Summary

Theme Tune: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJYZl1Ewoxk This song means A LOT! It has followed me around Lisbon... played it LOUD in Maria's car...


OK a summary is needed here because just too much has happened. Katarina has LEFT another GOODBYE. It the most surreal by far… we were spending all our time together before she left and then, “poof”, she is gone. We went to the top of the Sheraton hotel to say goodbye. It was surreal as hell. Maria was very upset indeed.
That weekend, I missed ANOTHER Erasmus party and went to the house of Maria, where her younger siblings needed looking after. They are adorable, the most caring children I have met, always asking me if I needed something, sharing everything. Maria has hammocks and clear stars and sandy roads and cork trees. Cooked bacalhau com nata and ate together and made up a song or two. It was just what I wanted. The next day, in the afternoon, I rode a moped for the first time. Wonderful! Freedom… golden light… sand. Saturday night was Cesars goodbye meal. Then a gypsy band covered in paint with a crowded room of dancing people. On Sunday I studied all day. On Monday I went to university, had lunch with the man in the jewelry shop, bought lots of things, cleaned the house, studied.
I keep meeting random people. It is easy here. Today – a masters student from London but Portuguese, a tramp from Czech republic, an angel on the bus (I will explain. Feeling a bit… blue, I suppose, on the bus to university. Wanted energy, and comfort. A German guy gets on, a bit lost. Start chatting. He collects fortune cookie slips and sticks them onto cash machines. Brilliant. Ended up showing him the university. At the end he told me to close my eyes and imagine I was in a cosy room with my Granny and she had just cooked buns and it was warm in there. Perhaps he saw that I needed comfort like that. It was surreal. Like god had sent him or something.)