Heyo,

half-time by now has passed and I’m blessed to call quite a decent number of new, great memories my very own. Well… I still won’t shy away from sharing them with you. And since right now, I’m finally having some days off school thanks to Carneval, I decided to get up my lazy ass and catch those exact memories in a few words.

To start off, I wanted to put a few words into documenting my learning progress, considering Portuguese language and culture, which is actually going really well. The foreigner Portuguese lessons I got have become way more diverse, with us, for example, going to Lisbon for seeing the birth house of Fernando Pessoa or on another occasion visiting the “Museu Santa Joana” in Aveiro. From times to times we also got to watch Portuguese produced films, which often were overly melodramatic but still quite enjoyable. And in a week’s time we’ll visit the city of Mafra, which is known for its beautiful palace, for what I’m quite excited. Summarisingly, I think I’m able to say I have been getting to grasp quite a lot about Portuguese culture, people and language.

Another mention-worthy memory was meeting a few exchange students, coming from Leiria, acting as a local tourguide — showing them Aveiro. In fact, it was really interesting and inspiring getting to know more about the experiences they made. And most importantly, the morning that day I saw a guy riding a bike while leading a horse somewhere on a dog leash, which somehow totally made my day.

The following week I made a spontaneous day trip to Lisbon to meet an Austrian primary-school-friend I actually hadn’t seen in a few years. Going there and returning on the same day created quite some difficulties since I had school that day, but in the end it worked out just fine, even though I didn’t catch the train back — out of scarily pure stupidity. On a short note: Lisbon’s railway stations are certainly not the nicest of places to be hanging around at ten o’clock.

Same week’s end, I got to sleep at another exchange students home in São João da Madeira. In there, with her, I got to speak German all day, which was totally hilarious for the both us as we tried to always use certain “trendy” words. Also, the night I was staying there we went out and had loads of fun, together with the rest fusing into one hell of an enjoyable weekend.

One more adventure, which deserves to be written about, is the skiing experience I had in here, more precisely Serra da Estrela. It’s the only chain of mountains in Portugal, which actually can be taken seriously, and besides is home of the only Portuguese skiing resort. So, in the end of last year my school gave us the chance of signing up for a ski trip on the second and third of February, which the week it was supposed to take place, got cancelled and later delayed to the 23rd and 24th. The trip itself was a wonderful experience, most importantly — shared with my truly amazing Portuguese classmates! And on a little skiing note… I totally felt like an assistant teacher.

Overall, my exchange is going super-well. I hope you’re doing phenomenal as well!

Julian