try to write a few shorter posts than combine them all into a long one. When I last left off I was sitting in a Kabob sandwich restaurant having just returned from Huelva (i think). Huelva is a Spanish town that has a monastery dedicated to Christopher Colón (Colombus) and replicas of the ships he sailed on... the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria.


This is the Niña, I didn't get a good picture of the Santa Maria which was the biggest.


I made a friend inside the ship.


Columbus himself...he was too busy plotting a course to India (or so he thought), so he refused to let me take a picture with him.

After the tour of the ships and the monastery of Columbus, we went as a group to one of the beaches in Huelva. The water was cold, and not much happened there to write about. Next... I write about my journey to Lagos.

Time's flying by

I'm sitting in a kabab sandwich shop right now which has free wifi. It was cool for the first 30 minutes, but then I looked around and realized there were a lot of Americans here. This week we only have a 3 day school week with Thursday off as a holiday and the following Monday off as well. On Thursday I am leaving via bus for Portugal. I'm going with some of my friends from the API group... were staying in Lagos for 2 nights then trying to get up to Lisbon. Time has been flying by here in Spain. I have been planning all the traveling I will be doing and am having trouble finding open weekends because there are so few left. I also have been having trouble with speaking fluent English because I have been focusing so much on Spanish. It's hard to think of an example, but when I speak I don't do it as fluidly as I did when I got here. I think this is a good thing though, as it shows that when I am speaking I am thinking about how to say things in Spanish as opposed to English. The easiest example I can think of is here in Spanish when you are hungry you say "yo tengo hambre" which translates literally "I have hunger" which I have caught myself saying multiple times.
Rosa has a daughter who has been studying in England for the last month. Her name is Sarah, and she just got back last week. I have been trying to practice as much Spanish as I can with her in exchange for me helping her with English. I think the trade off will be really beneficial and hope it will speed up my learning process. Sometimes when I don't know how to say what I want to it becomes really frustrating and I feel helpless. Also, when helping Sarah and seeing the English she is learning, I realize that I am learning Spanish at the 1st grade level. She will be writing things like: In the morning I don't like to get up because I am tired. I brush my teeth. I wash my hair when I get in the shower. I don't like going to school because I like doing a lot of other things. I am learning the exact same stuff in Spanish, so it is funny when you step back and realize what you are actually learning.
I have finally found some really cool spots in Sevilla. I like having places that I know are good and that I can always go to. Last night me and my roommates Jeff and Nate found a Chinese buffet called Sol Wok. It was absolutely incredible... you walk in and grab a plate then fill it with any type of vegetables you could possibly want, then you walk over to a huge buffet of uncooked meats which you throw on top of all the veggies. When your plate is loaded up you hand it to the chef who cooks it all together and tops it with a sauce of choice. Words really do this place no justice, it was amazing and by far the best food I have had since I've been here. Like I've said in earlier posts, the food in Spain is usually not good and very plain, so this was a pleasant surprise. Hasta Luego.