meu amor, o norte

Before I headed to Portugal I had a mental picture of what Portugal would look like. I pictured myself waking up in the morning looking out my window and seeing grapevine covered hills and trees in foreground. Unfortunately when I got to Lisboa I saw none of this, I was kind of sad that my mental picture didn't come true because it was so beautiful. However, my mental picture was a picture of where I wanted to be in the first place, the north. Before I headed up to the north I was told that the north is very closed off to Christians. However, within the church they are the most welcoming and amazing people.

On Saturday I caught a train from Lisboa to Porto and then headed from the train station to the home of Nancy. Nancy is a GEM missionary who has been working in the north for about  25 years and lives right outside of Porto. We relaxed at her home for a couple hours and then we headed to an English bazaar. There is a nice group of English in the north and they have a club house where they were having a huge bazaar with tons of different things ranging from English specialties to Portuguese items. There were two little kids that were trying to sell little gold star stickers for .50 euros each. They were super cute and would not take no for an answer so eventually we just had to ignore them and walk away. After the bazaar we headed to a church in the area for a chestnut celebration. The pastor of the church is Samuel Paulo and he is good friends with the Wootens, who are retired missionaries and I met at Multnomah, and has also recently spoken at Multnomah. It was really great to meet him because I had heard so much about him from the Wootens and friends from school.

Also, at the church there was a large group of older youth who were very welcoming and open. I was very grateful that they were all willing to speak English with me. I would every once in a while try and say something in Portuguese and they would say, "See! She does know Portuguese!" One of the girls, Rita,  shared her testimony with me and then invited me into the kitchen where a group of youth were playing guitars and singing Fado songs. I, of course, quickly followed her into the kitchen because I LOVE fado!!! Rita's boyfriend was one of the guys playing and so when ever they were talking between songs she would tell him to speak English so that I could understand, she was very sweet! I also met at the church the main youth leader who invited me to their youth event on Friday and then asked me to share my testimony which I agreed to. So, now I will be sharing my testimony in front of a group of youth... I am just slightly nervous!

On Sunday we headed into the hills to visit a couple churches and some friends in the area. First we went to a church in Motim that is connected with an English school. The pastor of the church is Brazilian and his wife is English and I met their daughter when I went on the youth retreat a couple weeks ago. After being introduced to the entire congregation the pastor asked if I had anything I wanted to share with the congregation. Dr. Kopp, my fav prof at Multnomah, always told us in our intercultural studies class to always be prepared to share something when you are visiting a church especially in a cross cultural situation.....unfortunately I guess I didn't listen that well because when I was asked if I had anything I wanted to share I became very wide eyed and respectfully declined to speak at the church. I know I should have come up with something but I was so caught off guard by the invitation but I did spend the rest of the time at the church thinking about what I could have said and what I should have said.

 We were invited over to the pastor's home for lunch, which the wife made a huge feast for us. Roast pork with chestnuts and tons of side dishes. Following lunch we then had to have dessert and after that in traditional Portuguese fashion we had a cup of coffee. We talked about many different things such as my education, what I like about Portugal, and what I miss about the States. I couldn't really say that I missed too much about the states because my mom has sent me chocolate chips and peanut butter, but I guess the one thing that I am missing is my 24 oz. quad white americano on the rox from the cherrybean in Salinas. They were very shocked when I said that I drank something with so much caffeine in it but then when I told them that I would normally have two a day they were even more shocked! We talked about the youth in the area and how it can be quite difficult to get youth sometimes but then I told them that I was use to the idea of searching out youth because that was the same thing that happens in the Lisboa area.

After lunch and the great conversation we headed to a second church near Fafe and again I was welcomed very warmly. After the service was over many women came up to talk to me but most of them didn't know very much English so they would go search out a younger person to come and translate for us. Nancy had a very close friend at the church that she calls her adopted daughter, Lily, and she kept going around to all of the youth in the church and told them to go talk to me because they knew English. I got to talk to some of the youth students and when I told them that I wanted to work with youth in the north they were all very quick in inviting me to come work with youth in their church. So, I guess I have a job once I get back to Portugal.

From the church visit we headed to dinner at Lily's mother's house and we got to eat dinner with Lily, her husband, and two super adorable children. We had another big meal of trying to get people to eat more and more food and try interesting little German treats. After dinner we headed to the castle of the first king of Portugal, Afonso I. We walked around the castle and the duke's palace, which Afonso actually built for one of his lovers. The grounds were pretty cool and the surrounding neighbor hood was also really pretty. There is an old Catholic church near the castle but they couldn't pay their taxes so it got turned into a hospital.

 This is a statue of Afonso and the Duke's Palace in the background.

This is the Castle with one of the entrances by the tree. 

This is the old Catholic church that is now a hospital.

After our walk in freezing cold weather we decided we needed to go warm up so we had a cup of tea at Lily's house. Her daughter, Sarai, who is about 4 or 5 wanted to talk to me all night and kept telling me something about painting so I watched her color a little picture from a McDonald's happy meal or something. Then she brought me a book to read and sat in on my lap and opened it up to the first page and then looked at me like ok you can read to me now. Her mom stepped in and told her that I didn't speak Portuguese but I don't think Sarai understood that someone wouldn't know how to speak Portuguese, so after a couple more times of trying to get me to read the book she then "read" the book to me.

All in all it was an eventful first day and a half and now I have 6 more days of exploring and sharing.

Peace out!

Adventures and mishaps....

Well, I have had many great adventures since my last posting. I have been to the aquarium, to a fado house, and now I am off to Porto. The aquarium was pretty awesome, although, it is quite a bit smaller then the Monterey Bay Aquarium. The aquarium was arranged by the different oceans and, kind of like Ikea, there were arrows on the ground and a certain pathway you are supposed to take. The aquarium was super dark also, so I barely got any pictures. For some reason they don’t allow you to use the flash...I don’t think they understand that if we can’t use flash then we need more light. However, I was able to find Nemo and Dori! I also got a some cool pictures of them both. One cool thing about the aquarium is that many of the tanks have tons of different fish in them. So they had a huge tropical reef tank with puffer fish and tons of other bright colored beautiful fish. 

We also had a youth event last weekend and we took the youth to Ikea for breakfast. We had four youth this time but it allowed us to have some really good conversations. The oldest Fairbanks’ daughter, Hannah, will be graduating from high school this Spring and is now having to go through the very challenging job of picking a university or atleast figure out what she wants to do. She is currently wanting to do a discipleship program with YWAM in New Zealand but is also contemplating what college she wants to go to. She has the option of choosing to either go to a university in Canada or Europe because she has dual Canadian and Portuguese citizenship. Dan, the main youth guy, and I had an awesome talk with her about seeking God’s guidance. I think we helped her in one sense but she still has a very hard decision ahead of her. After the conversation we then took a tour of Ikea, in which everybody had to test run every bed, faucet, and toilet.

A couple days ago, I had a girls outing with two girls that I use to live with when I was at PBI, Jordan and Regina. We went into one of the larger fado areas and found an awesome fado house! This place had the exact atmosphere that I had pictured for a fado house. It was dark inside with the only light coming from candles. The food was delicious and the  company even greater. After we started eating the fado singers started performing and it started with a young woman, who was probably around my age, and she had an amazing voice. The second performer was an older woman, probably in her 40s, and she also sang beautifully. She sang a song when translated says something like, “If you concentrate on your love to much you will forget about God. I did not forget about God.” I really liked the message this line was portraying because I think many times we can focus so much on finding love or the love that we have found that we forget about the most important thing to life. The third singer was a 70 year old man, who was also our waiter, He had black rimmed rectangular glasses and always had a shot of some sort of dark alcohol with him when he sang. These three singers would sing 3 songs and then they would switch. Once a full rotation happened they would take about a 15 minute break and then they would start again. They did the rotation about 3 times before we had to leave to catch the metro and a bus back home. The night was super perfect and was everything I dreamed of! The great thing about fado is that so much emotion is portrayed through the singing and instruments that it doesn’t really matter if you can understand them or not. I definitely believe that I need another dose of fado before I head back to the states and I for sure think that I need to see Manuel again, the 70 year old fado singer. 

Currently I am on a train heading to Porto. I bought my ticket ahead of time and was quite relaxed once I got to the train station this morning. Unfortunately, I can’t do anything without a slight failure involved....so.....I might have accidently bought my train ticket for the wrong day.....fortunately for me the guys working on the train were super phenomanazing and called the main office or something and got my ticket changed so that I could head to Porto today. So, here I am, riding on a train through the country side of Portugal and it is amazingly beautiful.

Well that is it for now!

Peace Out!

Minha Avó

I thought I would write a little blog about the sweetest little Portuguese lady I know, my adopted Portuguese grandmother. Every evening we watch a couple shows together. It usually starts with watching Cozinha de Nigella, which is an amazing little cooking show with this English woman who lives in the States but makes amazing food. I usually end up wanting to cook after I watch the show but I usually have eaten by the time the show starts because it is on at 8pm. We then flip through the channels and sometimes I will leave and go to my room or sometimes I will continue watching tv with her. Usually we will end the night watching Dr. Oz and Oprah. Tonight I decided that I would stop watching tv after the cooking show so I made myself a cup of tea and went to my room. Soon I heard Dona Merces calling for me, "Diana....Diana....Dr. Oz!" I thought it was so cute and so sweet that she wanted me to come watch tv with her.

Dona Merces is a talker during tv shows and she will make little comments through out the show and I try and figure out what she is saying it is a great adventure sometimes. If I am feeling really brave I try and say something to her about what we are watching but she usually ends up saying, "não compreendo," and I usually try again and again to get my sentence across to her. It also happens the other way because I will get caught up on one word she says and then I get all confused and I usually nod my head in understanding but she calls me out on it.  I love living with her because if I want to say anything to her then I have to stumble through Portuguese. The best way to learn Portuguese is when you are forced right?

A little random fact about the words for grandparents are extremely similar. A grandpa is called, avô, and a grandma is called, avó. So to keep my self from getting confused by these I would much rather stick with avozinho and avozinha. I would much rather use the endearing versions of the word then have to struggle through the complex normal words.

Well that is all I've got about minha avó.

Peace out!

Amazingness on top of Amazingness!

This past week has been full of many awesome adventures and experiences! I was able to help put on a baby shower for my friend Rebecca, who is due with her second child in the next couple weeks. I was able to plan the games for the shower, which was totally awesome because I had like 80 year old women eating candy out of diapers trying to guess the what the mashed up candy was inside! The more amazing part was that some of the women said that they really had an awesome time taking part in the games! I guess you are never to old to eat strange looking things in strange situations!


At the baby shower I was talking with my friend, Sofia, and we were talking about the fact that through her husbands work she always gets free tickets to concerts but can never go because she has a young baby so she ends up giving the tickets away. She started naming off the tickets that she had given away.... Shakira, Lady Gaga, and other people that I didn't really care about but then she said....Michael Buble!! I quickly replied with, "Why did you give those away!?! We could have gone to the concert together!!" I was completely joking when I said this but a couple days later I got a phone call from her saying that her most amazing husband, Sam, had gotten two more tickets to Buble and wanted to know if I still wanted to go! Of course, I quickly said yes!!!! So we were off to see the most Beautiful Canadian then next day!!! Here is the deal...Michael Buble might be amazing on CD but times that by a million trillion and that isn't close to his amazingness in concert!


During the concert Michael told us about his new found love for Portugal and it was especially cool because we were attending his final concert on his tour! It was also very emotional for one of his band members who is Portuguese and still has family here in Portugal, it was like a homecoming for the musician and he was very emotional when the crowd erupted knowing that there was a Portuguese man on stage!


The next day, I decided that I would finally go get my bus pass. So, I fixed my hair put on an extra cute outfit and headed to Campo Grande to get my bus pass. I got there filled out the paperwork, took the ID picture and went and to turn in my paper work but, first, I was at the wrong station to get a fast tracked pass and second, I forgot my passport!! I seriously never forget my passport but I had been switching between bags so much this past week that I simply forgot my passport in one of them. I was so frustrated with myself but decided to continue into Lisbon anyways.


I finally got to go to the Fado museum! Which was super amazing! I got to learn about where Fado started and how it has transformed to what it is today. There was also a station where you could read bios of Fado greats and listen to some of their recorded music. You could also watch recorded performances of Fado singers. I went a little crazy in the gift shop and ended up buying three books. The first is called, The Soul of Fado and is about the history of Fado and it is in Portuguese and English, so I justified it by saying that it would help me with the language and the culture! The second, Fadária, is a book with many different Fado lyrics in it and a recording of some of the songs. The last book, Roteiro de Fado de Lisboa, is a book that gives a little info about Fado in Lisbon and also current locations of Fado houses and a price range for how much it is to eat at the houses.


My week was capped off with an amazing weekend at a retreat, Encontro de Jovens com Cristo, which simply translates into Youth Encounter. Basically all I can say was that the weekend was amazing and was a great evangelical tool to allow non-Christians to come into a non-threatening environment and learn about Jesus. I can't tell you what exactly happened during the weekend because if I did...I would have to kill you. Seriously, though, they do ask that we do not talk about what exactly happened during the weekend so to respect that I will not share anything with you even if you asked me in person...desculpe, sorry. I really want to try and do a youth encounter in the states but to do it I would have to have  a bunch of Portuguese people to come to the states to help put it on because, see, you can only help put it on if you have participated in it.


Tomorrow I am hopefully going to finally get my bus pass and hopefully go into Lisboa to the aquarium!


That is all I have for you now....
Peace out!