Rain in Spain stays mainly in the Plain: Portugal!

Yesterday morning I woke up at 4:30 in order to be at the school at 6 to leave for Portugal! Needless to say, yesterday kind of dragged on and on. It was still a great day though because I entered a brand new country! Portugal country-side is basically indistinguishable from the Spain countryside. It took a sign to tell me we had entered Portugal haha. Even after we entered the country, we had a little while before we reached Evora, the first city we visited this weekend. The entire drive yesterday wore me out. After playing basketball Thursday, sitting in a bus for 6+ hours just about killed my back. I need a massage (hint hint David)!!! Oh well, I guess I'll have to wait 3 weeks for that...

Anywho, Evora was a beautiful city, somewhat similar to the Spanish cities we've visit. It had an old Moorish palace (part of it), a lot of Catholic influence and an old Roman temple. Something interesting observations in Evora: they appeared to be having an old car rally, felt like I was home for Autumn trails haha. They had a park with wild peacocks and an adorable old couple sitting in the park. In Portugal, a popular type of architecture is the Manueline style. It incorporates ropes and seaweeds and other maritime symbols. It is very unique to Portugal and I am glad I got to see several examples of this while in Portugal, one in Evora and another in Lisbon today. Also, cork either originates in Portugal or has become extremely popular here. Also cork can be used to make clothes, jewelry, umbrellas, postcards, coasters, hats, etc... As I said, it is VERY popular here.

Last night, we went to a huge mall to find some food. We ended up eating Pizza Hut, so I sorta consider it a success. But I was glad I went and got to see this ridiculous mall. It literally had a roller coaster in it along with every kind of store you could want and a supermarket that was at least as big as a super wal-mart. We should have wal-marts in malls! Its just convenient! It also had touch screen interactive mall maps. Makes our malls look shabby haha. I got some snacks to hold me through the weekend because I'm eating cheap meals since I forgot to withdraw money before we left Spain. Tomorrow we are going to tour a neighboring city which also means we get to go to the beach! Yay for getting tan. Hard to believe I've traveled from one side of the Iberian peninsula to the other in a week.

Random fact: Asian tourists love Americans. We were taking a group picture and they came up to take a picture of us, then wanted to get in the picture with us. It was a whole big mess of craziness that I couldn't even understand haha. That's all I can think of right now because my brain is a little tired, but I'll post again Monday when I have wifi again! I love and miss everyone from back home!