We're in Coimbra!

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Well, we officially live in Portugal now! We got an apartment today that we’re really happy with, have already gotten cell phones, and have applied for bank accounts (which required a whole other set of minor administrative tasks that went surprisingly smoothly). We even went to Carrefour today and got stocked up with kitchen supplies and sheets and towels and stuff.

Coimbra seems to be a fairly pleasant city, despite being kind of hot right now. We’re told that the heat will soon give way to months and months of cold, rainy weather, which actually sounds pretty nice right now.

The people here have been really nice to us and almost everyone we’ve come across has spoken at least some English. People seem very willing to go out of their way to help the confused foreigners - our landlords came with us today to help us get telephone and internet set up in our apartment, the guy we bought a little TV from at Carrefour stuck around while we paid to make sure we got a discount for buying the display model, the woman behind me in line showed me where to get a box to put the glasses we were buying in so that they wouldn’t break, etc… I suppose this might get irritating once we feel like we know what we’re doing a little better, but for now it’s very welcome.

That’s all for now - we’re going to spend the next few days getting settled in our apartment and exploring the town and the university a little before we head off to London at the end of next week.

- Lindsay

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