Teachers and students who participated in the game

So this past Friday was a day of activities for all the schools and it was a lot of fun. At my school, the day started out for me being a judge for karaoke in English. It was fun and the kids actually did really well. After that, I had a little bit of time before the 3 on 3 basketball began. I played with my 15 year old students that I usually go play with once a week. I played in the first 3 games with them and won them all. I let them play by their selves in the championship against older students and they still won. I had time to eat a half of piece of pizza before it was time for the teachers versus students basketball game in the gym in front of everyone. This game was also a lot of fun and of course we, the Bad Teachers Basketball Team, won by 20. everybody had fun and nobody got hurt so it was quite a success. Some things never change though, I still get yelled at here for not shooting enough.

Saturday we went to a nearby city for a friends birthday and Julien and I wore our suits. Not gonna lie, we were the best dressed people in the city.

This is a map of my trips I took during December and January from the first trip to Valencia until the end of Portugal.

So Julien and I bought suits yesterday. No reason. Well, they were on sale.

this is the link for all my pics

http://community.webshots.com/user/jamal424?vhost=community

or you can look at them here as a slide show



jamal424;jsessionid=abc7Fn7ScHxOD9cWB716r

we still haven´t been paid for December...

So after speending the night in Madrid, it´s almost time to go home. We have a 5 hour bus ride from Madrid to Murcia and then the 90 min bus ride from Murcia to Aguilas. After the 20 minute walk from the bus station to our apartment, we will finally be home to rest after a busy 2 weeks of traveling in December (Valencia and Portugal).

Porto is incredible. First of all, it didn't rain and it's just a great city. I think this would be the place I would live if I had to live in Portugal and I knew how to speak Portuguese correctly. Just like all the other cities, we arrived, found the hostel and went exploring. The hostel here is really cool because all the rooms are themed according to a movie. This city is what I think of when I think about a typical European city. The building are old, not too many people but not too few, it's on a river and there are plenty of places to eat. I really don't have anything else to say about this city except for the fact that I could and would live here. Maybe everyone will be able to get a good feeling of the city from my pics. Tomorrow, we head back to España. We are going to spend the day in Madrid and then back home to Aguilas.

We were greeted with rain upon our arrival in Lisbon. We found our hostel and immediately began exploring. Lisbon began on a sour note with the rain, large number of homeless people and the insane amount of trash in the streets. It did however get better the next day (today) even though it was extremely overcast and still raining. We still covered a lot of area and got some good pics. My roommates boyfriend is half-Brazilian and has a cousin that lives here and met us for a meal. After that, the sun finally came out and we had the opportunity to get in as many pics as we could. Overall, Lisbon ended much better than it began. We head out in the morning to Porto, a city that is in northern Portugal.

On our way to Lisbon, we decided that we had time to stop and make a side trip. We decided to go to this town called Evora. It is a really small town that didn´t take much time for us to explore it all. Before we left, we had lunch at this little restaurant and it was incredible. Without a doubt, this was the best meal that I have had since I´ve been in Europe. It was grilled beef with rice and some potato fries. It was a great way to start off 2009 and I am pretty sure I won´t have a meal that good for awhile. After that, it was back to the road.

So for New Year's Eve we really didn't do anything. We had lunch at this little diner and spoke Portuguese, Spanish and English with our waiter. After that, we just walked around and explored the little town. We went out to look for a place to eat dinner and just about everything was closed or only having a private dinner; even McDonald's was closed. We finally found a restaurant and it turned out to be really good. I had duck with seasoned rice, not a bad way to end 2008. after our last meal of the year, we walked around some more and found a concert that was taking place in a park. Practically the entire town was there waiting for the new year. We stayed for probably a hour before heading back, right before midnight. The next morning we headed out for Lisbon.

feliz ano novo (happy new year in portuguese)a few days later