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Did yoga, met runner. Took her advice later that night.

We arrived in Lisbon around 7am. The red-eye from Atlanta was brutal, but people do this every month so it wasn’t that bad. Considering the amazing experience in front of us, it was well worth the high C02 levels and lack of sleep.

After departing the airport on a shuttle, we stopped at the hostel to store our bags. I kept some paint, water and food with me. We went to the park, which in hindsight I’m excited to sketch. It featured a long Allé of trees alongside intricate paths, which border a hedge maze. The hedge was unused, but looked beautiful. The trees provided shade, which I found so little of in Tavira.

With a great deal of anxiety, I decided that a yoga session would do me good. I’m trying to make good on more of my ideas– like taking the train on my own, spending my own money to do so, and taking calculated risks. I realize that you need to just follow through sometimes, but other times I just need to relax. Yoga helps me do that.

We gathered and went out to dinner. We had a couple bottles of white wine that were incredible. The wine was so cheap in Tavira I could have gotten one bottle for the same price as a canister of butter, which is also very cheap- about $2. I wonder if the wine is better than the 2-buck-chuck at Trader Joe’s.

Oranges in the Algarve.

Watercolors

As I sit and listen to the city by Chadd Guimond Hippensteel

I hear the:

starting of engines, light conversations and construction sounds.

Mopeds, like boats, have an unsurpassed exhaust, making a loud tin-can fart.

4-cylinder cars whine like an electric motor.

Turbo diesels never sound like they’ve had enough sleep, which I’ve had plenty of this morning.

Friends murmur in love. Behind the Bang bang, metal on metal.

Like the stacking of chairs in an empty auditorium after a long speech made by the governor, the clacks ring out.

Go go motorcycle. Quiet footsteps, alerted only by the sand between the pavement and the sole of their shoes gives them away.

Doors latch and close, but I’m reminded I have to go sit with my classmates and wait for the moment my professor decides we must leave. He pays for my bus and metro tickets, he teaches the course, and this is his and my trip. My classmates send the address to the bus station. I think this means they have walked away from the hostel, but I will not no until I go look, or reply. But looking is more fun