Wipin' my face on my shoulder.

Lo and behold, Sunday morning rolls around and I, yes I, am on Maintenance Shift today. As you have probably read from Emily's note - working with Natividad is always an interesting experience. This morning was nothing short of interesting. The story begins here:

9 o'clock - I am in the staff house reading my Bible, praying and cleaning the staff house. I get a call from Emily asking me to come to the Reception because Natividad needs me. I sighed and put my shoes on slightly hesitant for the challenge ahead. I arrived at Reception and looked around for The Beast but Emily told me, "She needs you in the bathroom". My heart stopped. The.... the.... Bathroom? I've heard stories of this so called bathroom. I put my big girl panties on and walked over to "the bathroom". When I arrived i saw Natividad spraying the whole girls bathroom down from the inside with a hose. The walls. The toilets. The showers. The sinks. Soap was flying. Poop and toilet paper were flying. I was scared. Not just scared - horrified. What was to become of the sandals Zack and Kristen bought me for my 18th birthday? I took a deep breath from the outside of the bathroom and entered. She looked my direction and exclaimed, "Gracia!" I took a few more steps forward with a helpful face. She rambled off some Portuguese that i did not understand until the fifth or sixth time of her repeating it and us playing charades. I knew what I needed. I exited the bathroom in search of the Trash Picker-up-ers. I found them near the exit of the Reception - "that was easy" i thought to myself. I brought them back to her and she sighed and said something about "sacos"... It was then I realized that to pick up trash we WOULD need trash bags. I scampered on back to Reception this time in search of trash bags. This was easy as pie. Get 'em, got 'em, gone. Back in the bathroom i picked up piles of trash that i assumed were from the showers. Wads of hair, hair clippies, and old bottles of shampoo mixed in with dirt, sand and grime from who knows where. After i gathered the piles of nastiness i moved on to the girls individual trash cans in each toilet stall. This was nothing short of absolute gag-induced work. What I don't understand is why people choose to throw away poopy toilet paper in the small trash cans instead of just FLUSH IT! We are not in South America. The toilets flush just fine here!
....Back to my story. After I had gone through at least 12 individual girl trash cans I felt like I had had enough. What more could be done? Well, like they say, "you think it's as bad as it can get - it can always get worse." Natividad signaled to me to follow her and we creeped out of the girl's bathroom around the corner towards the boy's bathroom. This was not going to be pretty. When we peered into the boy's bathroom there were a few boys getting dress and walking around. Natividad rambled off something in Portuguese and then started repeating "Muito Rapido!". She motioned that I would be doing this one alone. Oh great... alone in a bathroom full of smelly guys = Grace's lifelong dream. I swept and picked up the trash minding my own business when the guys started talking to me. Is it just me or does talking to a person of the opposite sex while they're cleaning your bathroom seem a bit odd? Finally they all left and as I was going to get the hose to hose down the walls and anything, everything & everyone in site - in walks Armando back from church ready to help. So he willingly grabbed the hose and finished the boys bathroom. There are some things to be grateful for. :)
After doing a job of that sort - your hands don't go anywhere near your face or mouth. That's when "Wipin' my face on my shoulder" line was born. After we were dismissed, I ran to the staff house and washed my hands a few times as a surgeon would. Up to my elbow. I changed my clothes and then settled here to write this.


-Grace

Thursday, July 16.

Grace here.
Sorry for the long period of not journaling. I haven’t been spending quite as much time in Reception. We separated shifts so that there are only 3 shifts and I don’t like being in Reception when I do not have to be. I really haven’t been to the beach much since the first week. I really wish I made more time to go out there. Maybe later today if I get maintenance work done in time I can spend most the afternoon out there. I need sun.

The effects of being here are wearing on both Emily and I in many ways. Don’t get me wrong, we love it here but it’s impossible to not think of what we’re coming home to and all the responsibilities that need to be taken care of before we move off to college. Sleep has become less and less, and we all know my issues with food. Thankfully I will be receiving food either today or tomorrow from my bakery and possibly my mother as well. But we receive our strength to go on only from our Father in Heaven. He is what gets us through each day.

My adventure to the beach today was very disappointing. Michi and I got ready, went to the beach and it was very cloudy. We were hoping that the sun would come out and then we could get a tan… but instead it became cloudy, windy, and began to rain not 30 minutes after we arrived. So we came back.

-I did not get a chance to post this, so I’m posting it unfinished.-

Ahh, Portugal..

WARNING: not to be read by future roomates of grace or emily. do not read if you feel strongly about hygiene, on personal appearance. the featured characters names have been changed to protect their identitiy.
DISCLAIMER: this does not neccassarily reflect the thoughts or values of "Claudia adn Maria´s" parents

I dont know about how everyone else would feel about living here, but Claudia and i love it: )it´s not the cool ocean breezes, nor the warm sun, or the beautiful skies at sunset. Even though we enjoy it, it´s not the bike rides to the resturaunt on the river, or the seafood gumbo they serve. It´s not that we love our easy job at the reception desk, although we do. It´s not the sound of crashing waves outside our window; not the sound of nightlife and Portuguese bongos across the street. Not the ferry rides or the beautiful waterfalls that we love. What we love is: making odd faces when we notice people staring at us, watching the little kids have pinecone fights, squishing the ants that run across the computer screen, and the ongoing war with the ones trying to nest in our bathroom, it´s hanging the clothes on the line and wearing dirty ones, refurnishing our room, making the boys clean up after themselves, writing letters home, and ,at night, running as far down the path as we can before the light turns off, watching eagerly for hedgehogs, speaking in foreign languages and playing charades, remembering english in aw, it´s salada de fruita, and best of all NOT having to shower: )
getting dressed...
Maria & Claudia: (pick up shirt from pile. smell the shirt, put the shirt on)
Claudia: (looks towards Maria and smiles) Oh, you do that too?
Maria: do what?
Claudia: smell your dirty shirts then put them on anyway
Maria: hah yeah. hand me the deoterant when you´re done

refurnishing the room...
Maria: now all we need is a nice rug
Claudia: yeah, we should get a rug
MOMENTS LATER...
Maria: hey look a rug!(throws blanket on the floor as Claudia and Maria wipe their feet on the ´new rug´)
Claudia: (smiles)
Maria: *happy sigh
Claudia: hey wait, are you sure that ones not your blanket? there´s another one here
Maria: (grabs blanket off bed. examines blanket. it looks like the dirty one) aw darn, that WAS my blanket we just wiped our feet on: (
Claudia: .....
Maria: (shakes out ´new rug´turns inside out and places on bed, replaces with new, ´new rug´)

talks of things to come...
Maria: maybe we should shower before lunch.
Claudia: yeah, .. idk maybe
Maria: well we didnt last night, but i´ll see how we feel about it when i wake you up.
Claudia: but it´s Europe! we dont need to shower: )
Maria: but you havnt showered in FOUR DAYS!

Maria: i think we need a calendar
Claudia: yeah, im getting all confused, what day is it?
Maria: monday... the .. 6th i think. how long have we been here?
Claudia: well,.. i think we´ve been here eight days now..
Maria: that sounds about right, we shower every four days, and we´ve only showered twice i think

Tonight in reception.

I have learned:

Anyone, any race, any language can sing Knockin' on Heaven's Door, I'm Yours & Here Without You.

Because i am blonde, they like me. :/

Any shoe can fit... just not well.

The portuguese don't know the phrase "Awkward Turtle".

There is no need to whisper when no one knows your language.

Anyone, any race, any language WILL enjoy taking pictures on Photobooth.

You dont need English to smell each others shoes.

That it is fun to insult each other in as many languages as possible. Name-calling is always great.

Late nights with people of another country make for some great memories and great pictures :)

Thursday & Friday in Portugal

Olá from Grace, here!

I am working reception, again. Last night was really ridiculously fun! After working reception i went to the beach to hang out with Donnie, Emily and the Belgians. They were having a scout initiation and each new kid had to do a bunch of silly things. (like, acting out Michael Jackson dancing, or pretending to be Gollum.) Anyways, so we enjoyed watching younger Belgians making fools of themselves. After awhile of being there a young Belgian approached me and the following conversation occured:

"Hello, what is your name?"

"Grace, and yours?"

"Marteial. Where in the states are you from?"

"Louisana."

"Oooh, cool. You are very beautiful. Will you marry me?"....."Please say yes."

"Umm, no?"

"But, please! I will take care of you and we can have a house in the countryside and you will never have to go to the grocery store because you can sleep and i'll do all the work."

"How old are you, even?"

"16, and you?"

"18. We are illegal in America. We cannot get married."

"But when you are older you will want a younger man with big muscullation."

"No, i am sorry, Marteial."

(There was a lot of pausing in between for him to ask for translation from Martin, another Belgian who knew English.)

Later on i received a lot of puppy faces from this Marteial. And later they told me that I broke his heart. He ended up drinking a lot last night and they carried him back to camp. We ended up not going back to our house until 4am. Emily and I didn't drink, but others did.

We have a house cat named, Frank. He is a pure black cat with yellow eyes. We invited him in to our house but didn't know that he actually came in until later in the evening when we found him asleep on Donnie's bed. He's very sweet. I still miss Tito and Copper horribly, though.

I played fútbol yesterday on the beach with Emily and now my muscles are sore. I haven't run like that in a long time. Oh! and it looks like we'll be able to see Metallica and Slipknot. :) We have to double check first. I'm really starting to like Portuguese rock music, it's very good. Good strong lyrics. I'll probably buy a cd.

Well, that is all for now. I'm living for 4:30pm when I can go to the beach and lay out :) Can't wait!

Much love!

In Christ,

Grace

...What do we do?

a lot of people have asked what i actually DO here. so i figured i'd share some snippets of camp life.
so the first day grace an i were at camp we decided to take a shower. the bathrooms here are dirty there were spider webs all over, adn ants, (that dont bite) all over the floor, and it was pretty sandy. the sink and shower were sort of rust colored, and the mirror was blurry. so we decided we'd have to clean it before we'd actually get clean. we found some old brooms and swept the walls and the floors, then used clorox wipes to clean the towel racks and sink. we found some soap,(it was actually Tide) and used it to scrub the shower. i feel like snow white with seven dwarfs out here: )
the second night here i went to a camfire with some younger Portuguese scouts. they sang funny songs, and performed skits. they all stared at us with huge eyes, and tried to speak the little english they knew. one of the little boys said he was michael jackson and started dancing.
we went grocery shopping and learned a lot of Portuguese, adn how to say the names of foods. and practiced a lot of charades.
for dinner and supper we eat at a resturaunt down the street. the first two days we got a lot of stares and a few laughs at the way we eat. it had gotten better, until yesterday afternoon when they gave us some kind of seafood gumbo. it was really good, and we ate very civilized. but then we tried to eat the crab claws.. grace and i had eaten them before and knew we'd need somthing to crack them open, so we asked the waiter and he brought us a cutting board, some pliers, and a small mallot. its hard to explain what happened next ..well, the other guy with us took the mallot, i took the pliers, and was trying to break it, and he suddenly smashed the crab to peices, and it went all over the place. our table was splattered, and much of the floor. the waiters stared and the whole room was laughing. i think some of the Portuguese eat there just to see what the crazy Americans will do next.
we dont have much work to do here, except we take shifts working reception. there's not much to do, we normally just sit and wait. and check facebook. other than that we sit on the beach.
now you know what we do: )

-Emily

First few days.

Olá from Emily & Grace!

I will make this short because i am itching to go to the beach and soak up some sunrays. They say i'm beginning to look portuguese and that i also have a very nice portuguese accent.

We have Belgian and Portuguese campers for another week, i believe. They are very nice... The Belgians like to make noise and drive fast - but are very nice. They speak french - which i do not know. I am learning, though. I haven't met the new Portuguese campers yet. My Portuguese is getting much better, hopefully i'll be able to speak for myself before the end of next week.

Emily and i find ourselves on the beach, a lot. We eat, sleep, sit around and go to the beach. That's about it. The Portuguese complain of this being hot weather 20-35 degree Celsius. But it is NOT hot, it is so beautiful compared to the hot and humid Louisiana. There are always birds chirping and lizards scrambling around. At night the Portuguese and Belgians play the bongos.

The waiters no longer laugh at Emily and I about our eating habits, they now just wink. We get looks fairly often. Kinda strange being a rarity over here when we're normal back in America.

Emily and I have written quite a few letters which we will try to mail out tomorrow. We found out that the post office is only open from 10:00-12:30! What a short time!

Today, we woke up at 9:45 and cleaned the cabin. I did laundry, which was fun because we hang our clothes on a clothes line! So much fun :) and since there's no humidity our clothes dry fast. I've done near to 4 loads of laundry just today. ...I need to fold clothes. We went and ate lunch at the normal restaurant and walked back.

Tonight i have late shift, just until 12am you worriers! But i think we might try to close early so we can go climb the 2nd tallest lighthouse in the world. It's a couple miles down the beach.

Next week we go to Lisbon to hang out for a day or two and to MAYBE see Metallica and Slipknot in concert! :)

Oh, our mothers would be proud.. Emily and I have been cleaning our bathroom, kitchen and room quite frequently. We even scrubbed! I, however, did not bring enough clothing... i just have to wash alot. I guess that's okay. I can always buy clothes here.

Ciao!

-Grace