So I went running and a bird pooped on my hand. It was disgusting.
Hmmmm, I´m kind of behind in my adventures but I don´t know what to say. Lisbon was just so pretty. It was a lot cleaner and the people were nicer, and better yet, everybody spoke English! They have this weird abundance of American culture in Spain and Portugal. In Spain, all the tv shows are American and all my family ever watches are American movies dubbed into Spanish. When we´re on the bus they´ll play the radio, and all of the songs are in English. Yesterday, they were playing Tom Jones´¨Sex Bomb¨ and I was just dying. For Arrested Development fans, I heard them play GOB´s ¨Final Countdown¨on the radio one time. It made my day. They will play all the weirdest things and I just think it is so funny that they have no idea what is going on. But in Portugal they have the same amount of American TV and movies and music, but they don´t have anything dubbed. Everything is in subtitles, so I guess they all learn English so they can actually watch TV and movies without having to read the whole time.
We had dinner as a group the last night we were in Lisbon and it was interesting. They gave us disgusting kelp soup and all sorts of other weird foods and they gave us so much that I couldn´t finish even half of it. I told the waitress I was done and she looked very critically at my plate before she took it away. Anyway, the best part of our dinner was our director, Quina. She was telling us all the European social codes we were breaking. Hold your knife like this, your fork like this, never put your feet on the table, etc. Then she saw me pick up a french fry with my hand and she said, ¨Gianna, never EVER do that! Here, we only eat french fries with a fork.¨ Then we asked the waitress for ketchup and Quina was immediately embarrassed to be seen with such barbaric Americans. She said that asking for ketchup was just ¨so not the thing to do.¨ If it is so passe, then why do they have it in stock? I was feeling like the big dumb American that all the Europeans judge us as, but then I remembered all the things Europeans do, such as: whistle, hiss, honk, stare, and make kissing noises at girls almost constantly; smoke in restaurants; let their dogs poop on the sidewalks; blow smoke in everone´s faces; throw cigarette butts everywhere; wear pink/black/polka dotted, etc. underwear under white skirts, pants or whatever so anything that is underneath is completely showing (I see this on a regular basis); and a host of other weird or impolite things that make eating french fries smothered in ketchup with my hands not seem so bad.This also reminds me of their odd food habits. Such as leaving food uncovered on the counter--meat included--for hours and then serving it to us. And our host dad told us about this kind of gourmet cheese they have here that absolutely makes me want to vomit. So they make the cheese, wrap it in leaves, and then stick it in the manure of horses or cows to age. He said the cheese was considered its best when the maggots inside were still alive. I´m not making this up. But he thought it was gross, too, so I guess everybody here isn´t crazy. Well, I´m out of time. I have to catch the bus because we are going to the Reina Sophia today, which is a modern art museum. I´m really excited.