Octopus Salad and Vasco da Gama!

Location: Off the coast of West Africa

Wow, that was a bit of a leap, huh? Anyone still reading this? It has been 13 days since my last post, and I have now been to Portugal, Spain, and Morocco, as well as completed an essay, two midterms, two quizzes and approximately 150 pages combined readings for my World Literature, Medical Anthropology, and Cross-Cultural Psychology classes! So there was basically a marginal amount of time left over for sleep and no time for blogging. But since we're still a couple of days away from Ghana (and I don't have my third midterm until the day after tomorrow) I thought I'd try to catch up a bit and let you know what I've been up to since Ireland!

Lisbon, Portugal: 9/27-9/28

When we were briefed on Portugal at Logistical Pre-port, we were informed that there was a 100% chance of rain for the first day and a 71% for the second day. Sunny skies were not in the forecast––thunderstorms were. That night the ship was rolling a bit more enthusiastically than usual, and they actually closed the portholes of the folks living on the lower decks. Those whose portholes were not closed (and who actually have them; remember, I'm in an inside cabin, so no porthole) reported seeing lighting over the ocean that night.

Thus the stage is set for my first day in Lisbon, Portugal! We were only going to be there two days, and on the first day I had a field lab for my Mixed Media Visual Journal class. If you recall, field labs are day-long field trips in one of the countries which are a required component for each of our four classes. They tend to be really fun/interesting, and the cost is included in tuition so it feels like a day of everything being free. This would be my second field lab, and the last before I reach South America (yes, I have no field labs on the continent of Africa and two in Brazil alone. Not sure what's up with that.)

Looking out the windows of the ship as we waited for it to clear for disembarkation one could see a swirling and slightly foreboding mass of gray clouds hovering over the whitewashed face of Lisbon. The forecast also said that it was supposed to be in the 70s, a fact which I had trouble reconciling with the view out the window. But sure enough, when we finally stepped off the ship we were buffeted by strong, salty, and very warm winds as we made our way toward the bus.

Strangely enough, it did not rain on us at all that day. It would make up for it the next day, but more on that in a minute.

The field lab was technically supposed to be focused on tile art over Lisbon, but our first stop was actually a non-tile related one: Jerónimos Monastery! We had a quick tour around part of it, and then we each found a place to sit and draw in the main cloister. It was gorgeous, and would have been really fun, except that our teacher insisted we spend the entire time using the continuous line technique (basically after you start drawing you are not allowed to lift up your pencil, so no erasing or moving to another part of the page without drawing yourself a line to get there.) That was really frustrating. We were there for about an hour and I was already exasperated with the technique after about thirty minutes. But the place was beautiful enough to make up for it, even though I had to draw instead of taking a bunch of pictures like I wanted to.

We had boxed lunches from the ship out in front of the monastery, and then headed to a tile museum. We were toured around and then had a little free time to explore the museum on our own or sit and sketch (of course now that I'm tired of drawing we no longer have to use the silly continuous line technique!) Then we went to another museum, and to a workshop where local woodcarvers demonstrated how they craft and restore chairs, tables, desks, and other wooden objects. That was very neat to see, and the guys who did the carving were very friendly and happy to answer questions (most of them spoke English.)

After that we went into another room where we were each set up with our own tiles to paint! There was the option of either using a stencil or making our own design––I chose the latter, and I'm not sure if maybe I ought to have used a pattern, because as usual I was the last person rushing to finish.

We then took a neat, roundabout route through the Alfama district to get back to our bus, and I liked it enough that I took pictures of street signs so that I could navigate myself back there when I explored on my own the next day (I needn't have bothered, because as it turned out it was pretty close and easy to get to from the ship, but I was prepared just the same!)

After we got back to the ship I joined a small group from the class who were headed out to find dinner, and I ended up having a tasty but odd dish of Octopus Salad.

And that was my first day in Lisbon, Portugal!

On the second day I wanted to head out on my own to explore more of the Alfama district. The ship was really docked at an ideal location; it was only about a seven minute walk to get to the area I had wanted to go back to.

Incidentally, did you guys know Lisbon was actually the first port Christopher Columbus's ship returned to after he came to the Americas in 1492? Vasco da Gama also left from Lisbon on his voyage to India (he's actually buried in the monastery I went to on the first day), and while Ferdinand Magellan began his circumnavigation of the globe in Spain, he was originally from Portugal. The country was actually once a major colonial power in the 16th and 17th centuries, and it even signed the Treaty of Tordesillas with Spain in 1494 to divide up the world along an imaginary line in the Atlantic ocean, with everything to the East belonging to Portugal and everything to the West (i.e. the Americas) belonging to Spain. Either by chance or not, that line happened to go right through what is now Brazil, which is why nearly all of Central and South America is made up of Spanish-speaking countries, but Brazil is Portuguese-speaking (because the Portuguese could lay claim to the part of it that was on their side of the line.) I thought that was pretty interesting!

In any case, my second and last day in Portugal was spent exploring Lisbon! After a few hours of meandering around I stumbled upon a huge flea market, which contained an odd mixture of booths: from those that looked very similar to what one might expect to see in the US, with bags, necklaces, artwork and pottery, to a jumble of makeshift areas where people (mostly immigrants, I think) had set out blankets to display garage-sale-esque wares which included second-hand clothes, household items, and old movies. Of course about every other seller had a stack of Portuguese tiles for sale. I walked around and looked at everything for a little while, but then my perusing was interrupted when the heavens opened up and the promised downpour of the previous day was finally unleashed! I tried to huddle beneath my umbrella as I darted from booth to overhang, and eventually ended up sitting outside a little restaurant trying to Skype my mom over a very fuzzy Skype connection.

And since the ship only had two days in Portugal, that was it! I went back to ship and ate dinner out on deck to a lovely panoramic view of the city, and then we set sail for Cadiz, Spain!