Random Stories, Conversations, E-mails, and Things I Like to Talk About.

Today’s Story: Trip to Portugal: Volume II

Lisbon, Portugal: All the girls.

If you missed last week’s story, Trip to Portugal: Volume I, go here to catch up.

I don’t remember a lot about the flight to Portugal, but I know when we landed, we were all screwed up about what time it was.  I know at some point I was supposed to sleep, but I don’t think that ever happened.

Our living situation was 2XS Chicago and 2XS UK staying together in a house and then 2XS UIUC (U of I) and 2XS Prague were to stay together in another house.  Each house was about 30 minutes from one another.

In the Chicago abode, they had about one and a half bedrooms and one bathroom – and about 20-30 people staying there.  This was the morning rotation:  One person would take a shower while another person would be brushing their teeth, and a third person would be on the toilet.  Anddddd rotate!  This was a whole new form of bonding.

In our place, we were told we lived in a “dog zone”.  There were rabid dogs everywhere, foaming at the mouth, casts on their legs, etc.  So sad.  We slept in a basement area which made everyone’s clothes permanently damp.  On day two in Portugal, our toilet broke and we didn’t have any hot water.  The main culprit in the toilet problem was a tampon.

Autumn sitting on the floor in UIUC’s moist basement.

Kendra from the UIUC group tried to explain to Kkiko (pronounced kee-koh) why our toilet was broken and what a tampon is.  I have never laughed so hard in my life.  She was doing what you would imagine as “tampon motions” to explain to Kkiko what was stuck in the toilet.  It took her about 25 minutes to make him understand, and he finally said, “Ooohhhh! Tam-pogn!?”  Yes, Kkiko.  A tampogn is stuck in the toilet.  As for the shower situation, let me just say, it was so cold that when I washed my hair I got a brain freeze.

This is Kendra with whip cream on her face from the “cafe” drinks we always ordered.

As the trip went on, money became tight and food became scarce.  However, we always had the following available to us:

1) Choco-duo (basically chocolate and vanilla frosting)
2) Cookie-crackers
3) Iced Tea (which must have had some sort of chemical in it that made you feel like you were on drugs)

Choco Duo.  Try eating this for dinner…immediate stomach-ache.

One night, we all got the opportunity to go to McDonald’s.  You would have thought we were eating at the nicest restaurant on earth…we devoured the food.  I got a “Big N’ Tasty” and supersized the meal (is that even possible?) and ate the entire thing.

We spent half of our trip in Lisbon and the other half in Algarve.  By the time we got to Algarve, we were basically fighting over food.  Some of us refer to this time period as, “Lord of the Flies”.

We had four apartments that were next to each other surrounded by a pool, so it was nice to be near everyone during this part of the trip.  It was even better because we could now steal food from one another.

At one point, a group of us stayed behind while most of the group went to a water park.  The group that stayed behind (about five of us) went to each apartment and started stealing food.  We ended up with a full sandwich and all five of us stood in a circle and passed it around, judging everyone’s bite.  “You took a huge bite!  Now I won’t get any!”  Yikes.

I don’t want to make it sound like this trip was entirely bad, but I am explaining the parts that we remember and are now able to laugh about.  It did bring us closer and we were able to perform in an amazing show while we were there.

I have one last post about Portugal next Wednesday, and I’ll explain our last night there and our trip home.  Stay tuned…