• Portugal is kind of strange because every time I feel like it's not an inefficient southern European country, something happens to reaffirm that we are still Mediterranean in character if not in physical location, as well as the reverse happening whenever I start to get irritated by the fact that I willingly chose to live among lazy southern Europeans.
• Portuguese is precisely as easy as I thought it was, and I have somehow managed not to make a bumbling idiot out of myself using it more than a respectable number of times. Dealing with Brazilians, on the other hand, skews the distribution.
• Our wonderful host university, supposedly the highest ranked in all of Portugal, and most certainly with the greatest prestige, can not seem to get its shit together. I went in a few days after getting here to talk to the person who is supposed to be in his office all week on a regular schedule to get set up as a student at the university but instead left empty-handed with no one knowing when or if he might come into the office at any point during the week.
• The soldes phenomenon of government-regulated (read: mandated) sales in pretty much all stores exists outside of France, as it turns out, and I happened to arrive right in the middle of them. Hello, Zara.
• My apartment has no climate control whatsoever like a true, typical cheap apartment building constructed in the '90s, but the location is as good as they get and the rent is low to compensate. Can't have everything I suppose.
• Given the previous, my apartment is less of an apartment and more of an igloo. Wearing layers in the house almost doesn't work between the hours of sundown to midday and taking a shower is an exercise in something resembling idiocy, futility, and extreme lack of sex appeal.
• The hills of Portugal are stunningly beautiful and great for your ass.
• The city is kind of grungy and ...well lived-in, but it's got a character second to none. As well as views. Holy crap, the views.
Até já!
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