Blogs from Coimbra, Central, Portugal, Europe - page 6

We just finished our first week of classes. It’s a pretty intense schedule, with 23 hours of class a week and four different subjects. We’re both in the beginning level, which has moved really fast (present tense, present progressive, ser vs. estar - all in the first 4 days!). As we expected, we are among the oldest students in the class. There are about 35 students in our class, and maybe 3 or 4 other people who are beyond standard college age. It’s been fine, though, and a lot of the students are really friendly. We’re the only Americans, and there are two girls from Quebec, and everyone else is European - there are a surprising number of students from Eastern Europe - Lithuania, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary - as well as a lot from Turkey. We ... read more

Friday was kind of an odd/funny day because it was the first day that we needed to find our own internet access because we couldn’t use the hotel’s wireless network anymore (we checked out on Thursday) and our appointment with Portugal Telecom to set up DSL in our apartment is not until next week. We need internet at least every weekday so Lindsay can do her translation work and so I can write about the mundane details of our lives (and a few interesting things) for this blog. We started our quest for an internet connection by going to the free internet café in the touristy part of town, but there wasn’t any way for Lindsay to connect with her own laptop and there was a 30 minute time limit to use their computers and a ... read more

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 ... read more