3: Arrival

02/6/2011

I finally have a good slice of time and an Internet connection, so its time for the very first post that I’m writing from Portugal.

Azulejos

This country is absolutely beautiful.  My program is through the University of Coimbra, which is one of the oldest schools in the world: founded in 1290 by the Pope, some of the buildings on campus are ancient and beautiful.  The Universidade Velha, the oldest part of the University, has a courtyard which looks over the entire city and the river.  One of the best views I’ve ever seen.   But honestly, the entire city of Coimbra is beautiful.  The houses are light colors with red roofs, black grates, and unkempt white-washed walls.  There is amazing tiles everywhere, decorating the outside of houses, the inside walls.  So many houses and buildings are bordered with these blue tile designs that are about as high as your shoulder.  These tiles are called “azulejos” and I wish the entire world could be covered in them.  But then again, I am a bit prone to exaggeration.

A gift store in the Porto airport

The trip here was crazy.  I was up for a day and a half straight and used every single modern mode of transportation other than a motorcycle.  Thursday: Drive to DC to get my visa at 9 AM; drive to Union Station; take a MARC train to BWI Airport, where my mom picked me up and brought me to the terminal; flight to Newark at 1:40 PM; Shuttle from terminal B to terminal C; flight to Porto with new friend Amy, another person in my program; flight from Porto to Lisbon at 7:40 AM (Portuguese time.  American time: 2:40 AM); Taxi from Lisbon airport to train station; Train to Coimbra B station; Taxi to Polo III, my home for the next five months.  So in all:

2 cars

2 taxis

3 airplanes

1 train

1 shuttle

My room!

I can’t sleep on planes, so by the time we got to Polo III, Amy and I were absolutely exhausted.  Carlos, who runs the dorm and who is basically a male House Mother, gave us our keys (we have about six to different locks all over the residence), but I was too tired to understand English, let alone Portuguese, so I found out what those keys were for much later in the day.  I emptied my luggage, took a shower, and crashed for two hours.  That night, Amy and I stumbled around the surrounding streets looking for some sort of grocery store or CVS-equivalent, but only found cafes, clothing stores, and an inappropriate amount of dentists (seriously, there must be a dentist on every street in this city).  It was in a gas station that we randomly ran into the third girl in our program, Tatiana, and her father Tony (who is Azorean) and his friend Mario (who currently lives in Lisbon).  Because the school hadn’t given us any information other than our residence (and our advisor here at the school was away the very weekend we were all arriving), Tony and Mario were our saviors.  Though they forced us to speak in Portuguese most of the time we were with them, they brought us out to dinner to a restaurant called “Dom Pedro’s.”  It was absolutely empty inside, but the two waiters were so happy to see us that we received the best service I’ve ever seen.  We ate there again on Sunday night.  I think Amy, Tatiana, and I have a “place.”  We’re already planning on going there for my birthday.  Cinco estrelas para Dom Pedro’s!

The next day (Saturday), we three decided to explore the city.  We went to a Universidade Velha, which is the oldest part of the school (as the name suggests).  When I visited with my family in 2008, this was my favorite place because of the library, which seriously resembles the Beauty and the Beast library.  But we found out that the ticket required to see the library and the other really neat sites at the Universidade Velha was half as expensive if you show them your student ID card, so we are going to go back when we have those.  We also went to the Botanical Gardens (o Jardim Botanico), which were beautiful and will be even better come Spring.  After the Gardens, we walked down the hill and ended up in the far East of the city and had to make our way all the way back near the center.  We found our way to Mondego Park, where a small row of restaurants overlook the river.  The cheapest was the “Irish Pub,” which plays music alternating between traditional Irish folk music and contemporary Irish musicians like U2.  Unfortunately the service was terrible: the first hour we sat waiting for a menu, and the second hour we sat waiting for the check.  Coimbra is giving Ireland a bad name.

After the longest lunch ever, walked Tatiana to her father’s hotel, and then Amy and I tried taking the bus back to our dorm and succeeded more or less (we got off two stops before we should have, but we got back just fine).  Later, Tatiana, her father, Mario, and their friend Helder (also Portuguese) picked us up for dinner.  We ended up eating right next door to the Irish Pub (awkward) in a restaurant called A Portuguesa (to see the busty mascot, you can probably just go to their website aportuguesa.pt).  It was much more expensive than Dom Pedro or the Irish Pub, so I felt bad when the men again got the check.  However, I did get to not only talk about Brown with Helder, who lived in Pawtucket when he came to America, but also got to try “peixe do sal,” which was delicious.  Basically, it is an entire fish cooked under five pounds of salt.  It sounds disgusting and completely unhealthy, but it is entirely the opposite.  The salt acts as a sort of buffer, and the fish cooks inside its own juices.  He let us all try some and I loved it.  Apparently it is a specialty in Nazare, so I hope I can order some when it gets warm enough for the beach.

That night, Amy, Tatiana and I decided to explore the dorm and figure out where the laundry rooms and such were, and ended up with a very fun and useful friend.  He is Nasif from Bangledesh, and he is working for his Masters degree in Polo II, another Coimbra building on the other side of the city (which makes his living in Polo III very inconvienent).  He spoke very good English but was excited to meet native speakers, so we sat down with him and spoke with him for a very long time about subjects ranging from religion to school to clubs in Coimbra.  Because we still had no information from the school and no Internet, he let us know a few tidbits about the bus route and such.  Hopefully we get to hang out with him again.  He was very funny and, despite having a propensity for saying “bus stoppages,” he cursed in English very well.

Praça da República

The next day, the very first thing we did was go down to the McDonalds at the Praça da República and use the wifi.  Neither Tatiana, Amy, nor myself had been on the Internet for days.  I wasn’t on long enough to write and post anything.  Notifications, messages, and emails tend to pile up when you don’t take care of them properly.  Then we met up with Tony and Mario and went to a shopping center (called Coimbra Shopping), got phones and room basics, then returned to the city and explored the northwestern area, found the Coimbra A train station, and sat at a café and had tea, coffee, and pastries.  We go to cafés quite a lot, and now I understand why Europeans are deemed stereotypically lazy.  But they just like their coffee!  Mario was so funny that day.  Apparently his girlfriend is a high school teacher, and one of her students, Jorge, is a young doctor in Coimbra.  He had been trying to set up Tatiana, but he set his sights on me.  He told me that Jorge was a “gatao,” a very attractive man, and that we should call him up as he was in the city.  I now refer to Jorge as meu marido futuro and meu amor da vida, and whenever we see a particularly strange or awkward young man, we pretend we have found him.  I wonder if we will ever meet this infamous Jorge while we are studying here.

As I mentioned earlier, we ended up going to Dom Pedro’s again for dinner.  The waiters were so happy to see us again that they kept giving us things after we had paid for our meal, like free almond liqueur, matches, and every number they could possibly have.  I even signed up for their Internet mailing list.  I have a feeling that I might be the only one receiving their specials.

Unfortunately that was Mario and Tony’s last night in Coimbra, which was sad.  I hated to see them go.  They were so nice and fun and such a help!  I hope we can visit with Mario when we go to Lisbon.  Tomorrow we meet with Ana Paula Arnaut, our completely absent advisor, at 9:30 in the morning.  Hopefully it will be a good start to a good week.

2: Visa Woes

1/20/2011

So it looks like this blog might end up being irrelevant.

This week has probably been one of the most anxiety-ridden weeks of my entire life.  I'll try to detail it as best I can:

So on Tuesday I called the FBI, from whom I still had not received my official background check.  This background check is necessary to get a student visa, and without it I had not been able to make an appointment with the Portuguese consulate in order to apply for such a visa.  I had also been waiting 12 weeks for the thing.  While speaking to one of the customer service people, I found out that my background check had been sent to my Brown address at the end of December.  This is strange, of course, because Brown has my address and therefore would have forwarded me this envelope/package when they received it.  So I called Mail Services and they gave me a tracking number for a package that I later realized was my mother's Christmas gift, not the background check.  When I called again, under the impression that what they forwarded was the background check, the FBI told me that they could not resend the background check because it was not their fault that the package had been lost in the mail.

At the point I began to get a bit hysterical... I had been driving to pick my mom up from work and I was crying so hard that she refused to allow me to drive her back home.  I ended up calling the UWM Study Abroad office and let them know about the situation.  I called Mail Services again and got the tracking number for the package.  I called the local police station to see if I could get a background check from them.  I called my dad to give him an update and he said that my godfather, who works for the Department of Justice, knew people at the FBI.

Back at home, we realized that the package was not the background check and that the FBI was in fact responsible for my never receiving it.   On Wednesday, my godfather got in touch with his friend at the FBI, who told him that he would have the new copy of the background check Fedex-ed to me immediately.  It should be here tomorrow.  I cannot tell you how much I love and owe my godfather right now.

So today I called the Portuguese consulate to make an appointment for my student visa.  The woman told me that no appointment was necessary, which was great, but also that the process to obtain a visa usually took up to 3 weeks.  I leave in less than two weeks.  The anxiety from the entire FBI situation came rushing back, and I called my parents and my godfather again for one last favor.  Because all Portuguese people in the U.S. know every other Portuguese person in the U.S., it just so happened that my godfather knew someone in the Portuguese consulate in Rhode Island who might be able to make a few helpful calls to the consulate in DC.  Nothing is definite yet, but I'm really hoping and praying that this will work out for the best.

This whole process had me so frustrated and upset that I ended up having a bit of a breakdown today.  I had to do a few things at a lab as tests for my possible lactose intolerance and it turned out that I didn't do a few things incorrectly and I had to come back redo them.  On the way back, my mom asked me to go to the grocery store, but as I was walking in I realized I didn't have my credit card on me.  These little things just emphasized the whole situation with the FBI and the visa and I ended up sitting in the parking lot sobbing because I felt like a complete and total failure.  I felt like nothing I did turned out right, that I was constantly redoing every little thing because I was never able to do anything right the first time.  Once I got home my mom did a great job of comforting me and sent me right back out to the grocery store after I had calmed down.  I ended up having to come back inside because I left the keys to the car on the counter and, even after the huge breakdown, we just had to laugh about that.  I guess I'll never be completely on top of things! :)

On a serious note though, I don't know what to do if this visa doesn't happen and I can't go abroad.  I can't just travel to Portugal and get my visa there because the consulate needs my passport to process my visa.  Its extremely difficult to get a visa while in Portugal as well.  The next six months for me would be unimaginable.  I couldn't go back to Brown because classes would have started already and I have no place to live.  I would probably have to stay here at home, get a job, and wait out the coming months until I can return in the fall.  Without a car, I can't imagine that those months would go particularly well.  I'm actually shaking just thinking about the possibility that this won't work out.

I think it might be a good idea to start a novena for this, though I am not sure if its right to pray a novena for yourself nor do I have nine days... I'm hopefully receiving my background check tomorrow morning and driving into DC to visit the consulate later that day.  I figure submitting an application as soon as possible can't hurt.  Hopefully I can pay some sort of fee to expedite the process.  My adviser at UWM doesn't seem too confident.  She told me to look into changing fees for my flight and is trying to contact the people at Coimbra to see how late I can start at the university.

I'm so nervous.  Looking for a miracle.

1: Preparing to prepare

1/12/2011

Technically it is January 13, it being exactly 3:34 am, but my days don't tend to end until I'm asleep, and I don't do much of that during the early morning hours.  And since the trip of my life is quickly approaching, and Portugal can't seem to stay away from thought or conversation for more than about half a day at most, I figure its probably okay to begin this Portugal blog.

Unlike my other attempts at keeping a blog (which have all miserably failed), I vow to keep this one up as often as possible.  I want to  remember every minute of this trip because I hope it will be, at least, extraordinary and, at most, life-changing.  I can't wait to go to another country, have the inevitable melt-down a few days in, and then get out there and meet new people and have a fantastic adventure.  That's the plan, anyway.  Of course, I still have to get my visa squared away, which is difficult to do when the FBI takes 12 weeks to process a request for a background check.  Of course, this warrants several questions, like WHY it take the FBI this long to print and mail a background check, WHY Portugal requires a background check from the FBI, and WHY they (meaning the staff of both Brown University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison) did not tell us to request such a background check until three months before our trip (roughly).  But what's done is done.  The timing is simply nerve-wracking.

The other two participants seem equally distressed by the visa process.  They also both seem very  nice, though I have not met either of them in person.  The first is currently in France during her first study abroad term.  From what I can tell by our Facebook interactions, she seems very fun, as does the second, who lives in Vermont.  The latter and I are flying to Lisbon and then boarding a train to Coimbra together, for which I'm extremely thankful.  I would be TERRIFIED to go alone, especially as my grasp of the Portuguese language is NOWHERE near what I wished it would be when I decided to study abroad in Portugal three years ago.  But I've been trying to review (half-heartedly, I must confess) and my mom is bringing down my godmother's copy of Rosetta Stone this weekend, so that should be somewhat helpful.  But I think we, meaning myself and the other two girls in the Coimbra program, are all in the same boat language-wise, or at least, they are both very modest about their language abilities (and will hopefully be understanding of my deficiencies in the future).  At least I can tell from their  names that we are all going to Portugal for the same reason: we're all Portuguese.

I can't tell if I'm excited to go anymore.  I feel like I've been talking about it forever: not only studying abroad there, but the country, BEING Portuguese, the language, defending Portugal against people who say its an old and forgotten country (even though it sometimes is...)  All I ever do is talk about Portugal and I'm sick of it!  Hopefully that will change once I'm there.  It really is, as I remember it, a beautiful and enchanting place.  My parents bought me two tour books, one for Portugal and one entitled "The Best of Europe," which does not mention Portugal at all (awkward).  I'll begin to read those books soon.  I need to start making plans.  I already feel like I need to start packing!

That's going to be the tough part of leaving.  I'm a bit of a hoarder, and the whole "pack what you think you'll need and then take half of that" rule is going to be rough.  My mom keeps reminding me that I can buy all that I need there, but it seems a waste of familiarity and Euros.  Plus, how does one say "hair drier" or "contact lens fluid" in Portuguese?  I guess I'll learn these things soon.  I wish they had easy books with titles like, "Vocabulary You Will Realistically Use in Portugal."  That would make life so easy!  Instead I'll just have to tell my family there, “Não obrigada.  Não posso comer alguma comida com leite" (No thanks.  I can't eat anything with milk.)

I think I've become lactose intolerant, which is goin to make studying abroad tough.  Not only is the food pretty heavily invested in dairy, but if I AM indeed lactose intolerant (which a soon-to-be-determined doctor's appointment will hopefully make clear), I'll have to learn how to eat in a whole new way in a whole new place, which seems to compliment each other in theory but probably doesn't in real life.  Plus that's just more that I have to stuff into my already bursting suitcase: lactaid pills.  I guess we'll see soon if I'm just a hypocondriac or not.

I guess I've laid down a pretty good foundation for this blog with this one post... Sorry if it seems rather boring (I mean, I DID just talk about possible lactose intolerance for an entire paragraph).  I guess I'm just extremely nervous.  Actually, scratch that, I'm terrified to get on that plane on February 2nd.  I won't know the language, the people, the country.  Plus, everyone is going to ask me if I'm Chinese (as they did the entire time I was there in 2008)!  I hope I'll make good friends not only with the people in my program but with students at Coimbra.  I hope I'll meet guys, though its hard to look forward to a hoard of unknown, Portuguese-speaking men... no matter how attractive they might be.  

But I really do think I'm ready for this.  I am so ready to get away from home, to get away from Brown, and just have an amazing experience.  I'm not asking for a movie plot or anything, but I haven't heard of one study abroad experience that hasn't included crazy events and wonderful happenings.  I hope I never want to leave.

Portugal, you better live up to these high expectations.