Churches and phallic pastries

May 23
LAX » IAD»FRA»OPO
Reading: An Education by Lynn Barber
Songs on repeat: Lady Antebellum "Need You Now" and Band of Horses "No One´s Going To Love You"

I´ve arrived safe and sound. More importantly, so did the turtle pack. After a harrowing dash through the Frankfort airport, I was afraid I´d be doing the build in my chucks and t-shirt I had worn for 2 days already. But we both arrived safe and after 8 hours waiting in the Porto airport for the rest of the team, now we´re all in Amarante.

I had been worried about the language barrier, but like everyone said, a good majority of people speak English or at least understand it. What was surprising is the number of billboards, signs, even menus that are also in English. Not so much in Amarante because it´s out of the way, but elsewhere, English is everywhere. Really makes you think about how Americans view our tourists. Not only that, but the fact that in Europe, it seems they all speak at least 2 languages. It´s just a completely different mentality than Americans have.

The village is old and hilly and very beautiful. Erick, the team lead, swears it´s a city and it´s only my LA perpective that assmes it´s a village. I´m sorry but if you can walk it in under 15 min, the cars give way to pedestrians on cobblestone paths and every store, shop, or restaurant shuts down for mass, it´s a village.

Our local team lead, João, took us for a tour of this event. At that point I had been up since 3am LA time on Saturday with nothing but 20 min cat naps to keep me going. But I love tours and went anyway. He led us through all these narrow....well I guess you would call them streets but really they are just 8 ft wide cobblestone paths between the shops. Even so, cars race through them like it´s nothing. Every where we went, we were stared at by the locals. I don´t think it´s a very touristy area. A troupe of blue-shirted, overly excited Americans must have been hilarious.

Every inch of Amarante is just soaked in history. We walked through the ruins of a convent that has been there since some of the first kings and there is a local palace that has been converted into a hotel. There are churches everywhere. Almost all of Portugal is Roman Catholic and we peeped inside St. Gonçalo, the largest church, mid mass. The detail and care on the interior was astonishing. I wanted to take pictures but it wouldn´t do it justice. And this is just a typical church, not even a well known one.

Outside all of the churches, there are old ladies selling fresh pastries, bread, and cookies. I guess one thing that is tradition for the area are these penis shaped pastries. I have no idea why but Holly from our group mentioned she had read it somewhere. So on all these stands outside these majestic Catholic churches are these little old women selling pastries in the shape of penises. They have penis towers on the tables. They look delicious. I wonder how well business does after mass.

All of the Americans were starving by about 6:30 but in Portugal, most don´t eat dinner until 8:30 or after. The menus are heavily carnivourous. Lots of fish, veal, beef, goat, even octupus. I had an amazing roasted veal with butter-soaked roasted potatoes, these bite-sized meat pastries and spinach in some kind of sauce. I think I´ll be better off on this trip if I don´t ask what is in most of the dishes. Sardines are really popular and served on the table fried. Erick and I split a bottle of a great local red wine,Esteva Douro. The alcohol content must be less here. Normally if I split a bottle of wine, I´m on the floor. But after the whole bottle, we were both fine. It was ridiculously cheap, only about 8 euros for the whole bottle. If that´s the norm for the region, I think I´ll be sending home many more bottles than I had originally thought.

Our team is a really fun one. 8 girls and 3 guys and everyone gets a long really well so far. Even the hotel is better than expected. Comfortable rooms, hot showers, a fantastic buffet for breakfast and a patio that looks out over the whole village. Apparently this is one of the cushier Habitat builds. I´m the only one who hasn´t done some sort of Habitat build before. Everyone else has done at least one in the US and a few have done multiple GV trips. We´re from all over the country and a wide variety of jobs, so it´s been fun listening to everyone else´s stories.

I crashed hard after dinner and slept the best I have in my entire life. First build day is tomorrow and I´m so ready to get started.