Lucky 13

Portugal became my 13th country this weekend! (At least by my count, which only includes the countries I was old enough to remember.) Alemana and I joined an exchange student organization's excursion to Lisboa and Porto - that's Lisbon and Oporto in English, since we like to modify even the names we could just as easily pronounce anyway. I am very happy I made it to Portugal while I'm so close already, but perhaps there's something to the superstitions about the number 13...

Our group consisted of 70 people, including our 5 leaders, and Alemana and I counted at least 13 different nationalities. (There's that number again!) Our ten-hour bus ride started late Thursday night, and we arrived in Lisboa Friday morning to find out we couldn't get into our hostel rooms until that afternoon.
So we set off to see the San Jorge Castle slightly less fresh than daisies, in Thursday's clothes, complete with bus breath and ratty hair. How do you say 'multinational zombie invasion' in Portuguese? Well anyway, we didn't have long to wait for our showers at least because it started raining while we were waiting for the 100-year-old tram to take us up to the castle. San Jorge might be interesting and beautiful, but we wouldn't know because no sooner had we entered the castle grounds than it started POURING. We stampeded into the castle museum, which was literally just fragments of pottery and ceramics from various eras... Woo... By the time the weather calmed down enough for one of our leaders to attempt explaining the castle's history, everyone was so freezing and soaked (and tired and hungry and grungy) that he wisely cut it short before we out-and-out revolted.

If a picture says a thousand words, this more than sums up the weekend in Portugal...

Everyone perked up after we went back to the hostel and were able to change, eat, etc. Alemana and I befriended Viki, a music student from Hungary, and the return of our good moods might have had something to do with the bottle of wine we split over lunch.

The post-lunch city tour of Lisboa was our first hint that the trip was not going to be exactly what Alemana and I had anticipated when we'd read the description of our itinerary. The trip had touted an agenda of city tours in both Lisboa and Porto, tram rides, sangria nights, entrance to the castle, a boat ride and wine tasting as part of the price. It didn't take long to realize why all that seemed like an unbelievably good deal...

Plaza del Comercio, Lisboa

Our Lisboa tour consisted of walking around the city in the off-and-on downpour, and stopping outside the noteworthy buildings and squares and scenic overlooks while our intoxicated leaders tried to explain them. Which went something like this: "5 minute explanation in Spanish. Now English: So what you see here is, uh... The church of the (insert name)...And uh, well anyway, yeah." I mean...On one hand I was incredibly happy I understood the Spanish, but knowing the extent of just how badly they mangled the translations - and how much information everyone who didn't speak Spanish missed - made me cringe more than a little. Maybe that makes me a snob, but I wasn't very impressed with our drunk, unofficial tour guides to begin with.

Our sangria night was just as high quality and organized as our city tour. But thankfully sitting on a hostel floor drinking something akin to alcoholic kool-aid has a way of making you forget you're sitting on a hostel floor drinking something akin to alcoholic kool-aid instead of having the sangria you imagined. Alemana decided she was going to convince as many people as she could that she was American, so I challenged her to convince some of the other Germans she was American - in German (Nice twist, right?) We had a fun introduction to Portuguese clubs and made friends with a girl from Belfast.

We left for Belém the next morning, in the outskirts of Lisboa. We got another homemade tour of the tsunami memorial, Torre de Belém (Belem Tower) and Jerónimos monastery and cathedral. And of course Viki, Alemana and I sampled the traditional pasteles de Belém (Belem cakes), usually called simply pasteles de nata (cream cakes), which are the little custard tarts that area is known for.

Torre de Belém

We stopped in Aveiro on our way to Porto for a canal tour in the moliceiros, traditional gondola-esque boats that were used to collect seaweed to fertilize the fields.

Our first order of business once we finally arrived in Porto was dinner, a three course affair in the hostel restaurant that included plenty of red wine and an introduction to a group of a Greek and two Italian guys. (By this point, Alemana had forgotten who she'd told she was American and who she'd told she was German, so our social interactions ended up being pretty hilarious as the groups of people we talked to mixed into different configurations.) We had another shoddy sangria night followed by another fun night out. We made sure we left the club with a couple guys from our group since we hadn't really paid attention to the route from our hostel and then ended up being the ones who saved their butts from being lost multiple times in the ten-minute walk.

Sunday was our day in Porto, and started with - what else! - a city tour. Conducted by a drunk group leader, this time complete with the Harry Potter glasses and scar still drawn on his face from the night before. Which, come to think of it, you could consider culturally appropriate in the city where JK Rowling lived for 2 years, with the fountain that inspired Gryffindor's name and the book store that served as the movie set for Flourish and Botts.

The saving grace was that we finally had some beautiful weather, and Porto is a beautiful city. Viki, Alemana and I had lunch and gelato by the Douro river and soaked up the atmosphere and intermittent sun. Even though Portugal and Spain share a peninsula, I think they have a distinctly different feel to them. I don't properly know enough about Portuguese culture to honestly say how they differ, but it was nice to simply know - for whatever intangible reason - that I was in a different place.



Our last agenda items were a wine tasting and boat cruise on the river. By that point, you can imagine Alemana and I's reaction when our fearless leaders boarded the boat with grocery store bags full of various brands of white and red port. Went something like, "Yup. Saw that coming." So the 70 of us cruised up and down the Douro river for about an hour, swigging port straight out of the bottles and watching our leaders recreate the Titanic scene.

The grand twist came when our boat tour was over, and we proceeded to go to an ACTUAL PORT CELLAR for a tour and tasting!
Madre mia, a legitimate activity!!!
Things went quickly back to normal though, when - surprise! - they'd accidentally booked our tour in Portuguese. A little problematic when about half our group already spoke little to no Spanish. I was pretty delighted to learn I could more or less follow the general idea though. As a native English speaker, I've always been intrigued by languages that are closely enough related that their speakers can essentially understand each other without actually learning the other language. English has some pretty far-removed variations that may seem like sister languages, but this phenomenon doesn't actually exist for us anglophones. It was cool to finally get a taste of it for myself.

Lucky for us, the Portuguese speak infinitely better English than the Spanish, and we found someone to give us a tour we could legitimately understand without too much trouble. The Ferreira cellars are some of the oldest port cellars, and we got to learn a bit about the production process. I didn't like the white port, but the classic red was tasty. Alemana showed me how to swirl 'n' sip properly, and I just ignored our group leader opening a bottle with his teeth next to us...

In a lot of ways, our weekend was more than miss than hit, but I don't hold that against Portugal. For better or worse, country 13 was certainly memorable!

Happy Leap Day, everyone!

Encycl-au pair

Thanks to being an au pair, I've acquired a lot of random facts.
Little, especially, is insatiably curious (particularly when it allows her to ask random questions about whatever she's supposed to be studying instead of actually studying it).
My Google history serves as documented proof of the endless questions I get.
One day I sent my friend a link to a meme and she responds,
"That made me laugh, but why in the world does the link have 'do hamsters make noise' in the middle?!"
Because I'm an au pair and these are the things we have to Google,
that's why.

"What do you like better- your hair or your eyebrows?"
This was directed to her father, a propos of nothing, during lunch and I just about choked I was laughing so hard.

"Do you have strawberries in your country?"
She has trouble remember which one actually is 'my country,' so that's her safe term. Incidentally, she also refuses to even try strawberries because she thinks they look gross...

"How was Luke No-sé-que's hair?"
She meant Luke Skywalker.

"What's inside a lava lamp?"
It's primarily a mixture of salt water and the chemicals found in brake fluid and anti-freeze, in case you wanted to know.

"What was the first plant to have seeds?"
Ferns, which is why some types produce spores and other types produce seeds.

"What does lavendar look like?"

"Do hamsters make noise?"
Apparently they do. Middle won that argument.

"Do you celebrate Carnaval in your country?"

"What does ASAP mean?"
This was from Middle while we were reading one day, after already asking what BTW, OMG, NYC and RSVP meant. At which point she finally yelled, "You English people just don't like to talk, do you?!?"

"What do kangaroos eat?"
They're herbivorous grazers, similar to cows.

"Why do both twins have belly buttons?"

"Are fairies real?"
"Nope."
"But they must be real in the US..."
"Why in the US?"
"Because that's where the Tooth Fairy is! What about her?"
(The Spanish version of the Tooth Fairy is a mouse.) I had a deer-in-the-headlights moment over that one. I'm not a fan of lying or ignoring questions, but admitting the Tooth Fairy isn't real starts a domino effect I am not nearly prepared to take responsibility for. I reverted to the mumble-cough-suddenly-remember-something technique.

"What is your fifth favorite animal?"
She knows my first four by heart better than I do. I also get ambushed with personal questions such as my third favorite color and sixth favorite food in Spain.

The best (and occasionally worst...) part is Little retains the information I give her, whether it's the answer to one of her inquiries, a personal fact/story I told, or just an everyday conversation we've had.
In a moment of excessive frustration over some division problems that refused to behave, I told Little that sometimes it's ok to scream into a pillow if it helps you blow off steam so you can refocus. About a week later, I was dealing with a huge international banking nightmare while Little did homework on the other side of the screen that divides my bedroom from her playroom. Right at the moment I thought I might legitimately Hulk out, a sweet little voice floats pleasantly from the other side of the divider: "You can scream into a pillow if you need to, Kat. It's ok."

That means I try to stay really conscious of the things I say to her. In that sense, my job as an au pair is 24/7 because those little eyes and ears aren't going to care if I'm 'on duty' or not.
Last week Little received a BFF necklace (Another acronym. Middle might have a point...) from one of her classmates, and was worried about another professed best friend seeing it. She asked me if I thought she should take it off when she knew she was going to see the other girl. You can write it off as meaningless third grade drama, but I put my phone down, sat next to her, and gave it some thought. In my opinion it was actually a tricky situation, one that required her to consider how best to avoid hurting several people's feelings, while also trying to be honest and decide how she would deal with the hypothetical conflict. There isn't an answer that can be so easily Googled for that one.

I hope I'm teaching Little the right things during my time as her au pair. Whether it's a study trick, a fun fact or a life lesson, I never fail to be amazed by the moment a child independently uses something I had previously taught them. I think of it like leaving a fingerprint, and I want to be proud of the fingerprints I've left on this perceptive, hilarious, amazing little kid.

Of course, not every lesson sticks perfectly the first time...
I explained to Little that she needs to use hot water to wash the dishes to kill the germs, only to find her leaning over the soap scum two minutes later hollering, "Kat! What's in the sink? Are those the Germans?!"

And no matter what I say, she still belts out, "It's raining beds, Hallelujah!" every time it rains.

Once Upon A Time In Asturias

Once upon a time, a young woman found herself far away from home in a strange land. Although she lived in a beautiful city, she missed the forests and hills and rivers of her home. So her friends arranged to take her into the wilderness outside the city for a visit. They brought her to lakes surrounded by snow-capped mountains that stretched as far as the eye could see. They walked along clear rivers spanned by bridges that had stood for thousands of years. They visited small villages, where birds sang even in the winter and everything smelled like warm grass. And they stopped at a holy cave, with a waterfall just underneath, cascading into the pool below. Next to this waterfall was an old, mossy fountain with seven spouts. The legend says that anyone who drinks from all seven spouts will find true love within the next year. So the young woman drank from the fountain, and went off to continue living her happily ever after - no matter what happens in the next year.


I spent two weekends recently exploring places so beautiful, only a fairy tale could accurately depict them.

My friend and her family took me to Covadonga, in the Picos de Europa National Park. A striking rose-colored basilica sits on top of a ridge, set against forested mountains. An apparition of Mary is said to have appeared in a cave there, during the fighting between Christians and Muslims. The site is now a small chapel built directly into the rock. And just like the fairy tale says, a waterfall emerges from the cliff directly underneath to fall into a pool below. Where there is indeed a narrow path that leads to an old, mossy, stone fountain with seven spouts that are reputed to bring true love. Where I did indeed drink. The unromantic side to that story is the sign warning that the water isn't purified and how wet and muddy you get in the process, but I had fun with it.

We drove through the mountain roads to two nearby lakes, Enol and Ercina, to have a picnic lunch and take a walk. Asturias is breathtakingly beautiful, reminiscent of the Scottish landscape in places. We ended the day in Cangas de Onís, a small town boasting a Roman bridge arching over a beautiful river that runs with salmon every spring.

I went to Coviella with another friend the next day, to visit her parents' farm. Coviella is a tiny town in the same area as Covadonga, on the fringes of the Picos and overlooking the Sella River. It's full of tiny, winding dirt roads separating adorable houses where everyone seems to have cows in their backyards. My friend taught me how to feed orphaned bunnies milk out of a dropper, and let me hold a lamb. I got to ride through the meadow on her horse Copito (Snowflake). Her mom took us to Lastres, a port town with stunning views of the bay, just to take a walk around. We stopped at a stunning overlook of the Picos, where you could actually see the fog coming in off the ocean to drift between the peaks.

The next week I borrowed a bike and fought the 2 kilometers of hills to Parque de Invierno, where there is a bike path I have wanted to complete for nearly five months. It seemed like around every bend there was something that made my breath catch. The 7-kilometer path runs through forests and farmland and tunnels cutting through the ridges to end at a bridge overlooking a stunning, classically Asturian landscape of village, river, forest and rolling hills dotted with cows. It was one of those crisp fall-like days when the air is sharp and the light is soft, and food somehow tastes infinitely better when eaten on a damp picnic table under the trees. I was exhausted by the time I'd made the 9-kilometer return journey, but well satisfied with having finally met my goal.

Asturias has truly become my idea of paradise. It has the perfect climate, like living in an eternal mix of spring and fall days. One of my favorite things about northern Spain is that birds sing and flowers bloom all year, which makes everything feel like a dream in January and February to this Michigan girl. It has rivers, mountains, forests, farmland and the ocean - all right here. The cities are beautiful and peaceful; the towns are even more beautiful and peaceful. Every day I become more and more enchanted with living here.