Portugal musings

Adam and I have had a great 3.5 days of sightseeing so far in Portugal!  We have seen so many amazing things and I have a ton of cool pictures but I don't have enough time to post them right now, as we've been hanging out in the evenings and working on our presentations.  But I wanted to give a brief outline of the things we've done and some major differences we've noticed in our short time here.

We've basically done many of the major tourist attractions in the main city of Lisbon, including a day trip to a little town called 'Sintra' which has several former royal palaces and a Moorish castle on a hill with fantastic views of the surrounding countryside and the ocean.  We've been to several museums, including an art museum, maritime history museum, and old coach museum.  We've seen several churches and monasteries in Lisbon, including the famous 'Jeronimos Monastery' which is just absolutely intricate and beautiful.

Things that have struck us about Lisbon/Portugal:

- Things are EXPENSIVE!!  China is cheap and Europe is expensive, so the combination is a bit staggering...umph!

-Sky - there is beautiful blue sky with fluffy white clouds everyday!  Its amazing! And we can breathe the air and our feet aren't dirty and our noses aren't completely stopped up...

-Diversity of people - we are not the only 'foreigners' anymore!  In Germany on our layover we noticed that we were short in height compared to Germans; that's not really a problem in Portugal but there are still loads of white and black people around, which is not so in China.

-Understanding conversations/signs - even in Portuguese, I can read most signs, at least the general idea, and Adam speaks fluent Spanish and can communicate with most people.  Its been so great!

- Slower pace of life/tranquility of everyday life.  Things are all rush rush rush in China, even worse than in the US, and Europe is famously opposite of that.

-The food...oh the food.  Its not American, but its generally recognizable, and many more dishes are based around a meat with vegetable sides in the way that is common in America. I am so gaining weight on this short vacation...

-Churches - there are cathedrals and churches everywhere.  Not so in China. Although there are no Buddhist/Daoist temples here ;)

Tomorrow we start our conference-attending in earnest, so our culture shock might trail off to some extent, but be ready for more pictures coming soon!