de retour

I arrived back in Angoulême late Saturday night and tomorrow I'll get back on the train to go to Paris, before flying back to the States Wednesday morning. I am not looking forward to the trip. Basically, I hate luggage. Particularly luggage that contains things accumulated over 7+ months in Europe.

My two weeks in Faro were fabulous. It was hot and sunny, which were basically the only two things that interested me. Food was, geralmente, excellent. I love fish and so do the Portuguese, so we get along well in the kitchen. I had some tasty lulas grelhadas (grilled baby squid) and tried grilled sardinhas for the first time. I did, however, have a disappointing bacalhau experience. Bacalhau com natas, I love you. Lombo de Bacalhau from Portugalia, we will need to work on our relationship. Granted, I was in a noisy chain cervejeria that specializes in steaks and fries, and a Portuguese friend mentioned (of course, after I ordered) that it wasn't the best place to eat bacalhau. It was dry and chewy and took several swigs of wine per bite to wash down. After making quite a dramatic and over-animated scene (I was in Southern Europe, after all) about the less-than-desirable consistency of my meal, said Portuguese friend then decided to try some and informed me that it really wasn't that bad. On the bright side, the first glass of wine I had reminded me that I had been drinking absolute crap in France and I immediately felt a wave of embarrassment and wanted to take back the bottle of Vin Charentais I'd just offered my friend. And to this day, I have yet to have a glass of Portuguese wine that I haven't liked.

The language course was so-so. Somehow I tested into Level II, which comes after studying Portuguese for 4 weeks. Not really "somehow"; the test was written and I made lots of good guesses. I spent the first day or so just speaking Spanish with a Portuguese accent. This was received by my teacher with mixed results. It was the first time that I've studied a langugage since becoming a language teacher myself and I thought my teacher was pretty awful. Her common response to a question was: "Porque não fica bem!" followed by laughter to emphasize how silly we were for questioning pronoun placement. Ha ha, you're right. What a silly estrangeira I am!

A word about the Portuguese language: it's hard. Maybe I'm getting old, or maybe I just blocked painful memories of learning Spanish and French, or maybe I should remind myself that I've only actually studied the language for 10 days. But, I don't remember French and Spanish being this hard. The pronunciation is bizarre and nasal-y and beautiful at the same time and when I hear myself speaking it I feel like my mouth has no business making sounds like that. But, it has irritated my inner (well, let's face it, I'm not exactly hiding it) language nerd and I will not be satisfied until I speak it fluently.

So, for now, it's back to packing and doing a few more bicep curls so that I'll be able to carry my luggage. Next time, I'll be in Greensboro.