Finally I have the chance to let everybody know something of me!It has been a rough time, a nice time, a hot time, a long time...Right now I am in the library of my department, where I have already been shouted at by the erasmus coordinator for not having a studyplan, but getting here is a much longer story.Since my arrival at the airport in Lisboa the 4 of september, I stayed for a week in Cláudias house. I learned more how to ride the motorbike and how to ride the horse (still not very good at either of those). Even though there weren't a lot people in the house, it seemed crowded. People speak so fast in portuguese that it doesn't matter anymore how many people are there, you don't understand any of the conversations (1,2,vééél...). On the other hand, it is the best preparation I could have had: on my arrival day I had to do a very quick language test and was assigned to the highest level portuguese group after about three questions...(I am not going to write my answers here...) and notice that in these groups there is only one other person, a french girl, who is able to understand our professor of conversation the first time she says a sentence. Only one person talking at the time, it's a piece of cake or 'é caja'. Coimbra is to my estimation some ten times bigger then leuven, and the university has the same characteristic: engineering is on a campus far away from the center. My appartment is already very close to the distant campus (still a long walk, I have to get me a bike), which means that walking to the center takes about forty-five minutes. Not a problem, there is a bus stop in front of my appartment, takes me there in five! But sorry are those who go to the center to have dinner with other erasmus guys and only later find out that busses stop driving at a by Leuvens standards shocking 20:30! Nice walk home that was...So, after two days of walking and portuguese classes, I decided to skip my afternoon class of portuguese culture (figured I'd breathe that enough in the weekends to come) and took it on myself to walk to my polo II.
on hour later
After having asked the way about five times and after forty five minutes of walking in the sun still being laughed at that is would be still a long way to go, I found something that looked like a university building... I was pretty sad as it proved to be the high shool.anyway, I finally get to PoloII, I enter the first building in sight, find the cafetaria, go to closest table and ask for directions... The luck I must have to ask it to the lady assistant engineer responsible for my thesis who was talking to the lady doctorate student whom I will be working for ! They direct me to the reception desk, where a really tall guy (for belgium as for portuguese standards), takes me to a lesson that the coordinator of the erasmus students was attending. I didn't understand all of that, I would have waited, for sure... The professor asks my name, my country and what I want to do here, and I answer her very politely... She starts to give a kind suppressed scream while saying that I can only be here to do a masters work because she is sure that I didn't send here a study plan. If I had done, she would have had to sign it and she surely didn't do that. I would have to wait for her lesson to be over, go to her office and see what my options still were...Like a beaten dog I go back to the reception, thinking by myself what just had happened. I remember having seen that lady's picture on the internet as coordinator, indeed. I remember that communication to coimbra was not as fluent as I had hoped, faxes must have been on strike or something. I get worried that she is right in never having received my studyplan... I talk to the receptionists again, they looks up my file and find my studyplan, signed an all... just not signed by her ! The moment my documents needed signing, she was out of the country, so a colleague of her had to do that...In half an hour I am going to know how and what... have a meeting with her, hope we can solve this.See you guys soon !
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