Grand Bazaar today. I'd like to say we didn't spend our entire day shopping, but, um... We started off with great intentions, but we just seemed to get absorbed by the market, a sprawling labyrinth of vaulted ceilings and archways and water fountains, and nonsensical signs like "New Market (1571)". Shopping there, in our further defence, is not like shopping down your local Tesco. It's an entire way of being, you have to adapt your eyes and your soul; you have to learn that you don't just buy a bowl, you chat to the owner, you discuss your home country, you might even have a cup of tea together, and then you will mutually decide on an agreeable amount to be paid for a little work of art. And, sometimes, you will say goodbye with kisses on both cheeks. I think that we're very lucky, being here at this time of year - the market, which was described in an article I read as being an incredible test of mental and physical strength, and having between 250,000 and 400,000 visitors per day in summer, in winter is almost devoid of tourists and is instead full of headscarved grannies buying tea and linen, and men bearing beautiful silver and glass teacups on engraved trays to the shopkeepers, who drink and smoke together on little stools in front of their shops, and return the cups to the next passing tea-man.

We wander about the streets looking at backgammon boards and pottery. Some streets are completely filled with sellers of intricately metal-worked lamps, which cast a surreal glow over the brick walls and tiled arches. Some streets are named for their artisans, so Jeweller's Street, which runs through the centre, a wide and built-up street with full-on jewellery shops displaying endless gold bracelets, is easily avoided by Robyn and me, who want handmade masterpieces from countryside cottages. A few shopkeepers try to tempt us with rubber jackets and Gucci bags, but the majority of stalls are filled with beautiful ceramics, kilims, antique printing blocks, evil eye pendants, tapestries... I start to wonder if I've brought a big enough suitcase.

We stumble into a pretty, open courtyard with a fountain and trees and a hole-in-the-wall teashop, where we buy two teas served in vase-like glasses. We drink them standing in a corner, watching the endless tea-men scurrying off to all the stalls, and pay 20p each. It might be the best glass of tea I've ever had.

We spend hours and hours in the market, people-watching mostly, in between coffees at tiny cafes that are part antique shop, part art gallery with antique waistcoats serving as chair covers.


I imagine we actually see a very small part of this sprawling market, which apparently spreads its vaulted wings over 5000 shops and 60 lanes, and has sat here in the centre of Istanbul since 1461.

Eventually we head outside again - the weather has changed fom snow and rain to flashes of sunlight from behind low clouds - only to delve into another market - the Egyptian Spice Market - also covered, but spread over just two lanes filled with the strong scents of henna, saffron and tea, paprika and curry, chilli and oregano. It's known as the Egyptian Market because when it was built in the 17th century, most of the spices traded and stored here were imported via Egypt. We have a late lunch of cheese, cucumber and olives and have to fight off the stray cats that are drawn towards us by the enormous pile of meat that came with our "vegetarian" platter. Be not deceived by the "stray" description though - it's not really an apt description of the fat, sleek cats that roam this city.

Misty Istanbul

I really cannot say this enough: 4am is not a time of day I want to see from the wrong side. Waking up in the absolute stillness of the winter dark, too early for even the factory workers or buses to be stirring is just not a nice experience. As it is also too early for the trains to Lisboa to have started running, I have to catch a taxi to the airport - one blessing of being in Portugal is that the luxury of a comfy, heated taxi is completely affordable. And on the empty pre-dawn motorway, it takes just 20 minutes from my door to the check in desk. Lisboa Airport has been overhauled since I was last here 5 years ago - it's a pine-and-white IKEA dream now. The only two cafes open are Harrods, where I'm permitted to spend 3 times the real-life price for a stingy coffee and a cold pastel de nata.

I grumble, but then remember that my lovely sister and mystical Istanbul are waiting at the end of this journey...

Istanbul has been in the icy grip of some very nasty weather lately; from the plane, I even see snow on the fields of Greece. So it is that, after descending through miles and miles of fog and cloud, my first glimpse of Turkey is of a couple of metres of blue-green sea, a very damp runway, and mist. A lot of mist. Two thin minarets are visible nearby, but otherwise that's all there is - grey mist and damp runway. By the time I clear customs and find my ride to the centre centre, it's all dark anyway, and there's little to do in the shuttle but sleep... and then I meet my driver. He has different ideas. I'm the lone passenger, and he's a very friendly Istanbullu, who chats to me for a very short time, really, not long enough at all, before he says "Kurds. You know them? The Kurdish. Terrible people, we hate them, guns in hands when they little little." Now really, I don't know if this is just me, but I really feel you should get to know somebody a little before revealing your racist tendencies. Apart from his, ahem, antipathy towards his fellow countrymen, though, he's very amusing. Driving one-handed through heavy traffic and torrential rain, he whips out his mobile phone to show me pictures of him and his friends in macho poses in and around Istanbul. "And this is me at Black Sea!" "And me at beach!" "This one I go to Black Sea with friends!" "This one I show my muscle!" "This one when me and friends beat up those dirty Kurds!" and so on. Well, not the last one - but it was close. He drops me at the hotel with his facebook page, email address and phone number scribbled on a piece of paper, just in case.

Anyway, Robyn is waiting at the hostel, and so we go out for dinner and a long chat. We're in a very touristy but pretty area called Sultanahmet; the main street is lined with restaurants fronted with lovely cushiony porches, decorated richly with lamps and fabrics and shisha pipes. Mediterranean food is so delicious - we eat platters of vegetarian mezze and grilled haloumi and spinach with pinenuts and warm flatbread and and and... oh god, I'm about to put on a LOT of weight... :)

Sightseeing

Belem is a few stops from me on the Lisboa-Cascais railway. At the mouth of the Tagus, it's traditionally the place from which the conquistadors and explorers were seen off, and, mostly, welcomed home to Portugal. It's littered with enormous phallic monuments to people like da Gama and Dias, heroes in their own nation, vandals and homicidal enslavers in other, more southern, nations. One man's meat...

There used to be a little hermitage here, where da Gama spent the night before sailing on his epic journey to India at the end of the 15th century. When he returned, flush with success, the king ordered a vast and impressive monastery to be built on the ruins of the hermitage - Mosteiro dos Jerónimos, arguably the vastest and most impressive monastery in Portugal.

Although the squandering of piles of money on a religious statement is not to my taste, the monastery is admittedly very pretty, and as a bonus, inside are buried, side by side, two of Portugal's notables. One is da Gama, who, as I've said, had a lasting effect on my own home region. The other, more culturally fascinating, is Luís da Camões, the 16th century author and poet, half-blind soldier, traveller, romantic. In a shipwreck off Cambodia, his Chinese lover was drowned, but he managed to swim to shore holding aloft his precious manuscript for one of Portugal's classics - the Lusiads. Scandals ensued after his love affairs with princesses and queens, and he was imprisoned several times for debt and fights. He dropped out of the University of Coimbra - hence the statue I had to pass every day while studying there. Fascinating guy...

















Also in Belem, and along the sam colonial lines, is the Monument of Discovery, an enormous structure leaning out over the Tagus, Vasco da Gama leading the conquistadors into regions unknown, spreading Portugal's influence and briefly making it one of the wealthiest empires in the world.


All very impressive.

More interesting, perhaps, is the living, modern city of Lisbon. One of the must-do activities in Lisbon is a ride on the old trams, so Dad and I made our way to a small square where one of the trams begins its perilous ascent to the castle. There was a queue. A long queue. Apparently, everyone else reads Lonely Planet too. The last time I was in Lisbon, it was the depths of winter and the tourists had gone to warmer climes - my friends and I travelled all day on empty trams, chatting to the conductors and hanging off the back rails. One tram came and went, filled to the brim with camera-wielding behatted Europeans; the next came with a twin. Dad and I got on the first one, and managed to nab the last two seats by a window. Luckily for us, this driver decided he wasn't there to be nice, and closed the doors to the other 30 people in the queue; the tram behind us didn't take any passengers at all, but just drove by! Lucky us :)


The No 28 tram wends its way through narrow streets, past Graça and its little olive tree-lined squares, up to the summit where the castle sprawls, and then down again past the teeming alleys of Alfama.


The Castello de São Jorge is another Moorish bequest, as is Alfama, where tiny houses are filled by tight communities - and have been since the time of the Romans. During Moorish times, it constituted the entire city, and it's the only place in Lisbon to survive the great 1755 earthquake.
















After a day's wandering, including an unplanned trip out to a mall on the edges of the city for a CD Dad wanted, we were exhausted, and headed back to Cascais for dinner and coffee. I took Dad to Flecha Azul, the friendly cafe next door to my school, where we sat outside enjoying the evening cool. A familiar, older man emerged from the cafe to smoke a cigarette (and by the way, I'm astounded by how well the Portuguese have taken to being told not to smoke indoors - the last time I was here, there were ashtrays outside shops in enclosed malls, and the Portuguese were making full use of them!) The man, who was familiar in the way that many faces are becoming familiar to me in little Cascais, started chatting to us and turned out to be an English retiree who's lived in Portugal for 10 years (although in time-honoured English tradition, he speaks almost no Portuguese!) He was a fascinating find: in Cascais, most retirees are conservative, upper-middle class bridge players, but he was working class and liberal. Finding out we were Zimbabwean, he self-deprecatingly said he knew nothing about it, but then turned out, as so often, to know quite a lot. He told us of a story that did the rounds in the 70s: apparently, when Joshua Nkomo went to England for the first time, it was traditional for the Queen to pick up visiting dignitaries from Victoria Station in her coach, it being just round the corner from the Palace. Feeling slightly awkward, the pair were sitting in the coach making stilted conversation, when one of the horses lifted its tail and noisily let out some air. At which the Queen murmured "Oh, do pardon me!"

"Oh, no problem, your majesty," says our forgiving Nkomo, "I thought it was the horse..."

Oh, British humour!

Visiting

I want you to turn away from the computer and go to your childhood bookshelf. The one stuffed with all the big fairybooks and broken-spined Grimm's collections. Are you there? Find a fairy tale and open it to the picture of the castle. The one with the princess in the turret and the ogre in the dungeon. Pretty isn't it?

That's where I was on Friday.

On Thursday my Dad arrived from England, which was very exciting, and even more so when my big meeting-up plan worked like a dream, and I didn't have to run around Lisbon desperately looking for him.

The next morning I looked out of my window at the Serra de Sintra and, not seeing any clouds, hustled down to Dad's hotel and onto a bus bound for Sintra Village. Although I can see it from my window, it's still a 40 minute bus ride from Cascais. Perched high in a forested national park, Sintra used to be the big town, and Cascais the fishing village. These days Sintra is the preserve of the rich and famous and daytrippers from Lisbon, and when I say these days, I'm talking about right back to Lord Byron's time; in fact, Byron called it his Glorious Eden and used it in his poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, while Hans Christian Andersen merely considered it the most beautiful place in Portugal. Several English notables ended up here, some for more noble reasons than others, and some of them made their marks in beautiful palaces and landscaped English gardens.

We rode the bus through suburbs and villages, climbing the landscape, until the castle I can see from my bedroom window as a grey sliver in the distance was more looming than slivering, then we got off. Unfortunately a couple of stops early, so we had to walk through the lower town for a short bit, but we fortified ourselves with a Portuguese brunch - coffee and pasteis de nata.


Heading onwards past deep valleys and tiny roadside shrines, we turned a corner and were suddenly in Sintra Vila proper, the National Palace before us, chestnut sellers on the corner. We equipped ourselves with a map and a paper bag of roasted chestnuts, and sat in a deserted corner, a treed courtyard with a bench overlooking the valley. We decided to see the castle, and we decided to walk up to it - I swear Dad had all the information at his disposal when he decided that!

It was a hard work, but we took it slowly. It wound up a steep mountainside for 700m, first through tiny houses (one was lived in by Hans Christian Andersen once) and churches, then through forest. The forest floor was dotted with great big slabs of rock which seemed unnaturally shaped and placed. A couple had definitely been hollowed out a bit - perhaps to supply a suitably uncomfortable place for a hermit to live out his life. Soon we started seeing more definite signs of life with thick defence walls and a ruined church.


The path became wider and more defined.

I climbed an interesting little tower to look down on the ruin, and only realised after scrambling down the narrow steps again that there was a skull-and-bones on the base - it was an ossuary for the bones from the church's crypt.

Finally we reached the main wall of the castle. The Moors conquered Iberia in the 8th century, and their final defeat in Portugal by Christian Portuguese in 1249 coincided with the establishment of Portugal as an independent nation. In Southern Portugal, they left behind some beautiful architecture and buildings, and some important names - Lisbon (Al-Ushbuna), Coimbra (Kulimriyya), Beja (Baja - where I lived as a student), the Algarve (al-Gharb) and the beautiful area we're now exploring - Sintra. The Moorish influence continued long after the last were expelled from Portugal and Spain in the centuries following their defeat. Portuguese people took up their paintbrushes and created some of the most beautiful pieces of pottery I've ever seen, with intricate patterns and convoluted stories. The Moorish Fountain is an early 20th century example in Sintra.

This is no pretty but fundamentally pointless folly, though - it remains a water source for local people to this day. We passed another fountain further up the hill, also built above a natural spring, where groups of older people were cheerfully ignoring the municipal sign restricting them to 2 litres a day, filling five or ten 5-litre bottles each, and loading them back onto their waiting bakkies...

Anyway, as I was saying: we'd just reached the top of the hill, where the Moorish castle sits like a natural eruption of pale stone. Less menacing than it perhaps would have been were the hill still deforested to the base, as I'm sure it would have been once. The forest has taken back its territory, and is thick even inside the walls - fairly useless if you wanted to see your enemies coming from far off! The fort - for that's really what it is - looks remarkably well-preserved for something built more than a thousand years ago, and which has been through a number of wars and nation-shattering earthquakes. And this is because it's not well-preserved, but rather well-renovated. Much of the lower walls and floors, and the amazing cistern have survived from the first occupants, though. Even the outdoor granaries are still there - despite having been converted to rubbish tips by the subsequent Christian occupants.


The view from the crenellated walls is astounding - villages on the coast, half a day's hard ride for 8th century warriors, are clearly visible. Sintra Village is just beneath - although if you bear in mind that we actually walked up to the Village, and only then up to the Castle, I'm pretty sure you're bloody impressed with us right now. If you're not, you should be.

Dotted throughout the forest were dozens of sprawling mansions, every one of them sprouting turrets and lace like a set designer had just learned the Grimm Brothers were coming to see the play tonight and were expecting perfection, thank you very much.


From one of the towers, the fanciful palace on the next hill is clear in its pink and yellow glory - Pena Palace, a 19th century pure embodiment of romanticism built over the ruins of a medieval monastery.

Sadly, after all our effort, we didn't feel up to battling the tourists for a closer glimpse, and when we left, it was straight onto a bus, which teetered its way down the hills to the bus station. And when I say teetered, I actually mean "perilously crashed" - Dad thought it might be a source of pride amongst the bus drivers as to who terrifies more tourists on each shift... From there we caught another bus back to Cascais, along the beautiful western coast.

Bedtime arrived early that night.

Living

Nice thing about living in a small town: you get to know people. Not just my local cafe owner, but also the guy who wanders about smiling at everyone, his Tourettes manifesting itself in loud moans and groans and the occasional naughty word. Or the ancient fisherman with no front teeth who can't resist babies but never begs from their mothers (only from poor English teachers.) Or the tall dreadlocked Nigerian who wears a different traditional outfit every day and sells real Ray-Bans for €5. Bargain.

Cascais is a tourist town and has been since King Luís II first saw its crescent beaches in 1870 and decided it would be just fine for his annual summer vacation. But its native population (just 35,000) keeps a tight hold on its daily life - the fishermen still weave their nets on a secretive, rocky shore, the housewives still march about the streets chattering as loudly as they can, and the cafe air is still more full of Portuguese than English.

Long may it last.

Walking

Thought I'd take you on a walk today. This is the walk I take whenever I go into town. Hah - yeah, right! It's actually the route my bus into town takes, because who walks when there's a bus, right? But it is the walk I sometimes take when the weather's not too hot, as it's the quickest way to town, and the most beautiful.

First we're going to walk down the road from my flat towards the sea. This area used to be a part of the protected Sintra green belt. Then, because developers don't like to see a nice bit of land wasted, some fires mysteriously burnt all the indigenous flora, and the land was sold to be turned into hotels. It's a common story in Portugal - in this dry country, it's often easier to burn your rival's olive grove than to compete with his business. When I studied in Coimbra, there'd just been a fire that could be seen from space - the firemen (who are volunteers in Portugal) had given up on fighting it, and had just concentrated on saving the houses on the edge of Coimbra, and so everything beyond was a blackened desert.

But pass the hotels, and the most amazing view opens up to you.


Not the roundabout, obviously, but the sea beyond. At this point, the coast has risen from the beaches of Estoril to become crumbling cliffs and jagged caves, and it continues to rise until it reaches Cabo de Roca, the westernmost point of Europe, a 20-minute drive from here. We turn left towards town.


Lined on one side by blue-green sea, black rocks and the dry, indigenous vegetation, the other side of the road is where exiled royalty came to hang out during the European revolutions and post-WWII. The last Italian king spent his 37-year exile in one of the grand palaces hidden behind high walls, and the Brits are represented by Princess Di, who, like Rei Umberto of Italy, had a road named after her. Following the path towards town takes us into a shallow dip, where walkers are shielded from the traffic by trees. The sound suddenly drops away, as if you'd stuffed your ears with cotton wool, and all that can be heard is the boats on the water if the wind is right, or the plop of a fisherman's line as he casts off from the rocks beneath.


A few steps down the road, the silence is forgotten as Boca do Inferno, the Mouth of Hell, thunders into view. A deep chasm in the cliff, where the sea froths its way through a narrow opening, this is partly famous for being the site of an English occultist magician's faked death in 1930. Aleister Crowley was a rather unpleasant man, and his stay in Portugal after being kicked out of Mussolini's Italy is not widely celebrated by the Catholic-minded Portuguese. His "suicide" was assisted by one of Portugal's best-known poets, Fernando Pessoa, and Boca do Inferno became a bit of a pilgrimage spot for all of a fortnight, before Crowley rocked up again in Berlin.


The day I took these photos the Boca was tame, although still noisy, echoing off the rocks; in the fiery build-up to storms, the plumes of spray can be seen from the town centre.

Onwards from the Boca. Just before a narrow bridge, on the right, is an old manor house, Casa de Santa Maria, a beautiful ramble of shuttered windows and tiny towers, overlooking the marina. It neighbours a lighthouse, typically Portuguese in its blue and white tiles.

From Santa Maria, we cross the bridge to the marina and the castle. From the road, all that's visible over the fortified walls is a couple of cranes and some mysterious iron rods - something is being built or renovated or destroyed inside. Although the castle is owned by the council, it's not often open to the public. A friend tells me that sometimes they use it for classical concerts in the summer, but she's never gone; I'm definitely putting it on my list of things to do when they next plan one.


As we turn round the corner of the sprawling castle, the Baia opens up before us. Little brightly-painted fishing boats bob like apples, contrasting with a few sleek and enormous yachts, anchored just off a small curve of beach.


The fishermen store their equipment on a ledge below the promenade, watched over by a statue known as the Jolly King - a bronze statue of King Carlos the Diplomat, the last "real" king of Portugal, who loved the sea and spent many summers in Cascais. He's caught in the act of gazing over the Baia from a ship deck, telescope in hand.


Turning left at the Jolly King, the promenade drops down to sea level, a palm-lined road popular on weekends, when there's often a festival and Santini's, the venerable purveyors of ice cream to royalty for decades, has a stall by the mermaid statue (which you can just see behind the palm tree).


The road slips down to meet what would perhaps be called the Town Square, were it not so tiny; it contains the Town Hall, decorated with tiled portraits of the saints Pedro and Paulo.


We're two minutes from my school here, and so this is where we'll stop, on the bench where I often sit and have lunch or an ice cream, scoffing at the bright red tourists and envying the browned locals, keeping an eye on the fishermen's boats for them, until they come in the late afternoon with their nets and traps.

It's a hard life...

Paddling

So I feel a little like I've just hit the ground running. And the ground didn't even slow down with the impact. 10 hours in school on Monday for 2.5 hours of teaching, 11 hours on Tuesday, and I still ended up taking work home with me to plan for my classes on Wednesday. Friday was technically my day off - and that "technically" is placed there strategically so that you may know that "day off" is a theoretical term.

I have some lovely classes - two tiny 5-year-olds who babble at me in Portuguese about everything except the flashcard I'm holding up for them; three 8-year-olds who taught me how to say "maça" because I made it very clear that I didn't know what an apple was really called; a class of retired men who lived through the colonial wars (and the Portuguese colonial wars were devastating) and a revolution, but still listen politely to my thoughts on living in their country, and invite me out for coffee.

There's been a lot of coffee in my life. I need it. Really. There's a great, very simple cafe around the corner from the school where the waiter doesn't patiently listen to my painful Portuguese and then reply in English, but patiently listens to my Portuguese and then pretends he knows what I ordered. Usually he gets it right, but I think he's just got my favourites memorised.


I'm settling into my new place, which is a little flat (in the picture below it's in the middle of the big block, second from top, with an open balcony) just north of the city centre.


I share with Maria, who's a little younger than me but is doing very grown-up things that involve research labs and medical degrees and white coats, and Luisa, who is crazy. In her words. She's pretty awesome, lived in Angola before independence, came home, divorced her husband in Catholic Portugal, and lived to tell the tale sitting beside her well-adjusted daughter in a lounge littered with African statues and paintings. I also share the flat with Nala, who's crazier than Luisa, but can't natter away about it while chain-smoking, because she's a cat.


Once I get the hang of not spending 5 hours planning for an 80-minute class, I promise to tell you stories about Cascais. Just you wait till I get me a life...

Persevering

Well, I got the social security number. It near about killed me. I got talking to a guy from Angola while sitting outside waiting for my turn (I got there an hour before it opened, and was 48th in the third queue...) and he was very kind; him being the number before me, we went into the office together and he helped to translate when my "Slowly please!" didn't work on the official. It took another two trips to Finanças and one to my new Portuguese bank, but by 4pm I was through. I'm now the proud owner of 8 official pieces of paper which state my right to work here, which amazes me, as every EU citizen has the right to work in any EU nation anyway. But.

At least while waiting for my number to be called, I had time to wander around the area. It's quite amazing. Cascais itself is a popular seaside holiday for tourists from all over Europe; down by the seafront, the shops all sell postcards and green-and-red teatowels, and if you speak to someone in Portuguese, they answer in English. But here, just two (steep) blocks from the centre, it's quiet and traditional, and the voices in the streets are all clearly swallowing their words. Properly Lusophone.

The next day I started a three-day induction at my new school. All the teachers are undertaking some workshops run by the British Council, which is great, and very interesting. The other teachers (1 new, 3 veteran) are very friendly, and, astoundingly, all have British and Irish accents - I'm the only colonial there. The school is in a prime position near the fishermen's marina and in the very centre of town. It's the white building on the right:


Inside, there are 7 brightly-painted classrooms off a central reception.


I start actual classes on Monday with a group of 5 year olds - as terrifying as they are cute, believe me. I've never taught kids as young, but my director is great and will be walking me through it on Monday morning. I gather from the lesson plans that should you be wandering down the road that afternoon, and happen to pause by my open window, you will be able to hear me doing something I never do in front of any sane adult: singing!

Arriving

Having newly arrived in Portugal, I spent my first night at a celebrated hostel in Lisboa - one of the best in the world, according to certain sources. Amazingly spacious and beautifully done up, and clearly having cost a great deal of money right in the centre of Lisboa, I have to say I felt more at home in my sister's sweet hostel in London, where the staff's personality is there to see on every wall and in every room. The next day I was off on the railway line down the coast to São Pedro do Estoril, a small village just 20 minutes from Lisboa. I'd found a room there online, but, regardless of the enormous pool in the garden, the steep walk to the train station, from where I needed to catch a train to Cascais where I'll be working, was enough to convince me on the first day that unless I wanted to scare small children in the streets with my scarlet complexion and wheezing, I needed to find somewhere to stay in Cascais itself. Unfortunately, Cascais being as popular with wealthy Lisboans as it is with retired Europeans, rent costs twice as much in the centre as anywhere else in the area.

Sometimes life astounds me with its inventive coincidences. On Tuesday I went into Cascais to get some paperwork done. First stop was the Town Hall to get my Certificate of Residency, which I needed to apply for my Social Security Number. Unfortunately, you can't pay for the Certificate without the SS number - a rather strange governmental catch-22. Luckily, the lovely lady behind the computer, while quite underwhelmed by my attempts at Portuguese and urging me to take classes soon, offered to use her own Number for the receipt. First hurdle cleared. Town Hall having taken less time than expected, I decided to go to the Finanças office and walked all the way there up a steep hill, only to remember, at the door, that I didn't have my employment contract, which I'd been told I would need. So back into town I went, searching for an internet cafe in the cobbled streets of the old town, but not a single one was to be found. There's another Finanças office in another nearby town which I'd heard could be faster than the larger Cascais one, so I was about to give up for the day in Cascais when, outside the train station, I noticed a big official looking building advertising its Internet Space. I went inside to find a completely free governmental initiative where I could print my contract. Gotta love Europe. On my way out, I paused to look at an advert for yoga classes on the community noticeboard, and right next to it was a handwritten note offering a room to rent. Not being entirely happy in my current place, I took down the phone number. Back at Finanças, I glanced down the street to see an internet cafe almost next door... The dire warnings of two-hour waits evaporated in the face of a wait barely long enough for me to catch my breath. And guess what? They never even asked for my contract. Typical. That evening, my telephone skills utterly deserting me in my time of need, I texted the woman with the flat and set up an appointment to see it the next day. It's ideal. Cheap, close to town and the school, near a gym and a park, in a spotless apartment with a Portuguese woman, her fascinating English-professor mum and a tiny cat. Where would I be if my Finanças information had been right?!

I'm settled into the room now, and have been to see the director of my school; I have a bank account, a tax contribution number, a certificate of residency, a written income confirmation and a local resident card. Feeling proud. Still to get: my social security number, and a health card, which relies on getting the former. I anticipate the social security application with trepidation - I need to be there by 7am to get into the queue to get a number to get into a queue to see an officer, and then I don't know if he'll see me without having the forms, which are unobtainable without seeing the officer... Portuguese bureaucracy nearly rivals Zimbabwe's! But the sun shines, the sea beckons, and the cafe round the corner from Social Security serves amazing pasteis de nata; I'm already thinking of signing up for another year!

Into the sunset

My life in South Korea is done, and my sister's wedding is fast approaching in South Africa. My last few days at English Village are a whirlwind of final dinners and goodbyes, and relief that I'm going to miss the latest directive from the "management": African accents are to be replaced in the future with American ones. My American accent is so poor I'm embarrassed to even try in front of my friends for fear of angering them with the imitation. And anyway, which of the thousands of US accents would I choose? Oh, mad Korea.

In my last week, it snows. Yes, in mid-March, it snows. Poor Korea lucked out on the weather front...


Also in my last week, Shabu Lady discovers that I'm leaving and suddenly realises that she loves me! She really does! (Or maybe she's just thankful that she no longer needs to put me on my own table at big Shabu dinners...)

So. Korea. I won't miss people peering into my shopping bags, picking things out so as to have a better look at my groceries. Or the nightmare of having to deal with social and administrative hierarchy. Or the staring on the subway as I stand swaying in my foreign skin. The smell of silkworm pupae sizzling on the street. Having to explain for the hundredth time to an offended Korean just why I don't like the wonderfood that is Kimchi. The food and the wholesale worship of meat, no matter where it comes from. My tiny box they call an apartment. Sharing space with a million other people. Being met at the door of a shop by an assistant shaking her head at me and shouting "No big size! No for you!"

I'm going to miss shabu shabu and the local Indian restaurant, where curry comes with a side of pickles, and the friends that I've made from, truly, all corners of the English-speaking world - at least I now have a place to stay in a thousand different cities. The elderly lady in the shop who holds my hand when she babbles in Korean as if that will help me understand - and her wide smile. Couples' shirts! Someone going 3 blocks out of their way to show me where I need to go. Living two doors down from a cousin, and 4 doors away from my closest friend. Shopping in Seoul!

Korea has been an amazing ride; I can't see myself back here again, but then I have many friends at EV who said exactly the same thing right before they started looking into visas for another year. It's the first place I've ever truly experienced culture shock and that's a good thing. Without culture shock, the world is just one endless high street of McDonalds and Starbucks. In Seoul, the first Starbucks was met with such fierce animosity that it was the first Starbucks ever to translate its sign into another alphabet, Hangeul, as a compromise (it reads Seu-ta-bug-seu Ko-bi, and I love it!)


The other day I found myself thinking of the way that I get upset when people aren't nice to me on my travels; I write in my diary that "people in [insert town name] aren't as friendly as in [other town name]" and feel sad that I haven't had as good a time as I might have. But travel involves meeting people who are going about their lives, having a good day, having a bad day, trying to come to terms with the influx of people from other places, tourists who spend the equivalent of a month's local wages on a room for the night and then demand smiles all the time. The shock of having to adapt to Korea has left me smiling: if Korea, who looks to America as an adoring child looks up to a heroic baseball player, can still be so different to the McDonaldised West, then perhaps there's hope for the rest of the world.

Rediscovering the joy of teaching

Dongsan High School is with us this week. A Christian specialist school, it's considered among the top five schools in Korea, and every year, they send their freshman students for a week at English Village, before they even start proper school. It's a chance for freshmen to get to know each other, form relationships, do a bit of teambuilding, and compete for the clubs and societies that mark this school as different from the average - which consider clubs as a waste of time that distracts students from their studies...

They are a joy to teach. My first day, I'm so used to herding unruly middle-schoolers, my jaw drops when the students walk out of their hotel ahead of me, in two perfect lines, making their way to our homeroom without even being told. I can stalk at the back, talking to two girls, who tell me "We're very excited about this great opportunity to study with real foreigners." Apart from the pristine language, who ever knew English Village students could be so thrilled about studying English!

The lessons are a pleasure; even the lower-level kids are interested, and the high-level ones actually laugh when the teachers joke with them!

On the Wednesday, we're walking them to the classroom when we pass the school teachers' hotel at the bottom of the road. A teacher is watching TV just inside the open door, and one of the girls lets out a scream of delight. Before long, we've lost them all, a crowd of teenagers cheering and clapping as Kim Yu-Na, the country's top figure-skater, takes first place in the initial round at the Winter Olympics. She's not a singer or a society princess, but Yu-Na is more than a celebrity in Korea - kids here worship those who rise above the crowds to excel in anything. When we complain, the girls reluctantly leave the doorway to get back in line, but our headteacher, who's standing nearby, says that it's ok for them to take a couple of minutes to watch the performance, and the smiles on their faces as they run back to see uplifts me. Later, my coteacher plays the full video of Yu-Na's triumphant piece; she's absolutely perfect, slipping along on the ice as if humans were made to move on two razor thin blades.

Each day, a member of the Overseas Class appears holding a bundle of newspapers for the students and teachers. The Overseas Class is an elite group of students fluent in English. The freshmen actually took a test to be considered for this class while at English Village. Because they couldn't be expected to skip any classes or initiation for the exam, it was written at 11pm - and that didn't even raise an eyebrow from my coteacher, who explained that these children, the cream of the crop, have been raised from birth attending English private lessons and piano classes from 7am until midnight in order to give them the chance of attending such a school as Dongsan. The newspaper is impressive, written at EV, rushed back to the school where it's printed on the private printing press they own, and then driven back to EV the following morning for the students to read over the morning break.

It's a bit of an ego trip for English Village. Their newspaper, commenting on the opening day, calls the teachers "of a high quality, and very handsome and beautiful like princes and princesses."

On the other hand, the headline is "Students Meet Foreigners". Yes. As if we were an exhibit in a zoo. Ahem.

On Friday at lunchtime, I'm with a number of teachers in the pizza restaurant in the Village during the freestyle skating, the second and final round. The Japanese and American contestants are awarded decent scores, but not fantastic. Kim Yu-Na comes on. The restaurant has filled with children, teenagers and parents, and one of my colleagues climbs on a table to turn the volume up on the flat-screen; everyone falls silent, the chefs stop clattering, and we all watch Yu-Na effortlessly break her own record to take the gold, 40 points ahead of her Japanese rival. I can't believe that even the young schoolkids, who haven't been herded in by adults but have hurried in of their own accord in time for her display, are absolutely engrossed in the TV, and when Yu-Na's score is announced - clearly so far ahead as to be unbeatable - the restaurant bursts into tears and applause. It's emotional...


My students compete in a debate they've been preparing for all week. My girls have to compete against boys - until now, they've not been allowed to cohabit classrooms with the opposite gender - Dongsan is strictly Christian. Not sure entirely why it's even co-ed... The boys are also terrified, hiding their fear behind jokes and laughing and formal handshakes. They're more fluent, but my girls have much better grammar. The boys win...




























I listen to their hard work, and then later, can't believe it when a head teacher tells me I was actually assigned the lowest level class in the school! These kids weren't fluent, by any means, but they were miles ahead of any of my previous students - even better than some of our Korean teachers! Polite, well-behaved, interested, willing to participate, smart, creative... At the closing ceremony, I eye their foreign English teacher, wondering if he's going to be leaving the job anytime soon - for these kids, I'd return to Korea.