Hakuna Matata é tão fácil dizer!

Day 15 - This week started with a girlie trip to primark in search of clothes for the Pimps and Ho's party... After well over an hour in primark our outfits were finally complete and it was time to go back to get ready for a night out. Drunk again.

Day 16 - I should really start getting up before 2pm so that I actually have something to write about in this blog! The pimp's and ho's party, however, was very successful and the pimps definitely won on the costume front!

Day 17 -  I drank a lot of tea and prepared for a horrible week of lectures :(

Day 18 -  Getting up at half 7 hurt but the lecture was in fact quite interesting. All about the history of the Portuguese flag from what I understood.. and from the pictures of the stages of the Portuguese flag in front of me. In the evening a few of us went out to try the traditional dish 'Francesinha.' I had a bolognaise. Purely due to the fact that a Francesinha is filled with cheese. I did try someone's though and apart from the cheese it was very nice!

Day 19 - So. Monday hurt. This half 7 wake-up more than hurt. Wow. Pro plus helped slightly but at least I made it and I actually enjoyed learning about the history of the Portuguese language. I managed to finally sort my life out and all while Charlotte was still in bed!

Day 20 -  Lecture missed. Maybe next week. I couldn't do it! haha In the evening we went to a mini house party and I was shown up to an outdoor balcony that looked over the whole of the city, right over the river and all lit up. It looked amazing! I love Porto it's beautiful!

Day 21 - As I did nothing today but a little food shopping and listen to Portuguese Lion King album on spotify, I thought I would explain a few things.

Everytime I make a cup of tea someone in the room from whatever country will say "but it's not 5 'o' clock." Apparently, us English only drink tea at 5pm.

When we first arrived in Porto there were loads of Happy Potter looking people walking around. All in suits all wearing the same thing including shoes! And many of them carried spoons. When I found out that J. K. Rowling actually lived here and got the idea for Harry Potter from these creepy Second year students there to sort out the first years, the whole thing became rather creepy. Also, I don't think you're supposed to look them in the eye.

Oh and Black vodka is amazing.

The Second Week in Porto

Day 8 - Not a very exciting day. Slept until late and carried out a few more uni tasks. In the evening my new housemates and I sat and had a few drinks before heading out to a bar to drink a bit more. I have never been this drunk before. wow. 

Day 9 - This was the day of the BBQ. After doing practically nothing all day, at 7pm it was time for cooking your own food on the BBQ and drinking some more. I stuck to sangría. Hmm.. At around 1pm, it was time to go to our first Erasmus party. However, after standing in the queue for half an hour without moving we made the group decision to leave and head to a bar instead!!!

Day 10 -  Started the same as it had done since I moved in here. Charlotte runs into my room and shouts morning!!!! I don't need an alarm. After I sat up in bed and tried to open my eyes she came back in my room and said that we were going to the beach and I had to get ready now. I didn't have a choice in the matter. The beach was nice. Lovely and warm and the sea was.. well not as cold as France but with huge waves. I have never swallowed that much sea water. Bleugh. We finished the day with a trip to Pizza Hut. The entire menu was in English. Great.

Day 11 - Monday morning and my first full Portuguese lecture was thrust upon me. The lecturer started by making everyone introduce themselves to the class.. Everyone was fine except for the tense looking English crew at the back, frantically trying to remember the first lesson of Portuguese.. "Hello my name is.. I am from.. studying... and I don't speak much Portuguese." However, after mastering the introduction and the lecturer pointing out that English people are generally quite poor at languages, we were just left to listen to two hours of Portuguese. I wrote a page of scrambled notes on Positivism.

That night we celebrated our achievements at Riveira. A regular Monday night affair with buckets of alcohol at €5 a time.. buy one get one free of course. €2.50 for what's in the picture below and it went straight to my head.

Day 12 - I am finally home. Portugal I love you. Primark in Portugal :D YAY So I kept seeing Primark bags around and then made it my mission to find it. So i went on google and found it instantly so it wasn't a very long mission but nevertheless successful.  After thinking about trying a Portuguese Francesinha for tea, me and Charlotte both had burgers and finished the meal with a huge waffle with ice cream and lots of other wonderful things. When I asked for mine "sem chantilly" I was looked at as if I was English or something and he asked twice to make sure it was really what I wanted. Yes. I do not want cream!

In the evening it was time to say farewell to a new friend. It was Kamil's last night and everyone loves him! We had a lecture in the morning but thought it best we stay to say goodbye.. it's only fair.

Day 13 - Weekly shop was in order for this day after missing another lecture. For tea I had chicken in roasted veg and potatos. Yumm. Then after planning to head to the cinema we all suddenly decided that we'd do this the next day and that we'd actually go to our fav bar Piolho and fill up on Capirinhas. My housemates all went home and left me there with my ex housemates whom I'd bumped into. It was a nice evening but drinking every night had definitely started to take its toll.

Day 14 - Did absolutely nothing today but talk to my lovely housemates. Everyone is really nice and it's like one huge family. There's going to be a house meeting soon and outdoor weekends including paintballing and canoeing to come :)

In other news I made a cracking bolognaise!! I was well impressed!!! Maybe I should study though..

Reggae Reggae

Day 5 - This was another day of not doing much. We went to the international office to register and my Macedonian housemates were there too. They never said a word to me. Wow. However, meeting up with a fellow Nottingham University student did remind me that there were four of us in total. The 4th was supposed to be on my plane... I never saw her..?? Where was Lucy?!?!?
My Brazilian housemates arrived and they are absolutely lovely. Unfortunately, my room isn't. It's far away from uni, very small, no window and noisey too. I had asked to live in the same place as Charlotte but apparently there was no space left.

Day 6 - After having planned to go to the 8.30am lecture and waking up more towards 8.35am we decided to go back to sleep before moving Charlotte's things into her new room. When we got there, the landlord said ".. and this can be your room Lindsay." WHAT?!!?!?!? You mean there is a free room in the party house where everyone wants to be, where I get a huge room, 2 beds and can do pretty much what I want with it, along with students from all around the world so I can practice all my languages????? Yes.

Oh.. but then.. then I had to tell the lovely housemates that I would be leaving. They understood though. It was heartbreaking!!

We all sat outside drinking, playing guitar and such like when at around 2am someone said we we're going out! Same place as last time but more people! A reggae room where you went in for a dance and came out stoned. You couldn't see the person standing next to you for smoke. Guess who we found. Lucy. She had actually missed the flight!!!!  Glad she was alive still..

Before I came to Porto I broke my sunglasses and so I went on a mission to find them. On this day, having found some the day before and planned to spend some time on the beach, the sun decided not to burn me any more. It decided to rain instead. And so.. this is me trying my new sunglasses on... in the dark.

Day 7 - A really good night out and only a slight cough to wake up to from all the fumes! My first night in my new and final room for the next errrmm.. 5 ish months. After waking up at around 12pm and doing nothing til 4pm, I decided to venture out solo without my partner in crime and went straight back to the shops to buy things to deck out my room and do my first weekly shop, Porto style.

And I end this blog post on a plea. My room is very, very large. If you have seen my living room at home then it is bigger than that by a long way. This means that there are many walls that need to be covered. If you would like to send me things to put on my walls.. that you have made yourself or something personal then get in touch so I can give you all my new address :) xxxx

Valida é Obrigatório

The Brazilians said at around 11pm that they would come and pick me up in half an hour to go down to a local fair. At 12.30am... giving up and starting to get make-up off for the night, the door bell rang and I was expected to be ready and pleased to see them.

Aside from the concert stage and the firework sesh it was pretty much a small-scale Goose Fair with stalls, food vans and a couple of rides. I had a huge burger.. it had a burger, carrots, mushrooms, lettuce, ham and chips inside it.

The whole thing didn't shut down until 2am and then I was walked back to my flat..... where the Brazilian gang, (15 of them and then me), said that we were actually going into town, (yes at 2am), for a few beers. Now, as you know it takes a lot to get me out in Nottingham, so when i crawled in at 7 in the morning, after having consumed a reasonable amount of beer and hanging in a room full of chain smokers who expected you to be a master of every traditional Brazilian dance (and if you had no idea you were frowned upon), I thought it best I go straight to bed :S

Day 3 - Getting up at 2pm was nice, although quite necessary, and I had a nice meal with Charlotte after waving her mum off at the airport. Charlotte then came back to mine as she can't move into hers until Wednesday and after struggling with the internet for a few hours it was definitely time for bed.

Day 4 - We had a major to do list. Go and get breakfast at the cafe? Successful! Except for the poor Portuguese attempts and them not understanding 'normal' when I was asked what tea I wanted. Apparently, to them that's green tea. Negro. Chá negro in future. I asked for milk.. I didn't get any.. it's because I'm English.

Go into town and get passport photos? Check! Not your average photo machine, no, just an old man with a camera who gives you a comb and a sink to get ready before sitting you down and directing you in different positions. Really never took a passport photo that seriously before and for €5 for 6 photos.. bargain!
Go into university and register? Done. Very nice people at uni. Nice building but quite old. Got my timetables and I seem to start at 8.30am almost everyday. (But finish at 10am ;))

Go shopping? Yes! NorteShopping. I cracked out an "Onde está o NorteShopping?" Before a very nice man practically laughed and said "It's that way." Very big place filled with everything English that you could ever need. Oh. But we had chinese for tea. Yet to do something typically Portuguese...

However, finishing everything on our to do list resulted in mass blisters on feet and sweating of epic proportions. If that wasn't enough the lights suddenly went in the flat. Flicking all switches available, we decided to find neighbours to help. We listened through a door and heard lots of people and so we knocked.. but no one came. As we went down the stairs the door banged... we came back but it was shut... we went down  again and it happened again.. this repeated itself until we found nice neighbours who pointed out that us 4 girls (all in pyjamas) had failed to flick the one switch we'd needed to. We settled back down to our laptops and the neighbours we had first tried were now playing knock-a-door-run with us. Great.

Settling in to the Portuguese way of life!

The day began trying to make sure everything was packed and then saying goodbye to everyone. I met mum in town and she took me for my last Mcdonalds, for the third time, (I've also had one in Portugal today).

At the airport there was a lot of waiting to be done. I started thinking about the programme Airline that I'd watched the night before and someone was taking their test to be an air hostess. Sure enough on the plane a nice lady called Bergona was new to the crew. After having rammed the food trolley into the back of my chair and forgetting to give me any change I was pleased to see that she remembered to do the toilet check at least.

On landing I tentatively gave an "obrigada" to the custom's bloke who looked at me as if I was English. Buying a metro card was my next hurdle. Trying to find somewhere to put a €20 note in to a machine that doesn't accept notes was challenging until a nice woman came and pointed out that I was English and suggested I moved to a different machine.

After having dropped my case on the escalator and actually breaking the metal wiring on it I made it onto a train and into my hotel. Failing to understand the free internet system that you had to pay for and finding a note from my sisters that said "the llamas will miss you," I decided to have a bath. The plug didn't fit quite right into the the hole but I was determined to have that bath! Eventually, I sat in the bath and held the plug down with my big toe. I gave up with that day. Bed


The next day began more possitively. A nice buffet breakfast with watered down orange juice, lots of butter and not so much bread. However, I finally worked out the internet system ten minutes before I had to check-out.


I got the keys to my flat from Eduardo. He's Brazilian and he was complaining about how hot it was. I dumped all my stuff on the floor and left again. Straight on a bus to ikea. A wonderful place. Ikea, cinema, h&m, Zara, Claire's accessories, Mcdonalds, Burger King and Pizza Hut... I really started to enjoy and embrace the portuguese culture.

I met up with Charlotte and her mum bought me a hot dog! :D After that I returned to the flat with goodies from Ikea and from the supermarket and started to write this blog. Now I am off to party Portuguese style... hopefully..

The Night Before the Beginning...

It's been on its way for years now and yet it still hasn't hit me. The first day of my year abroad is tomorrow! It all begins in Portugal, where I will be studing Portuguese at the University of Porto until the end of January. Then I move off to Marseille to teach English in a lycée until July where, finally, I will be in Spain... somewhere... doing something... no.. I have no idea yet. :|

Today was my last day in Nottingham. I had  a meal in Tamatanga, my favourite restaurant in the world ever, with Ruth and then 4 hours later and still stuffed, I had a buffet in May Sum with the family! (Still managed 3 plates and a pudding.. quite hungry now actually.) After all this food I still had to come home and pack.. pack my life into 20kg of luggage. Pretty easy really.. apart from having to leave 10 out of 11 pairs of heels behind. :(

I still have 3 nail orders to complete before I leave tomorrow and I have just found out that my webcam is dead and therefore an emergency trip to curry's is in order tomorrow morning :)

It's weird saying goodbye. I said goodbye to Ruth, who I hadn't seen in a year.. hmmm.. and I've hugged people that I've never hugged before too!!!

Well anyway, the presents and card received for going away will encourage me to travel for long periods of time in the future. Nottingham tea towel, Nottingham lace sewing kit, (well posh), some euros and a couple of naughty bits. ;)

I hope you enjoy my blog about what I get up to over the year! It won't be interesting, cleverly written or witty in any way...it will be factual.. and the main aim being... getting out of having to tell everyone the same thing over and over and over again :) x