Lisbon T-27

Hi gang,

Well, the 5 of you that read this!! Well, Blanchettes, my period here in Spain is nearly over and done with. I'm a bit ambivilous about leaving Casellón. At the end of the day, it has been my home for 5 months, and you sort of get used to a place after a while. I'm sure I would have enjoyed it much more if I had been here over summer!!

Well, at least I'm going somewhere nice for Summer! I'll be in sunny old Lisbon! I'm so looking forward to it it's untrue!! I'm excited about going and experiencing a different place and getting used to a different culture. You know, I think I could do almost anything after this. Afterall, I have moved my entire life over to a foreign country, where I know only my flatmate, but you know what? I survived it!! As Heather Small asks in her song Proud, "What have you done today to make you feel proud?" Plenty! I've setteled in at work, greatly improved my Spanish (I have my off-days though!) and managed to survive in what is frankly, a place very different from my customery territory of Manchester. My workmates didn't hang me for being a gay, in fact Gemma was showing me all the places to go out to that I didn't kow about.

So yeah, I'm happy at the end of it all. I feel like I can do anything! It's a mad feeling! I suppose I'm happy at how I've coped and managed with everything. I miss all my mates, I miss Mark and I miss mum, dad and Jenny (however nowty she is!), but I coped ok. Bar a few teary moments in the first few weeks. I remeber one occasion coming in after my mega-slog journey and having had Mª Carmen (landlady) waffling to me for ages about the flat and she'd gone, I just broke down for about half an hour. It's a necessity though, I consider it to be part of the transition, and it does good to get it out of the system!

I've not achieved as much as I hoped I would have done, language-wise, but ye olde Spanish has definately improved, and once I get going, I'm actually quite good, which gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside! Carmen and Nacho both say I can speak Spanish well, and I trust them, so there!!

So... to the land of the Portuguese! It'll be a weird change at first, not having my flatmate ther with me, but hopefully it'll give me the impetus to get out there and meet people. I also decided that Alamada was too far and crossing a river on a ferry every morning would wear thin after about the 3rd time of doing it! So, now, Maria Rosário Braga da Cruz (yep that's her name!! HOW LONG?!) who is the ERASMUS co-ordinator at ISLA (Instituto Superior de Línguas e Administração) has managed to sort a room out in a flat for me!! How helpful is that?! She's got it with other students/workers in a commuter town on the beach called Oeiras.

Apparently Oeiras is a lovely place to live and pass summer! So, if I'm there until August, it'll be fantastic!! I'm going to try and get a job in Lisbon in a bar or a theatre so I can earn and learn at the same time! The CVs are being sent off this week. 5 years in a Box Office have got to be worth something...

Well, I'm going to sign off now, it's late, but I can't sleep! Must have popped a pro-plus instead of paracetomol before. Oh, just following from my last post, here're what I've got on my desk at work...

Ye olde printing calculator from 1995

Ye Olde Brother Daisywheel Typewriter

Jesús' 1970's Typewriter
(Yes, there's somone called Jesús at work; it's a common name here!)
On Jesús' desk, but I thought I'd put it on to show you how old it all was!

Anyway, yes, so, after that bout of randomness, I'm off!

Até logo os meus amigos! Obrigado pelos vossos comentarios!

Ben xxx