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