9th, 10th and 11th weeks - State of mind - stil crazy

Olá,

It´s high time to grab a pen and open a new page of my experience in Portugal. This page will be a little bit different - you will have to find discoveries yourself;)

Three words describing these weeks perfectly - international, cultural, and touristic.

General state of mind - still crazy about this internship, can´t imagine skipping this part of my life:)

Portuguese language+classes+illegal cafe:) My Portuguese language is improving, so if people speak slowly and simply I can get the point. Good improvement for a person who has never learned any Latin language and Portuguese in particular. How do I learn? First of all, Portuguese language classes are organized by one of the LCs here in Lisbon and it really helps a lot. Many thanks for them! Another way - at work I have a colleague who tries to speak Portuguese with me and always helps me to speak myself. And the third thing - well I am practicing with everyone. And the funniest thing that some guys call me ´´convencida´´(pasikelusia) for fun, because most of the time I can say that I understand even though I have a vague clue about the topic of the conversation:)

Offtopic: some of our classes take place in a cafe called ´´crew hassan´´ (the pronouciation is like of that cookie cruasan). It´s a home made cafe in a flat on the second floor where we went few times, just had a class, ordered nothing and noone even asked us why we were there. Weird:)
Oceanario. As Portugal has Atlantic ocean washing its coast, it is natural that it has an oceanario - a place where the life inside and near ocean is presented. The real beauty is that we can see natural environement from the oceans all over the world. The penguins and sharks in one big building. What is more, the educational part is also prepared very well, so groups of children may have for example sleeping with sharks (in the space near the aquarium:)). For more info check: http://www.oceanario.pt/site/ol_home_00.asp?popup=1 And as you can see from photos I found some new friends there.

By the way, Oceanario is next to my work place. As well as another interesting attraction - cable car. The view is really beautiful when you go above river Tejo and on the side are gardens and business area.

Belem. If you visit Lisbon, you have to visit Belem area. And I did this one nice Sunday afternoon together with Mo (Chinese intern from another LC). Belem has a wonderfull monastery - pitty that not all open to visitors. Also 2 monuments: Belem tower and discoveries´ monument. This was the place where Portuguese discoverers were concencrated before leaving for discovering new places.

And the last but not the least -it has Pasteis de Belem - cookies that are known far outside the Portugal. That special cafe (pastelaria) is there for more then 100 years and as they say only in that spot you can try the original taste of the cookies (the recipe is the top secret). Well, after waiting for some 15 minutes in a queue, me and Mo managed to get Pasteis and it was really tasty, however, the whole myth about fantastic taste is abit exagerated. Well, but it´s worth trying anyway:)

Offtopic: it is actually funny when some countries say that they found America, Africa or India as if noone was living there before. We Europeans are quite arrogant, aren´t we?;)

Azulejos museum. Do you remember me writing about special ceramics - azulejos - that Portugal has?? Well, they have also a special museum for that. It was quite nice to see the tecniques how it is made and was made some time ago. What is more, in that museum they have some really interesting peaces of art (especially related with religion), including awesome church shining with gold.

Offtopic: only here in Portugal I again understand how much the history of human beings is connected with religion. It was highly influenced centuries ago and I think it has a lot of impact nowadays as well. E.g. near my place there is a kind of church of sect that has millions of followers in Brazil but in general it is known for having a good technique to decoy money from people. Wanna know more - it is really interesting;)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igreja_Universal_do_Reino_de_Deus

Other interns in Lisbon. In lisbon we have a nice family of interns and a very diverse one as well:) Brazilian, Chinese, Indian, Romanians, Serbian, Lithuanian:) Quite a nice company for having deep discussions, dinners, Portuguese classes, making fun and enjoying life in Portugal. The most interesting discussions are when we speak about our experience in Portugal or discuss such things as education and compare how different it is in our countries (does beating children help for them to be more disciplined? as you can imagine some discussions are quite taugh).

Beja. One of the special occasions to meet interns from all over the Portugal was International Reception Weekend organized by one of the AIESEC Local committees in Lisbon. It was south from Lisbon and we had really fun time getting to know the city, its famous places, typical food, typical people:) It was the second largest city in Alantejo region, however it was strange to see that it was really small when we climbed up to the tower of the castle.

Some special pics:

Taking pictures of people taking pictures:)

Taking pictures of some peaces of art (children under age of 16 are not allowed to look:P).

View from the tallest castle tower in Portugal.

Wanna some oranges?;)

Crew:)

Jazz, concerts and other cultural activities. What I especially like here in Lisbon - cultural part of the life. Almost every week I go to some concerts: on Mondays there are free concerts in casino Lisboa, and the singers are really great there. On Wednesdays there are jazz sessions in one the most famous clubs in Lisbon. So, these are two main spots for weekly doze of culture. Besides that I visited ballet ´´Sleeping beauty´´ with my flatmate - girl from Italy (the home land of ballet). Mmm, I haven´t been to a ballet since my childhood, so it was amazing to watch one performed by theatre from St.Petersburg.

St.Martins day. A very interesting celebration in Portugal is St.Martins day. One nice Saturday me and Marco we went to one of the squares in Lisbon where scouts organized a traditional celebration of St. Martin´s day. They were selling cooked chestnuts (kastonus), very light wine ´´aguape´´ and some Portuguese singers were singing fado (traditional melancholic songs - very typical for Lisbon). Check out the video;)

Involvement into AIESEC. One of parallel eperiences I have here in Portugal is involvement in AIESEC. This, to my mind, is a very important part when you go on an internship. And as I am currently the only intern in my LC, I really try hard to let them feel why they are working and what experiences they can have. Short summary of my activities here: member of exchange team, coacher for matching, a member of organizing committee of local conference (check the last message), facilitator in national conference and organizer of the discussion about CSR (coming soon in next messages:)).

Work. New and valuable experience - after 2 months I really feel that I am into the processes. The main challenge - language. Though I am working with files that are in Portuguese:) Sometimes I experience a very strange feeling - people start speaking Portuguese about some hot topic, are envolved into a really intense discussion and as they speak quite quickly I cannot understand anything. Then the feeling is like I am sitting in the cinema and watching a soap opera with really emotional characters:)
I really like my colleagues in the company- they are fun and friendly guys whom I teach Lithuanian, with whom sometimes I go to the cinema, have serious discussions about environment, Portuguese culture, have funny situations, and fights about the temperature that we want to keep in the office (I am the one who is always hot even with short sleeves:)).

Routine and mastery. Just recently I have read Macy´s blog (Portuguese-Cape Verdian intern straying in India, Jaipur) about change of the routine when you are abroad. And that is true. However, in my case it was more not the change of the routine but lack of the routine. Some of you might argue that that´s a perfect situation. However, routine is highly needed if you want to learn: to reflect about your experience, to gain some news skills, to really live. So, now I feel more or less comfortable with the established routine and at the same time enjoying crazy unplanned moments:)

Warm greetings and kisses:*

Ruti