Last Minute Sightseeing

Hey everyone!

I am currently sitting in the foyer to my hotel because the internet in my room somehow got worse overnight. Yes, I am that dedicated to updating this blog.

Well, ok.. really I'm just bored. I went out for a bit yesterday but I'm not feeling great and I'm trying to rest up so that I can be 100% in Spain. So, I've been avoiding going out in the cold as much as possible. I keep waking up feeling like my tonsils are still there because it hurts to swallow. After having a couple cups of tea it feels better. But where was I...ah yes, the blog! I wanted to share with you all some pictures from this past Saturday! As I told you the other day I went to the Catacombs and two museums. The number of pictures I can put up will depend on how slow the internet is down here.

First of all, I should explain what the Catacombs are. I'm just going to say what I can remember from reading a few signs while we were there, and from what I saw for myself. The Catacombs is really one thing, so I'm going to use "is" instead of "are." The Catacombs is a series of underground tunnels that was built a few centuries ago by quarry diggers in France. Because of some incident, all of the bodies buried in the cemetery of innocents had to be dug up and placed somewhere else. There was either a flood..or overcrowding..or something. They started burying all the dead people in these underground tunnels, and families were allowed to visit them. As the burial site for each dead person began to look like it had not been visited for years, the skeletons were moved to the piles of skeletons already under there. So eventually what they had was 8,000 skeletons down there, their bones are piled along the walls in huge stacks, and the skulls rest on top of the piles.

We arrived at the entrance and were confronted with a sales lady who refused to accept my 20 Euro bill, saying she didn't have change. The ticket price was 4 euro for youth (16-25 yrs). Well, I didn't have change, and I sure wasn't going to just hand over 16 extra Euro. Besides, I knew there was no way that she didn't have ANY change. I mean where are we, Bolivia?! She stared at me until I said I'd pay for Hira too, and she handed me back 12 Euro. So off we went down the stairs to reach the underground cemetery. I was immediately nervous. The winding staircase we descended was so tightly wound that there wasn't that hole in the middle that you can look down to see how far you have to go. We just had to descend blindly for what seemed like hours, I kept looking for the moment when the wall would stop curving and we'd be there, but it took a very long time. I started getting nauseous. Once down there we walked through several dimly lit tunnels.

The ground was dirt and the walls were stone and mud brick. Initially I was like "this is so cool, this is JUST like Harry Potter!" Then I noticed that the ceiling was maybe 5 foot 7 inches high. And then I started thinking about how I would escape if I needed to, and I started to feel slightly claustrophobic. The only escape that we knew of was that hellish winding staircase and we were walking farther and farther away from it. There were supposed to be phones down there to call up to someone in case of trouble, but the only one I saw was out of order.

I made myself ignore that fact and that feeling went away. In one area of the tunnel there was a replica of what looked like a roman palace carved into the wall. Apparently the same guy dug them when he was prisoner down there and then he died from a cave in. After walking for 20 minutes through these tunnels, we reached the entrance to the cemetery.

This says "ARRÊTE! C'EST ICI L'EMPIRE DE LA MORT," this translates to "STOP! HERE IS THE EMPIRE OF DEATH."

It smelled funny in there. It wasn't as gross as I'd expected because they weren't whole skeletons, it was just piles of the same looking bone in neat stacks with skulls on top. Hira said she saw a hip bone, but all I saw was what looked like femurs and skulls.

There was a really cool skull and cross bones built into a couple of the piles, but because we weren't allowed to use flash, the picture didn't come out great. As we walked through the cemetery part of the tunnels, we noticed that the ceilings here were dripping every now and then, creating pools of dirty water on the ground. The last thing I wanted to do was get dripped on with what I decided was death juice in a cold underground cemetery from which there was no escape.

At the end of the cemetery there was another winding staircase to return to the land of the living. At this staircase there was a sign that told us exactly how many steps it would be until we reached the top (87). Thank goodness for that sign, or else I think Hira and I might've lost it.

After this we headed over to Musée d'Orsay to see some art. Hira said we should get in free by showing our long stay visas and our Sciences-Po student IDs. We walked over to what we thought was the appropriate entrance (out of like 5 entrances) and Hira, who is in Intermediate French but decided that since she was 2 days from being home she no longer needed to speak french, asked the doorman in english if he spoke english. He shook his head and said "Français, Español, et Italiano." Hira looked at me and said "spanish!" so I hastily switched to spanish mode and said:

"Hablas español?"

"Sí."

"Ok..uhm..somos estudiantes..y.." (we are students..and..)

Then he broke off in French and said something and pointed to the door, motioning for us to enter. After saying what he'd said in french, for some reason unbeknownst to me he switched to italian! The only word I caught was "Inglese." I very bewilderedly entered the revolving door, and behind me Hira, also obviously confused, tried to enter too but she walked straight into the glass. It was priceless.

I really liked this museum, it seemed overwhelmingly large when we first walked in, but after an hour and a half we'd walked through almost 2/3 of it. I don't have pictures from this because they weren't allowed. All of the Monet (which this museum is famous for) was gone for the Monet exhibit at the Grand Palais, but we saw Manet, Van Gogh, and some other guys. It was 4:30 and the last museum we wanted to visit, Musée de l'Orangerie, which is in the middle of the Tuileries Gardens in front of the Louvre, closed at 6pm. We walked across the Seine and through the gardens to wait in line for our free youth tickets.

I absolutely love Musée de l'Orangerie!! I hadn't been before. It is TINY and so it is extremely doable. It is known for the two oval-shaped rooms of Monet panoramic paintings that wrap around the entire room, creating the feeling that you are in his gardens. Those rooms were pretty sweet, but all the seating space was taken so we stood staring for a bit and continued downstairs.

All of the paintings downstairs (we saw Matisse, Renoir, Picasso, and some other people I can't remember), were very beautiful paintings. I really can't appreciate most modern art, but this kind of art I can truly enjoy. And pictures were allowed! (As long as you turned off your flash). So I have a few pictures of paintings that I especially enjoyed. I would put pictures up of these but the internet connection is like Crabbe and Goyle: almost too slow to function.

Of course at this point we needed nourishment.

We chose to descend the walkway in front of the museum to Place de la Concorde (where the end of the Christmas market on the Champs Élysées and the end of the Tuileries Gardens meet) to get it in the form of waffles covered in melted Nutella. For dinner we met Yomna and walked to our Indian restaurant, only to find it closed. It looked like it was undergoing construction. After walking up and down Montparnasse looking for other ethnic food and failing, we settled on Pasta Papa.

Thus ends my last night with the people on my program. That night I was up late, being awoken by tipsy people saying goodbye, someone wanting me to return a library book they forgot about, my roommate getting the handheld luggage weigher she'd borrowed from a girl she doesn't like stuck to her bag, and the 20 minutes that ensued with a parade of people stopping in our room trying to help get it unstuck. Of course, I was glad for these nightly interruptions. Anything to extend my time with new friends. Not to mention, at 3 am all of these events were experienced with a healthy dose of hilarity. I've really enjoyed my time here. I am so grateful that I was able to be a part of this program.

That's all for now. I'm off to pick up some lunch. I may decide to update again later today.

Love,

H.

Swiss chocolate, swiss knives, swiss cheese..

Hi all!

I just returned from Geneva, Switzerland a couple of hours ago. We didn't spend much time there. Our train got us in at 12:30pm on Monday and we left Geneva on the 5:00pm train tonight. When I think of Switzerland I think of ski lodges on snow-covered mountains, rich people storing their billions in banks, and neutrality. Unfortunately we had a tight schedule and we barely left our hotel neighborhood so I didn't get to see the pretty mountain towns that I'd imagined..or even walk past a ginormous and intimidating modern-looking bank.

When we arrived in Geneva it was very cold and pouring rain. Luckily our hotel was a one-minute walk from the train station. The hotel hadn't assigned rooms to people, so Bruno (our teacher and the head of our public health program at Sciences-Po told us to match up on our own and tell him what we decide. People started pairing off left and right and I felt like I was back at middle school worrying that no one was going to ask me to room with them. I was even more worried that I would have to room with one of the people on this program that have no notion of how to not be an annoying person. I took initiative and asked one of the girls I get along with who wasn't paired up yet to be my roommate.

At 2:45pm we headed for MSF. We were going to walk there but because of the train we took the cable-car bus two stops and walked into a very unassuming building. There is no way I would've ever guessed that inside this building was the headquarters to Medecins Sans Frontiers (Doctors Without Borders). I didn't even see a sign. We listened to a speaker talk about the history of MSF for an hour and a half, something we had all already learned while in Paris (not to mention that we're all global health minors and probably knew it before coming to France).

His lecture was very dry and I found myself struggling to keep my eyes open. I entertained myself by drawing the MSF logo on my notebook. After his lecture we were supposed to hear a doctor speak to us, but because of the Haiti cholera goings-on all of the staff were all over the place so we got a last minute lecture from a more lively woman (who had reporters waiting for her once she was done), she talked to us for a half an hour about a new nutrient supplement and the controversy surrounding it. Apparently there are intellectual property rights battles surrounding the liquid. It is made of peanuts, milk, water, and something else. I couldn't figure out what she was calling the stuff, it was either "plumpy nuts," "plant peanuts," or "plampinuts." There was nothing else scheduled for us at MSF so we were released at 5:00pm and told to meet in the hotel lobby a couple hours later to walk to dinner.

As we were leaving I noticed the front desk was displaying MSF apparel for sale. I asked the guy behind the desk if they were for sale and he said yes but they only accept Swiss Francs and they don't accept credit cards. Yomna and I decided we'd try to look for an ATM and then we'd return to buy something. We were told that the closest ATM was back at the train station near our hotel. We started walking that direction, searching earnestly in the pouring rain for any sign of an ATM. As we left a pharmacy that couldn't give us change in Swiss Francs we quickly realized that ATMs were not located every couple of blocks like they are in Paris. We tried to go into a bank but found the place completely empty.

Look closely at the picture below. The ceiling was made to look like the night sky!!

We left the bank feeling very confused about our preconceptions of Swiss banking. This was supposed to be Switzerland! Land of banks! Where was the top security? We walked in like we owned the place and only saw one person in an office behind a curtain.

As we left the bank we saw a bureau du change across the street! Yomna and I changed over 50 Euro and hurried back to MSF. The man didn't seem happy to see us, he informed us that the guy who was in charge of the apparel wasn't around, and that they didn't have all of the merchandise there. I was about to get nasty and tell him that we'd take the shirts they had behind the glass in the counter until he said he would make a quick phone call. As we waited Yomna pointed out a white board that listed all of the staff who were departing for service over the next several days, their debriefing meeting times, and their location of work. People were listed as going to Sudan, Swaziland, Niger, and one or two places in the Middle East that I can't remember. Eventually he got off the phone and was about to tell us that the merch guy wasn't there but then cut himself off and said "oh, he's right here." The man behind us asked us what we wanted and he went downstairs somewhere to bring up sizes. The sweatshirt was 80 Francs (about 70 Euro)! I didn't get a hoodie but I got a t-shirt, which was much more reasonably priced.

When we returned to the hotel I drank some tea and tried to ignore a sinus headache. I tried to get into my room but we were only given one key and my roommate had it and she wasn't there. I got one from the desk and took some sinus medicine and laid down for 20 minutes, channel surfing.

At dinner we were served traditional Swiss fondu.

There was a band singing, yodeling, and playing traditional Swiss instruments like the saw, the accordion, and this thing:

First they brought out orange le creuset pots with handles full of slightly boiling cheese and placed them on little...hot plate things with a little flame inside. We watched Bruno show us the proper procedure. First you take the long skewer/tiny fork onto which you secure a hunk of bread and you dip the bread into the hot cheese using the skewer/tiny fork. Bruno let his bread sit in the hot cheese for a long time before taking it out but the bread gets really soggy that way. I decided that what I liked the best was to dip half of the little hunk of bread into the cheese to improve the proportion of cheese to bread. We had two birthdays on Monday; Yomna and Amanda's 21st birthdays! The band brought them up a few times to play their Swiss instruments and it was really cute. When it was time to bring out the hot pot of chocolate fondue and the fruit trays the band played happy birthday as we all sang.

The experience was great but the food wasn't good enough to make up for it being so absurdly unhealthy. I don't know why, but food in France has a tendency to be made with alcohol. Almost all of the desserts (except for the ones at patisseries) taste like someone poured two shots of rum on them after cooking them. Well, Geneva is in the French speaking-side of Switzerland and, true to form, the cheese tasted faintly of alcohol. We had really good white wine with our meal, but I hate when my food tastes like alcohol. Also, the cheese they used didn't even taste that good. Several people said they didn't like the cheese that was used. The chocolate was delicious but they served it with apples, oranges, cantaloupe, and pineapple. I was really surprised that they didn't give us strawberries or bananas. Nothing went well with the chocolate, and the cantaloupe with chocolate tasted like vomit. All criticisms aside, it was a very fun dinner!

It was still raining by the time we left the restaurant around 10:00pm. I was dead on my feet when I got back to the hotel. Sunday night the new people in the room next to me had friends over and they were up past 2 am. They kept doing that random loud bursts of laughter thing. Remember the girl I spoke about before from New York who spoke like my Ben & Jerry's co-workers? I could hear her voice clearly. I could hear every word she said. I had waited since I went to bed at 11:30pm for them to quiet down, but I finally knocked on their door at 1:30am and asked them politely to keep it down because I had to get up at 7:00 to go to Geneva. My roommate came back from her weekend in Brussels and Amsterdam at 6:00 am and didn't see the point in sleeping for just one hour, so she stayed up. So I only slept from 2:00am to 6:00am the night before. At the hotel my roommate wasn't back yet so I changed into my PJs, vowed to ignore any knocks on my door, watched BBC news for half an hour in bed, and then went to sleep at 10:45pm.

I will post day 2 in Geneva soon!

Love,

H.

Portugal ch. 4: Leaving Lisbon for Lagos

WARNING: This post is very long. You have my permission to read it in pieces.

And now, for the final chapter of my week in Portugal!!!

We left off on Sunday late afternoon in fairy tale land in Sintra.

That evening once we'd returned to Lisbon on the train we decided to take it easy because we'd had a long day of walking/hiking. We ate dinner and relaxed at a coffee shop called Brown's Coffee to eat and read. It was like a large starbucks. We just camped out and didn't move for a couple of hours until it was time to return to the hostel to shower and sleep.

Monday:

Apparently in Portugal Monday is the day that nothing is open. We had been informed of this the previous day by our breakfast friends (whom I forgot to mention we ran into at the moorish castle in Sintra). We decided to wander around the areas known as Barrio Alto and Alfama. They were in opposite directions so we began with Barrio Alto. To reach this neighborhood involved a lot of uphill climbing but we passed by a plaza that I later recognized to be the same plaza where Ali and Roberto took pictures. Most things were closed because it was still before 11am. We found a really book store where I spent some time leafing through books. It was a pretty cool area.

Afterwards we returned to our neighborhood and sat by water for a half an hour, I was reading To Kill A Mockingbird and was almost done with it so I was trying to slow down so I'd have something to read on the train ride to Lagos.

We walked to Alfama, considered Lisbon's old town, caught lunch, and walked over to another castle. Outside of the castle a rasta guy was selling something. As I passed him he said to me "Eres Española?" (Are you Spanish?) I shook my head and half smiled in delight and then he said "Oh! Eres Italiana!" (Oh! You are Italian!). I grinned, so happy to be presumed anything other than American, and he gave me a high five. The next two pictures are from Alfama:

We walked back to our neighborhood and found ourselves on a major shopping street, so naturally we spent a few hours popping in and out of stores. We bought some pastries and returned to Brown's to relax. Once we were ready for dinner we headed over to the local mall and ate in the food court. We each got huge salads and then to balance that out we ordered chocolate cake.

Tuesday:

Tuesday morning we had a 10:20 train to Lagos (pronounced "Lagosh"). We arrived at the train station around 9:40 and couldn't find our train time on the monitors. In horror I looked down at my ticket and realized that our train station was the Lisboã-Oriente station, the one in the suburbs about 10 minutes before Lisbon. I had noticed this a couple of days earlier but we figured that didn't make any sense and that it would just stop in the main station on it's way down to Lagos. There were no teller windows in that entrance and I frantically ran across the street to what seemed like some kind of train building as well. I showed the woman our tickets and asked her if that meant we were at the wrong station. She kept telling me I had to cross the street and look at the monitors to find my train platform. We were losing precious time! Finally she listened to what we were asking and she confirmed it and told us to find a taxi. We happened to be in the one city where taxi drivers do not wait in or around their taxi when they are in a line up. We found 15 taxis and none of them had drivers. We crossed the street again to the main drop off point for the station and hopped in a cab as soon as some woman got out. He didn't speak english so I broke out my rusty spanish. "Tenemos prisa!" I told him (we're in a hurry!).

He flew and got us there in ten minutes and I gave him a tip and thanked him. At the station the monitor had out train time but a different city other than Lagos was listed. I asked this older British couple and they said our tickets indicated a transfer at that other city, then on to Lagos. We sat down, relieved, and waited for the train to come. The British couple took us under their wing (I'm SURE they were grandparents by the way they took care of us) and made sure we got on the right train car and everything. We knew how to board a train but I just smiled and let them help us with whatever they wanted to. On the train I instantly wanted them there to tell us when to get off and transfer, but they were far away in another train car. The ride got prettier and prettier the more south we got. We looked out the window at the sea and at miles of orange bush things (they had oranges on them but it didn't look anything like a tree). After our transfer I looked out the window and saw several geckos crawling around by the tracks.

We reached Lagos around 2:45 pm.

Once again, we followed the crowd and then we got directions from a rent-a-car place to our hostel. They also gave us a handy map of the town. Lagos is known for it's beaches and is quickly becoming a vacation spot for lots of British who are buying up properties. I can tell it is still a city in development (it looked like a poor man's Huntington Beach) but in a few years I could see the prices rising and the tourism business becoming more professional. As we were asking for directions everyone kept telling us to walk past the big statue of the person, the statue that no one really knows what it is:

After checking into our hostel, which felt liked it too belonged in southern california, we found lunch and walked around. The town is really tiny. This was late October, but I bet that in the summer it is over-run with families and college kids doing beach stuff and clogging up the restaurants. I'd love to return in the summer. As it was, there were already tons of Brits there when we were there. Really, it was a town of British people. We found dinner at this hippy place where we ate on a couch because the mexican place we'd wanted to eat at was empty. The food was delicious and we enjoyed the vibe.

Wednesday:

We ate breakfast at a tiny place called the Odeon café, owned by a middle-aged British man who also serves as the cook, and his daughter (who was around my age and was on facebook on the computer everytime we walked in) was the waitress. It had a tv and the menu was full of cheap american/english breakfast food like pancakes, hash browns, eggs on toast, beans on toast, and juices. The atmosphere was very friendly. When the daughter would take our order she'd sit down next to us at our table and write everything down. They also had free internet. We returned each morning for the rest of our time in Lagos.

That afternoon we spent a few hours at the beach because it was about 80 degrees and Jennie wanted to tan. I am done with tanning on purpose, I'm hella afraid of getting sun spots and premature wrinkles..not to mention skin cancer. So I put sunscreen on constantly. And I still got tan, woohoo!

There was this dog on the beach that was about..twice as big as tiger and asia and had black curly hair. It spent all afternoon harassing beach goers with it's incessant barking. It barked at everyone who went near the water. It barked at me as i was halfway in the water but eventually switched to barking at a group of British college-aged boys. Every sound was amplified because of the rocks and at one point, as I was reading "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" (a book I'd picked up the day before because I'd finished my other one), I heard one of the guys yell "F*ck he's after me!!!" British accent and all. I looked over, along with every single other person on the beach, and watched as this kid tried to swim away from the dog, only for the dog to follow him into the water.

As the sun went down it got chilly and we stopped for tea and "read" a couple of Portuguese magazines.

We ate dinner next to an American/Canadian couple at an otherwise empty restaurant. They were acting oddly formally and politely but we couldn't figure out what they would be doing in Portugal on a first date. I decided they must've come with a big group of friends, and everyone else was not interested in dinner quite yet, but they were and they decided to eat by themselves and they didn't know each other before the trip hence the awkwardness. Afterwards we got hot drinks at a café called Xpreîtaqui. They played coffee shop music and we chilled there and chatted for awhile before hitting the sack.

Thursday:

We had breakfast at odeon café again. Then at noon we went kayaking!! The kayaks were doubles, and it was us two, a strangely quiet Australian couple, and two very tan, small-ish, and muscular guides. The journey was a 3 hour trip to see the rock formations along the shores and to visit the grottos. Jennie and I pulled up the rear the whole time, but it was a great work-out and I was glad for the exercise. The guides kept pointing out rock formations and saying "this one is an elephant, this one is a face, this one is a toilet seat.." Once he said the toilet seat one I started to wonder if he and the other guide have fun by pulling out random nouns every time they hit the water and hearing the tourists go "Oh, I see it!" Jennie and I started doing it too. I would look at a rock and be like "This one looks like a teapot! That one looks like a table!" The guides started laughing and judging by their reaction I have a feeling I'm right about them making it up sometimes.

After the kayaking we sat on the beach so Jennie could tan some more. It wasn't as warm as the day before but it was still somewhere in the 70s. After an hour on the beach I tried to find the slave market. According to our map I had passed by that plaza a dozen times already. Our map wasn't totally accurate as we'd figured out during our time in Lagos (another thing that will improve in the next couple of years). It told me it was located in one corner, but it absolutely was not that corner since that corner held a bikini store and a restaurant. I think it was this:

On the sides of the broken platform were iron rungs. Also, why else would they keep this broken slab of cement around? This is on the side of the church in the lower picture.

We showered, tried and failed to get the hostel cat out of our room and had to get help from the manager, then read for a bit and ate an early dinner. After dessert we walked around and ended up back at our café with the weird name.

Friday:

We grabbed breakfast at the odeon café. Our train wasn't scheduled until 4pm so we sat down in another café while we watched a tropical storm try to blow everyone over. We had a ten minute walk to get to the train station and there was no sign of the storm letting up. We changed into our board shorts and I put my scarf over my head and we hurried in the rain over to the station. We spent about 20 minutes in the bathroom drying ourselves off along with our luggage/shoes/purses.

Once I was done I saw a sign that said the next train wasn't until 5:20. I have a suspicion that the train time on our ticket was for our transfer stop, not from the Lagos station. Which meant we were going to miss our train. We hastily changed our tickets to the 5:20 and later called the hostel to let them know we wouldn't be arriving until sometime after 1 am. The train ride was long and we had a couple of transfers, but I survived by reading my book and eating trail mix. Except for the stuffiness I was quite content. Jennie had less patience for the train ride, and I realized that Bolivia really helped me to see transportation in a new light. After being on a 10-hour freezing cold and bumpy ride to Sucre and back, several cold 7 hour bus rides to La Paz with one bathroom stop, and taking a 12 hour train to Tupiza in freezing temperatures with unsanitary bathrooms and warm but gross blankets and alpaca socks on my feet, 6 hours through Portugal was a piece of cake.

We returned to the same cool cinema hostel in Porto that we stayed at when we arrived in Portugal. We had to return to Porto because the only flights to Paris left from Porto. I was in bed by 2:10 am and woke up a little after 8 to grab a relaxed breakfast at the hostel before leaving at 9:15 am for the metro to the airport. We arrived with plenty of time and witnessed a strange scene. The picture below is my sneaky no-flash shot of what we saw. We walked much closer but I didn't think taking a picture of a possibly dead woman would make the police very happy. In front of the police was a person on the ground covered with a medical sheet. There was no medical professional around, and the police weren't even paying attention to the body. I looked around for mourners and saw one lady facing the opposite direction on a bench and a man who was putting his arm around her. I can't even be sure she was related to the incident at all. There was an arm and a foot sticking out from under the blanket. She was there for at least half an hour with nothing going on around her except some police standing a ways away chatting. There was no rope or barrier around, I mean literally someone could've walked up and uncovered her before the police noticed. Eventually some paramedics carried her away in no hurry and put her in the back of a van that could've been an ambulance but I couldn't see it that well. I didn't hear any sirens.

Anywho, I bought a National Geographic and we boarded the plane back to Paris!!!

That's the end of my trip to Portugal! We leave for Geneva tomorrow morning for a public health field trip to MSF headquarters and WHO headquarters. We also get fondue.

-H.

Portugal ch. 3: Today Was A Fairytale

Hey everyone!

I know you've been hanging on the edge of your seats waiting for the next addition to my Portugal posts, but wait no longer! To refresh your memory, I ended the last post on our first afternoon in Lisbon after having left Porto. Here we go,

After we spent some time bumming around the plaza and walking into a few different stores near the shopping area (including a store called "Pull and Bear" which was like a cool version of Hollister where there were a few VERY attractive Brits standing around chatting), we headed back to the hostel to change and head to Hard Rock to celebrate Jennie's 21st birthday, which was that day.

On the way to Hard Rock we passed by one of the coolest lunar scenes I have ever seen. Behold:

(Tilt your head so the left side is the top of the page)

I didn't have my camera but I drew it in my journal that night.. and then stole this picture from Jennie once we got back home:

It was one of those moments when everyone around you has stopped and is staring at something, so you look in the direction of their gaze and your jaw drops.

There was a very long wait at Hard Rock but it was well worth the wait. I ordered a strawberry daiquiri (is that really how you spell that?) that tasted exactly like a strawberry smoothie and I have a sneaky suspicion the bartender left out the alcohol..which I guess is fine with me, it was yummy. To my surprise Jennie didn't order a drink because she'd had half a drink the night before. We had agreed on getting a fun drink while we waited for our table to celebrate her birthday but after I decided on mine she changed her mine and ordered a soda. I was a little frustrated but I wasn't going to push the issue and make it awkward. It was delicious food as always, but my twisted mac-and-cheese (which is Morgan's go-to at Hard Rock) was 11 Euro or around 15 dollars! Oh, and while we were waiting in the crowded bar area to be seated, a guy walked past us and said "hi" with a british accent, and as he passed Jennie heard his friend say "dude they're like 14!"

No comment.

The next morning was Sunday. We got up and ate breakfast at the hostel. While we ate we chatted with a couple girls from Eau Claire college in Wisconsin!! How random. After talking to them and sharing tips, we decided to head out to Sintra, the castle village about 45 minutes out from the city. We hopped on a train, I with London Fog Starbucks drink in hand ("hazelnut instead of vanilla, please") right before it pulled out of the station. We chatted about boys and political ideologies until we got to Sintra. We knew when to get off because all of the tourists on the train were getting off. When traveling and confused, always follow the tourists.

Before we go any further I should mention that Ali from last season's Bachelorette went to Lisbon with 5 of the guys and visited 3 different castles. One of the castles was multicolored and I'd seen it atop it's ginormous hill from afar while our train pulled into Sintra. I was more than excited.

We followed the tourists up a long, windy road as a horse-drawn carriage rode past us (Ali took a horse-drawn carriage all the way up to the multi-colored castle!) and we found ourselves in the middle of a fairytale village. I mean, it was lush and green with a slight chill to the air and the place was littered with palaces nestled in the rolling hills. It was beautiful. We reached the city center which was tiny and visited a tourists office to plan our day. First, we visited the King's summer home (don't ask me which king) because it was only free until 2pm.

I found two amazing things in the King's summer home.

First, Narnia's wardrobe!

Second, A GALLEON ROOM!! WOOHOO! There were no galleons in that room and my dreams of wizarding riches vanished with a sting.

Then we decided we should grab some food before walking over to the next palace. Strolling along the narrow streets to find food we passed by a café that Jennie had read about for being famous for two of Portugal's pastries. They are called "travasseros" and "quejados." One was an almond pillow and the other a sugary cinnamon cheese thing from which I tasted no cheese, only heaven. To get them we had to take a number and wait in line. We took our pastries to a café and ordered food and chatted.

Our chat turned into a conversation about what it is to be gay. You see, Jennie is a conservative Christian who goes to church every Sunday at an english-speaking church in Paris, and while I am a spiritual person I also do not agree with many dictums from organized christianity or christian churches. We had a very respectful and grown up talk, but a lot of things surprised me from our conversation. I knew she was a strict christian, she will only marry a christian and she has a tattoo to remind herself of God's love, but I don't know..somehow I thought she would think the same way that I did about this topic. I guess that was naïve of me. I quickly learned that she believes that being gay is a sin, "just like murder, it's in the bible." She also said she knows for a fact that it is something you can change about yourself because she had a friend who was a girl and dated a girl for a year, but then changed her mind and "saw the error of her ways" if you'll allow me to paraphrase, and she switched back to men. Then she went on to explain that she doesn't think politics should get into the moral issue and that the reason we should ban gay marriage shouldn't be because of religion, but only because it is causing so much tension.

The frustration was building up inside of my chest and I could feel myself frantically trying to calm myself down and find a way to respond politely while still expressing my opinion. I hate debates. I took a breath and told her that the story about her friend is ONE story, and that it's purely unscientific to take one case-study and apply it to everyone. I went on to explain to her the theory of the dimensional view of sexuality, where everyone has a place on the scale. Some people are at either end and are purely homosexual or purely heterosexual, where as there are some people that can fall anywhere in between the two extremes, and that her friend would fall somewhere in between the middle and heterosexual. She hadn't heard this theory before and I was surprised by that. I didn't make it up, I learned it. We decided our disagreement was purely based upon whether we thought our sexuality was something we could change, or something we were born with. Over the course of our conversation we had moved from the cafeteria and were walking to another summer home palace of sorts.

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves!

I found Aslan!!! I can't share with you what he told me.

Next we caught a bus up the huge hill/small mountain to find the Moorish Castle and the Palacio Naçional de Pena (the multi-colored castle). I thought the winding walls looked a lot like the great wall in Mulan. Climbing all of these steps was very tiring and tricky to do while wearing a skirt in the high winds, but well worth it for the view.

We were told that the multi-colored palace was only a 15 minute walk up the hill from the Moorish castle, so we walked. This was the most exercise I'd had since climbing the too-small-to-be-called-a-hill hill at the Salar de Uyuni at 10,000 feet up. It was tough but I was glad for the exercise. (That exhausted picture of me above is before the hike up to the palace.)

Walking around the palace was amazing. The rooms were full of stuff to look at and admire. Jennie charged ahead in front of me so fast she didn't stop once to look at anything. I raced through the rooms in order to catch up to her when what I'd really wanted to do was take my time and marvel at things. When I caught up to her she said "there you are!" as if I'd taken my sweet time. Traveling with only one person can be tough sometimes. You can never argue because you know you're stuck with them and the awkwardness that is sure to come after an argument. I smiled silently and followed behind her. I decided to take my time looking at the hogwart's-esque kitchen with fake dead animals strung upside-down in the back pantry.

Thus ends chapter 3!!

-H.

Going Postal

Greetings and Salutations!

Yesterday, something happened that I have been avoiding since day one of arriving in France. Let me give a little background info.

Because we are staying in France for over 3 months, we are all required to fill out a form called "OFII." We were all informed of this over the summer, and we were told it was very important. At some point we learned that it had to be submitted before the 3 month mark of living in France. The form asks for your address and how long you'll be in France. After the OFII office receives the form they contact you with a doctor's appointment that you must attend. Along with the form you are supposed to include a copy of your passport ID page and a copy of the student visa page of your passport. Given that this process involves making copies at a copy center, filling out a form in French, going to the post office, the looming mysterious doctor's appointment, and that we had a whole 3 months to do it, naturally all of us put it off.

We started asking each other what would happen if we just didn't do it. None of our program heads had said anything to us about the form since the first week we arrived. Somehow it circulated that if we just didn't do it, France could keep us from ever entering the country again. Another answer that circulated was that France wouldn't let us leave. "Not let us leave?" someone would ask,"wouldn't they want to kick us out?" It goes without saying that there was much confusion surrounding the whole process.

I already had copies of my passport, but the thing that kept me from touching the form was the dreaded trip to the post office. My 2 hour ordeal at the post office in Bolivia had me not wanting to ever enter a foreign post office ever again. EVER. AGAIN.

Mail piled up, and this weekend I found myself with my sublet contract for winter quarter, 6 post cards, and my OFII form all needing to be mailed.

Photo Courtesy of: L'Express.fr

So, after class, I walked into La Banque Postale. The man was very nice and helpful, but I didn't have cash and my card wouldn't accept the low 87 cents charge. I apologized and packed up all of my documents and left. Near my dorm I found my atm, withdrew cash, and crossed the street to a different Banque Postale. This one was much bigger. I walked up to a lady and asked her if she spoke english (we haven't learned post office vocab). In french she said "a little." I pulled out my documents and said I needed to send them but I needed 6 stamps. She brought me over to a machine, typed in something, pointed to the screen, and started to walk away. The screen said I owed 6 Euro. "Excuse me," I said, "this says I owe 6 Euro for 6 stamps..?" "Oui," she said. I sighed and thought, maybe the man from the first post office didn't know I was sending these to the U.S..so maybe the stamps (which look like normal stamps) he had pulled out were only domestic.

I pulled out a ten dollar bill from my wallet and realized there was no place to put in cash. I stood there staring at the machine trying to figure out what I was expected to do, and how I was expected to pay. Finally, a young woman behind me pointed to the cash to change machine next to me. I got ten dollars in change, and paid the machine with coins. This is my first observation of inefficiency in the French post office. After I got my stamps (which look like long rectangular labels and not like stamps at all) I realized that they were way too big and would cover my writing. I stood there feeling like the subject of one of those photos where one person is standing still and there is a blur of motion around them. I literally stood in one spot for 5 minutes.

The woman who I'd first spoken with was running around the post office hoping from desk to desk. There were several different counters but none of the signs had been translated to english, and the words weren't close enough to english for me to figure out. I had my postcards, my OFII form, my passport copies, and my sublet contract in one hand, and my weird looking large stamps in the other. Every time I tried to stop the woman and ask or pantomime a question, she'd respond to me in french, point in no particular direction, and then hurry away.

Finally I found an employee who spoke english. She actually walked with me through the process of getting done what I needed to get done. We solved the stamp problem by folding them over the edge of the postcards.

Since mom stubbornly refuses to take some things back for me like all the other parents, I know I'll need to ship a ton of stuff back home before the program is over. But the last place I want to go back to is to La Banque Postale.