It is hard to believe that we are already at the halfway mark of our trip.
Work is going fantastic. I am based in a AEC, Associação Empresarial de Cantanhede, or in English 'The Business Centre of Cantenhede'. It is also the social welfare office for the area. Inês, who is my mentor here is extremely kind to me. She has complemented me on how well my Portuguese has come on in the last week. I've told her that I am having difficulty with certain pronunciations due to my Gaeltacht background. She has also been teaching me some sayings in Portuguese such as 'Abril águas mil', which translates as 'in April, there are thousand waters'. This was definitely true as yesterday it down poured for most of the day. We have also swapped a word or two in Irish, as I explained 'dia' is God and then another word that was used when my computer froze on me! Any free time that I have, Inês has sent me on websites about central Portugal so that I can become more familiar with the region. She also found out today that four of us are going to Porto for the weekend to celebrate my birthday so she has been giving me tips places to visit and things to do. The office is right beside the main reception so I am practicing my 'Bom dia' and 'Boa tarde' with all of the people that pass through daily. Carla who is at front of reception has very little english but we actually communicate quite well with the use of google translator and also through the use of body language. I've helped her with some of her work load, including letter folding and helping her post the 200 plus letters from the office. Carla uses a system called 'win-touch' which I had never heard of, to carry out various tasks. Yesterday I observed her using the system for a while, so that I could get a better understanding of her job. I was also given the task of helping Elizabethe with filing. This was a fantastic opportunity to test the skills I have been taught in one of my modules in GTI. One thing that is catching me out the most is the different keyboard layout. My typing speed is down as the Portuguese have their own keyboard with an extra letter on it. Also some of the symbols are placed in different areas to the keyboard layout i'm used to, but I am slowly getting used to it. I've noticed so much in regards to the difference in culture and traditions. Even though Ireland is considered a Catholic country, here it was lovely watching the procession on the streets on Sunday. It is considered an honour to carry the cross, as the men wear red robes. I watched the 3pm one also. The bells went every three hours to announce the procession. Sadly I did not take any photographs as I felt it would be inappropriate. Nearly every place was closed also. I spent most of Sunday roaming the park watching easter egg hunts, family picnics and people playing football. I also spotted a mother and daughter taking cuttings of the plentifully rosemary plants that are dotted all around the park. It was a scorcher of a day, 24 degrees at one stage and I managed to get some colour too. Sadly the same couldn’t be said yesterday where I had to change my clothes as I got so wet...I definitely missed my Galway rain jacket. Today, it has thankfully warmed up again so i'm enjoying having my bedroom balcony open as it overlooks the small park. -Arlene
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Back in the office today after being off since last Thursday because of the long Easter weekend. I have to say everyone was really buzzing after the break. Justina went to Amsterdam, Carlota and el Presidente relaxed at home with family and friends, while I went to Coimbra.
Coimbra is about 50 mins to 1 hour away on the bus. The first thing that struck me was how cheap the fare was, €3.50 single for nearly 30kms, while at home it would cost me €7.00. Combria is a river front city in central Portugal. It is famed for its university and of course students, (the oldest in the country), it has a fantastic collection of churches, monasteries, and cultural institutions. Walking around the town, gave a lively atmosphere with many tourists enjoying the shops, boutiques (which I found a little expensive) but they do have a “Primark” and many restaurants to choose from. Everywhere, I felt there was a hub of activity but not a rushed pace. People were very friendly, and the food was very good and cheap. The weather while I was there was great.I didn’t have much trouble in ordering, though I tried to say everything in Portuguese. Combria is a city best explored on foot as there are lovely little lanes, but it is a little hilly. One can walk, but I don’t think you could see it all in a day. There are cruises on the Rio Mondego, and the tuk-tuk to get around the city. For me, I loved the tradition, the ancient buildings, the history which is evident everywhere. For anyone travelling in the centre of Portugal it is a must see. Easter Monday, having been to Combria on Saturday, I felt I didn’t see enough. So, I took the first bus out of Cantanhede. Arriving early the streets and people were starting to come alive, ladies were out washing windows and pastries were setting up tables. I browsed around speaking to the locals about their wines, cheese and their cork products. The wines and cheese are both local and imported from around the region. Their cork handbags, belts, hats, shoes, little key-rings are imported also. Though lovely they are not cheap. Having coffee, I was mistaken by a lady for being American, who along with the waiter proceeded to tell me all about themselves and where they from and what brought them to Portugal, to live. There wasn’t as many tourists as Saturday, it was a lot quieter. They city has its share of homeless same as Ireland sleeping in doorways, but It is defiantly a place to visit as there is so much to see. -Maggie Today Eimar, Arlene and myself decided that we wanted to go to Coimbra again to do a little shopping because we discovered the Alma shopping centre, which was once voted the best shopping centre in the world. We took the early bus to Coimbra and planned our journey. It was a long walk both up hill and down hill but the views were amazing and they made the trek all the more enjoyable.
While sitting outside a shop waiting for the girls, a lovely local women came over and spoke to me. At first this women was quite intimidating as she was speaking fluent Portuguese at an alarming speed but the minute I told her I spoke English she slowed down and spoke English. She told me she was a writer who enjoyed speaking to tourists to get their opinions on Coimbra and also discover the differences between her country and theirs. She asked me about the weather and if I was cold, when I replied that I was actually quite warm she looked very shocked and asked what sort of weather did we get in Ireland. I told her about the cold, wind and wet weather of Ireland and how the weather of Coimbra though it may be cold to the locals, is quite warm to us. It was so interesting to interact with the locals. All in all we had a good day out and got to see more of Coimbra and we hope to see more of Portugal soon. -Laura Just as we were told before leaving Ireland, Portugal is a country that more strictly observes Easter than at home. That means quiet streets and closed shopfronts, especially in a small city like Cantanhede, and particularly on Friday and Sunday. With that in mind, we decided to travel to Coimbra over the weekend, the largest city in the province and a well-known university town like Galway with around 30,000 students studying there every year.
The last couple of days have been wet, but the sun shone on us on Saturday and the steep streets of Coimbra were busy with tourists. Coimbra is about an hour's bus journey from Cantanhede and--just like food and drink--it's stunningly cheap compared to Ireland, costing just €3.50 one-way. A five minute bus journey in Galway costs over half that! We took a walk through the botanical garden in the middle of the city. In its centre is a towering tree, its gigantic trunk lined with grooves. I'm told it's a Portuguese Laurel, perhaps 300 years old. Normal life resumes on Tuesday and I'm looking forward to getting back to work. Overall it was an interesting day and we enjoyed our visit. -Josh The five of us decided to get the bus into Coimbra today, to explore the city and its many shops and beauty. Its a gorgeous old city, with many hills may I add but there is so much more in Coimbra to see and do than there is in Cantanhede. And the weather was good to us today than it was yesterday. We had sunshine all day.
We headed off towards the Botanical Garden of the University of Coimbra, and oh my, it truly those take you're breath away. The place was just so naturally pretty and calm, no wonder it is considered one of Europe's most beautiful gardens. We did do a lot of walking today, but unfortunately we got caught up so much on the shops we didn't go looking at other tourist attractions. But hopefully we may go again another day and squeeze it all in. I have forgotten to mention, how we have all progressed in trying to speak the Portuguese language and improving our understanding others. Yet I still only speak the few words but the people here love hearing us try. The majority of staff that we have met in any workplace, restaurant or shop do their best to speak English or to help us understand, which is very kind of them. -Eimar Day 5 in Cantanhede, I am working in the 'Junta De Freguesia De Cantanhede'. This seems to be very similar to our own Galway County Council. On Monday we were introduced to our employers. Then on Tuesday morning I headed into work. My apartment is a 2-minute walk to work, which is very handy to say the least. My first day was such a whirlwind not knowing what to expect. But the ladies I work with are so lovely. I communicate with Justina (the secretary) who has no English, and use google as a translation tool. Carlota has very good English but insists on me speaking Portuguese every chance I get, even while working in the reception area.
My hours are 9am – 12.30pm and 2pm - 5.30pm. There is also a coffee break at 10am where we could be gone for up to a half an hour. Since arriving I have been introduced to the local restaurant owners, where Carlota has showed me the cheapest places to eat. I was also introduced to the Vice-President of Canthende, when we visited the Town Hall which was an interesting experience. My working day tasks vary, from totalling invoices to inputting or registering a dog, to inputting people into their system who are looking for residency. The office is sometimes very busy with a lot of people coming in looking for different services. What is so interesting is that people seem to have time to chat and pass the time of day, which is interesting compared to back home. Everyone here are very friendly and courteous, it is deemed rude if you don’t answer a 'Bom Dia' or 'Bom Tarde', which means 'good morning' and 'good afternoon'. Overall, things are going well. - Maggie Today we spent the morning preparing for an afternoon of baking with children from a local Easter camp. We spent the first half of the afternoon learning how to make and shape the cookies from Sandra and Lurdes, two local women who work with us at the museum. They showed us how to knead and roll out the dough to the correct thickness and then cut out shapes and space them out on the tray. After showing us they let us try it ourselves and although we thought it would be easy it proved harder then we thought. Our first try ended in us burning our cookies. On a positive note, the cookies that weren't burnt tasted amazing.
After this, we then went to meet the children and we started the process all over again with them. The children were allowed to mould and shape the dough into whatever form they wanted and then we set them on trays and went to clean all our hands and faces from flour and cookie dough. While waiting for the cookies to bake and cool, myself and Eimar watched the children play outside. It was amazing to see the excitement in their eyes when they were told their cookies were ready. After all the children had gone home we were told that we had been invited to visit an art gallery near Porto in a refurbished factory. We knew we could not refuse because this was an amazing opportunity to see more of Portugal. -Laura Tuesday was my first day at Escola Tecnico-Profissional de Cantanhede, a second-level school not far from the city centre or fortunately, the apartment we're staying in. I'm working with Michael, who teaches programming. As the students are currently on holiday, the building is quiet and the teachers are mostly occupied with meetings. While I have the programming classroom to myself, i've been tasked with running cleaning tasks to get the PCs ready for the students' return.
When Micheal isn't teaching, he works as a web developer, creating and maintaining websites for clients and the main task he's set out for me over my three week placement in Cantanhede is to refresh his company's website. In order to complete these tasks i'll need to get familiar with HTML, CSS and Wordpress. This is something that i'm looking forward to. Cantanhede is beautiful, packed with gleaming white houses capped with orange roof tiles. Its population is less than half that of Galway's and its city centre seems compact and the streets are relatively quiet. Walking around in the sunshine is very pleasant. The locals are friendly and willing to help out, even if they don't have any English. Conversing in Portugese is something I want to work on over the next couple of weeks. -Josh Today involved a lot more walking than I expected. Laura, Josh and myself left our apartment and headed into town to buy internet for the house initially, then to meet Ana or placement host.
Just after 2pm we all met in Arlene and Maggie’s apartment to meet with Ana and see everyones work placement location. Although it was a lovely sunny, warm day with a bit of a breeze, the locals were going around with their jackets whilst we were just in t-shirts! The place Laura and myself are working is the Muesu da Pedra. It turned out that they have loads of interesting jobs for us to work on. For example, this week they are trying to organise to bring us on a trip and we will be helping some of the local children learn more about Easter and we will get to bake bread and cookies with them. Carlos gave us a tour of the museum and explained that we will be translating the facts and poems around the museum to English and maybe even creating a brochure. This part that i’m most excited to do because it helps us learn the Portuguese language, which I am a bit shy to use freely so far. Unfortunately we couldn’t get the internet fully set up, so we are hoping by the end of the week we will have it fixed. We look forward to seeing what tomorrow has in store. -Eimar Well I think I can speak for all the group when I say... it was a long journey. Dublin airport was extremely busy and we noticed that there were lots of school tours traveling. We also had a youth team on our plane traveling to a tournament in Lisbon.
We arrived in Lisbon on time and to the amazing sunshine. We navigated around the airport very easily as the corridors were so wide. It was extremely handy getting the metro to the train station as the metro station was underneath the terminal building. The train journey felt long as we were separated for this part due to the allocated seats. It was lovely to see the countryside. There were large farms and vineyards with the large irrigation system which I hadn’t seen before. We also saw some of the devastation caused by the forest fires in this region, last May. Once we arrived in Cantanhede, Maggie and myself checked into our apartment. We met everyone at the hotel and had a nice bite to eat in the garden cafe. The waitress was very helpful as she spoke some English. We all had an early night with all the travelling and time difference, we were exhausted, We are all looking forward to our first day tomorrow. -Arlene |
Office Admin / IT Students 2017/18Arlene McGrath Map of Cantanhede |