Bom dia, Boa tarde, Boa Noite! Sending greetings to wherever you?re reading this from. Portugal is the first country I have had the opportunity to travel to apart from the United States, in other words, my first time going international. I have to say that I was utterly unprepared mentally and emotionally for the depth of personal cultural expansion that I have experienced. The world is sooooooooo unique! From just being in Lisboa and Porto for the past two weeks, I feel like I have been positively inundated with the nuances and differences of being a part of another culture. Even just walking the streets and talking to someone at a restaurant or gelato place feels very special to me, and I can?t specifically put a finger on why it does, but I think I?m just genuinely happy to experience something so different than what I?m used to.
The landscape, architecture, and natural environments like the cathedrals, bridges, cork forests, hills, and even just your average Lisbon apartment all are honestly strikingly beautiful to me. Walking around the Alfama district of Lisboa on the first day had me in awe of the city line in the foreground of the Atlantic Ocean and made me very jealous of the locals and also wonder how many wonderful sights there could be all around the world. It seems almost all of these places have unique and in-depth backstories that make me admire the lives of the people living in and around them. I can say this trip has flown by pretty fast, but the amount of new cultural history and broadness I have learned from just a small part of this one country alone has opened up my wonderment of the potential in front of me.
