My favourite saying is "O próprio viver é morrer, porque não temos um dia a mais na nossa vida que não tenhamos, nisso, um dia a menos nela.", by Fernando Pessoa, which says that the act of living in itself is dying, because we don't have an extra day of living without having one fewer day of living.
Hello! My name is Tomás Batista Oliveira, I'm a 17 year old student in the Secondary School of Loulé, I'm in the Computer Equipment Management Technician Professional Course.
My hobbies are listening to music, playing video games, watching youtube videos, talking to my closest friends and playing HandBall.
I'm going to spend a total of 28 days in Palma de Mallorca, with 5 other students for an internship through Erasmus+.
My current favourite music is either River of Despair (Metal Remix) or The Devil in I (Slipknot)
My favourite bands are: Linkin Park, Fall Out Boy, Skillet and Slipknot
The following link is my Curriculum Vitae: Europass Curriculum
The first day of Erasmus started at 2:30 (PT Time) in Faro to catch the FlixBus, which would take us to Sevilla at 3 AM. I, aswell as my colleagues, went sleepless. We reached Sevilla after 2h at 6:30 (Sevilla Time; +1h) and after a whe found a terminal with a bus that went to the Sevilla Airport. There we wwaited for a couple hours unfurtunately, the flight got delayed, getting boarded around 1 hour after the time we we're supposed to. It was the first time I was in an Airplane in my life.
Finally, we reached Palma de Mallorca at around 16:30, after reaching the hostel ("The Boc Hostel"), my friend Márcio realised he had the wrong bag, someone in the same flight had the same one and took his by mistake, he was able to get it back, but only after some time. After hat rollercoaster of a day, we finally went to sleep..
This day started off at 8:35 AM, when we met up with Teacher Duarte at the Hostel, after we had our breakfast, we met he Erasmus Partner, the place in which we met her is a café that also happened to be really close to the Train Terminal, so we entered it to understand how to take the trains.
After a while we had Lunch at a restaurant that is on the same street as the hostel we're staying at, we had a 2-part meal, the ones I ended up choosing were really good, though tough on my stomach. In the afternoon, after some free time in the hostel, we had an amazing 2-hour long tour about the history of Palma de Mallorca
The following photos, were taken during the tour, aswell as one from the Lunch I had. In a lot of the photos are a Gothic Style Church that really caught my eye.
In the morning of this day, I, aswell as my friend Lucas, met up with teacher Duarte to go together to know the place we would be doing our internship in, we both go by train, though to different places. The place I will be working at is "IES" school, a school in Sineu.
After we got home from the presentation. We went and ate lunch in a, in my opinion, pretty fancy restaurant. I had Roasted Chicken with fries. Following that, we had a bit of time in the Hostel, though we did make plans to go to the beach with Professor Duarte, since it was the last possible day that was "easy" to go with everyone being present, as from the next day, it would be hard since both me and Lucas were going to be working.
The place we went to was a beach, the one closest to our hostel, so close in fact that we went there by foot. The biggest difference between the beaches in Algarve and in Palma de Mallorca is, the water was much warmer, it felt even warmer than a pool would. It also seemed like it was saltier, but that's probably because it's the Mediterranean Sea instead of the Atlantic Ocean I'm "used to". It was extremely fun!
This day, aswell as most of the ones that will follow, was a day in which I woke up early to get ready for work, as I had to be at the train staotion a bit before 7:30 to be able to reach the train on time. If I were to miss this train, I would be very late. Next week I'll start waking up even earlier, to catch the 6:50 train. It's going to be a bit hard, but for a total of 6 hours of working per day, it's not all bad.
The first day of work was very calm, I mostly worked with simple PC errors without opening them up, and projector problems, be them audio-wise, in terms of the speaker, or touch-wise, it seems like almost all the projectors in the school are smart projectors, the problem bbeing that the pens seem like they're nowhere to be found.
There's a very nice thing about their informatic system, they have a site where people can relate problems which will directly go to and notifify Senhor Josep Maria, the "administrator", aswell as the classroom where that faulty computer is, from there he can also choose the one to do the job, being able to choose the most qualified / the one who is free each time.
In the afternoon, more especifically at 17:40 we met up with our teacher and went on a bit of walk towards a place recommended by the Erasmus Partner, it was pretty expensive, so I asked for a red fruit and pineapple juice, it was pretty good but it was still 4,90 €, even being one of the cheaper options, however for once in a while, it's not a bad option. After that we had a bit of free time, so we went to an Anime shop called "NekoNeko", since we all like anime and there aren't any in Algarve, there was loads of cool stuff, like katanas from certain characters, or character figurines.
Today I was asked to stay a bit later in work while still not losing my train, only working 30 extra minutes. Work was a bit different today, we had to "sabotage" all computers from 2 classrooms like loosening the ethernet cable or the mouse / keyboard usb. Aswell as "sabotaging" the teacher's computers from certain rooms for a final part of the "event" that will be occuring the next day.
There was also some sort of celebration at 11 AM, where I was invited to go to by my supervisor, there was peanut ice cream and some kind of traditional "dessert" being a specific type of "bread" with powder sugar on top, both of which being something new to me, they tasted very good! We ended up staying there for a bit before resuming the work.
After we got home we had some time so we played some computer games for a bit to relax. Me and my friend Márcio also decided to wash our clothes today, it kind of went wrong since we had to wash them twice, the first time around we didn't put clothe detergent, which we though would be included, and in the drier we put it to the lowest setting, which didn't even dry the clothes.
Today dinner was Tapas, I tried some of them and then ate some "Huevos Rotos" from my friends as they weren't hungry, it was a pretty calm and good day.
Today as a pretty "uneventful" day, I went to work, where for the first part of the day we did the sabotage "event" we prepared last day, we'd sabotaged the PC's. There were a lot of teachers, which were split into the 2 classrooms and had to make groups of 3 to solve 4 total sabotaged computers, aswell a test that was inside of each one that had a question with and answer that would be a password for the next one. A total time of 40 minutes was given to the teachers, with every single one of the groups seemingly being able to win, even though with an after check some PC's from the different rooms seemed to have some of the sabotages still.
In a later part of the work day, I had to install some speakers, aswell as some usb network adapters for a router which would be installed in the school's Science Department, by my friend Carles, and me who went to try to help later.
Today my lunch was something very simple, a baguette with ham and cheese, aswell as a water, and some takis, which I saved for later, gotten while I waited for the train to come after work as unfurtunately I have about a 50 minute window in between the both of them. Luckily though, there's a shop that's really close to the train station, so that's where I'll probably be getting alomst all my lunches from now on. (Excluding of course the Takis as they're not really a healthy option)
Today was the first day of the weekend, saturday, and we all finally had some extra time to rest, as it seemed everybody slowly got tired from sleeping less than what's normal for them, and waking up extremely (in our eyes atleast) early. Since we all woke up late, I just ate a snack, some chocolate filled mini croissants, which I had bought the day before.
In the afternoon, to pass time and to leave the Hostel, me, Márcio and Volodymyr, went again to "NekoNeko" and found some pretty weird "cat" ears, which meant we obviously had to put them on and take some photos, quite like the following.
As for Lunch, I didn't take photos because I forgot, so I asked my friend Lucas, who ate the same thing, to send me the photo he took so that I could still put the lunch I had here.
In terms, of Dinner, we had sushi, at "Dragon Sushi", which was one of those buffet style sushi places where you pay a certain amount and then eat however much food you can eat freely, needing only to ask for it and maybe wait a bit. Even though it was full to the brim with customers, service was still really fast and good.
Today was the first day where we could do an activity. Our day started at 10 AM, when some of us started getting up to take a shower. Then me and my friend Márcio had breakfast together, we both ate cereal.
For our lunch we got dressen and went to a pizzeria that Volodymyr and Christian recommended that was close to their workplace, it took about 15 minutes to get there. This place wasn't super expensive, costing about 10 € and the pizza was one of the best I've ever had.
In the afternoon we finally did "something"! We visited the "Palácio Real de La Almudaina" using the quirk that on sundays it has free entrance if you prove that you're a resident in the European Union. I took about 50 pictures in there, there was a enormous amount of "content", there were rugs, various paintings, an armor set, antique furniture, small sculptures etc... aswell as vases and other stuff that was left there by the romans and arabic when they invaded Palma de Mallorca, there was also a small "stone" tablet in almost every room telling the story of what happened, where the items came from or the story of that specific king that a painting right beside it portrait.
As for dinner, we went to Venecia for the fact that it's exxtremely close to the hostel, it's relatively cheap and it serves good food. Today I tried the "Pechuga de Pollo Empanado" instead of the usual "Pechuga de Pollo a La Plancha" the difference being that one was cooked chiken breast steak and the other was breaded.
Today I yet again had 2 snack bars as breakfast since the shared kitchen isn't open until a couple minutes after I'm inside the train and I still haven't decided if I want to eat something like a sandwich made the day before, or something like a "Pain au Chocolat" which while being worse for my health, it is easier to carry and does not have the chance of the "filling" going bad since our room is extremely hot and humid.
Today at work I made backups of certain ISOs, after a while and having all of them backed up, me, Carles and Josep Maria, went and got some PCs from different classrooms in the school and brought it to classroom 212, where we had to use specific BIOS settings and put them in each one by hand to try and make a small server in the room. unfurtunately it didn't work.
I had a the same lunch as the other day today. which was a ham, cheese and tomato baguette, along with a big water bottle. The water bottle isn't as cheap as it is in Mercadona, but it's still much cheaper than the ones I would've bought at the school where I'm working.
For dinner we went to Venecia yet again, and today I tried and Harmburguer from there, mine had meat, lettuce, bacon, cheese and tomato. It was, as always, very good and I will for sure eat it again to vary from the chicken breast I usually eat there.
Today was yet another day of eating 2 snack bars at the breakfast, though later I bought some "Pain au chocolats" to start eating instead, as it's better in terms of sustaining until lunch, in my opinion. At work I started by learning how to restore a disk image using clonezilla. Then I was tasked with making a timetable with the times where the 3 teachers who work in the informatics office, so that students ccan know when the teachers are attending to help, or when they have free time.
I also learned how to correctly, or atleast a bit of how to. Today was a very fun learning experience. Unfurtunately the tool was faulty and ended up breaking about 4 pins from the connector, making it not work. We ended up having some free time after that so me and Carles went and drank a Coffee with milk, perhaps to wake up.
Today I ended up eating the same baguette as yesterday as the shop close to the station is pretty small and onl has that, atleast that's ready to eat and not too unhealthy.
In the afternoon most of us had to update the website so we mostly stayed home, with some gaming afterwards to relax a bit for the day. As dinner we went to Venecia, I had the "Pechuga de Pollo Empanada" as it's already one of my favourite dishes there. I might have forgotten to take the photo before starting to eat.
For breakfast today I had a "Pain au Chocolat" aswell as a snack bar. At work I started by cloning a PC, it took a while since there was a bit of a problem with it at some point since it stopped connecting to the screen after restarting, after some ore time though, it went back to normal and everything went well from there on the process.
After that I spent most of the work day in the informatics office, which my "coworkers" call "peixera" as a term to an aquarium since it has 2 glass walls, making 2 different google sheets, one for a recommendation of a specific chromebook that would be the relatively fast while still being cheap as a lot of them were going to be bought. And then the second google sheets was similar but only with 1 normal laptop for someone, being the cheapest possible with requirements like a benchmark value in PassMark around or over 10 000, the computer I chose ended up being an HP with a Ryzen 7 5700U (Benchmark average at around 15 000), 16 GB of Dual Channel 3200 MHz RAM, and 512 GB of NVMe as the most important specifications, while still being under 700 €, even without discount.
The green cells mean that the specific laptop was the best in the specified above thing.
As lunch I yet again had a baguette together with buying a water, with the only difference being that today I decided to buy some potato chips to eat troughout the day as some kind of salty snack.
At dinner we ate at Venecia and I had the "Pechuga de Pollo À la Plancha" like most times as it's my favourite dish there so far, unfurtunately though, one of my "steaks" had a texture like it was raw, even though it looked cooked, it was pretty weird so to be safe I didn't eat that one and ate the rest of the food.
My breakfast today was still a "pain au chocolat" with a snack bar, which I ate as I went to work by car, since my friend Carles has one and has to pass the "Sineu Estació" anyway.
From today on I will start working about 10-15 minutes earlier to leave work 15 minutes earlier, this is to be able to catch the 13:57 train instead of having to wait almost an hour after leaving at 14:00 for the 14:54 train.
Work was pretty simple as usual, I started by cloning a PC, this time by mhself, which went without a hitch, then I went to a place where me and Carles chose some tablets to change their label some day in the future. After that I was supposed to put an RJ45 connector into an Ethernet wire, but it didn't go well, so I ended up asking Carles for help and instead went and did another task. After that, and going to Classroom N.º 105 to swap a keyboard, the work day was already over.
Leaving earlier also made it so that I went straight home instead of buying a baguette, so while now I end up eating lunch later, I can eat it together with some of my friends who reach home before me, today I ate with Márcio, we bought 2 pizzas and each of us ate half of one so we both got to taste the 2 of them, they were bought in Mercadona.
Today in Venecia I asked for the "Pechuga de Pollo Empanada" as it is very good and has, or atleast it seems like it, a bigger quantity of food if and when compared to the "Pechuga de Pollo a la Plancha", though that's probably because of the bread around the chicken used for frying. Today's was looking a bit small though, luckily I wasn't very hungry so I still got full from it.
I started off the day by eating my pain au chocolat and snack bar, went to work and started it by finally working on the hardware inside of a PC, most notably the Power Supply and the SSD, there was also another computer which was exactly the same in terms of both case and specifications which was working, so before I went to repair the first one, I fully connected the new Power Supply to the second computer to check if the problem was in that part. It turned to be true, as the computer turned on normally with the new power supply while it's report card said it didn't turn on.
After that, I was teasked with taking 3 projectors to 3 different classrooms and switching them out with the ones they had, al of the classrooms I was to take the projectors to were pre-built ones and each had a projector that displayed a very small screen, so it was hard for students to read what was on there.
After work I went straight to the train station to catch the 13:57 train, when I got to Palma, Márcio was there waiting for me as he had gotten permission to leave work early since he ended all his tasks. We went to Mercadona, he bought 2 premade tuna, egg and tomato sandwiches while I bought 1 premade sandwich like Márcio's and a cup noodle as I had been wanting to try it, I chose the "Spicy" one.
As for dinner we, as always went to Venecia, I had the "Hamburguesa Venecia" which is a hamburguer in a bun, together with goat cheese, egg, ham, lettuce and tomato, and to drink I had an Orange Fanta. While I didn't really like the salty taste the ham and cheese gave, it was overall a nice dinner.
Today was the second saturday since we got to Palma de Mallorca, and today we officially did our second activity, we went to "Aqualand", an aquatic park, which is located close to Arenal, so we had to go by bus. We started by getting the bus at around 9:50, we each payed 2 € on the way there and on the way back. We all went to a lot of water-based slides, some with floaties and some without, it was an adrenaline inducing day. Unfurtunately though, since every activity in the park is based around water, we didn't really take our phones with us to the atractions we went to, that being said, I was only able to take some photos of the park when we we're leaving, as it would be very hard to go get my phone between going to the atractions specifically to take one or two photos and go put it back in my bag.
For lunch, while some of us had already buyed lunch in mercadona beforehand, the rest didn't, so me, Márcio and Luís had to buy lunch there. It turns out that it's super expensive, we all ate Pizza and each of us had to pay 19,80 € for the pizza with a drink. My pizza turned out to be a bit burned on the crust, but luckily the rest was good.
We started packing up as soon as the acitivities in Aqualand started closing down, we caught the same train, payed the 2 € yet again and went on our way home, this was an extremely fun and physically exhausting day.
As for dinner, today I chose the "Pechuga de Pollo Empanada", but ended up forgetting to take a picture as I was a bit hungry and only remembered it after eating over half of the dish.
Today we had agreed to go and do another activity, but we ended up not doing it, as we were too tired from yesterday, so we ended up staying most of the day home to rest. We, as now normal in the weekend, woke much later than usual, since we also had much more free time. So we didn't eat breakfast.
For lunch, me, Volodymyr and Márcio, went to a pizza kebab restaurant, me and Volodymyr ate a "Spicy Mixed Durum Kebab" while Márcio had a "Hamburguesa con Queso", it was about 8,00 € each, so it wasn't very costly, but it was very good, though a bit tough to eat as it was a bit big.
In the afternoon, Me and Volodymyr watched some One Piece, an anime which I started watching some time ago after he recommended it to me, I am now around episode 80 of the currently aired more or less 1030 episodes, with each one being 20 minutes, which means it will still take a long long time to catch up, but it's very good so far!
Me, Márcio and Volodymyr also played around 12 games of snooker to pass some time, we are all pretty bad, so it was fun seeing us missing such easy shots, utting the 8 ball in early or just doing unimaginable tricks by mistake and saying it was all "skill".
For dinner, we all went to try Taco Bell, a very famous fast food franchise which sells both tacos and burritos, me and Márcio chose a double menu to divide, as it was slightly cheaper than a normal one with a bit more food in total. It wasn't up to my expectations to be honest, there were some fried potatoes with cheese and bacon that only tasted like normal potatoes. Our burritoes also mostly tasted like the lettuce that was inside it.
As always today's breakfast was a snack bar and a "pain au chocolat". Work was good as usual. I started by finishing the updates of the computer I was repairing and installing both windows and ubuntu on. Next I had to go into a classroom to change a couple mouses and keyboards that were either broken or somehow had disappeared.
Then came the task that took almost the rest of the work day, trying to discorver and maybe repair 3 PCs that weren't starting up. One of them ended up having a bad power supply, another one was the SSD, and the last one we couldn't find out as the day ended, but we narrowed down the possible problems to the CPU or the Motherboard, as the computer couldn't detect or send signals to monitors and vice-versa.
My lunch today was a pizza I bought in Mercadona, I ate it while I played UNO with my friends Márcio and Volodymyr, I also drank the rest of a Fanta knockoff I bought a few days ago for extremely cheap. Mercadona is actually incredible if you want a shopping place that has good quality items for how cheap it is.
As for dinner, I ate the "Pechuga de Pollo À là Plancha", while I have eaten it now for a good amount of time, being one of my most ordered dish, today's was definetly the best in terms of taste.
Today started a bit differently, I forgot to put the food for breakfast in my backpack and so I was expecting to not get to eat breakfast, but after a couple hours, at around 11:20 I got lucky, we had a break and I was able to discover that there are sandwiches in the school bar, so I finally ate breakfast. It had a traditional food item that kind of tasted like "morcela", I also drank a coffee with milk.
Anyways, on to the workday. It started with me trading CPUs between a computer which worked with the same processor from the computer of yesterday, to check if the processor was the problem with it, it turned out that the motherboard was the most likely problem, so I got tasked with searching for the same motherboard with as cheap of a price tag as I could.
Next I changed a power supply on a pc which didn't work, I fortunately knew the connectors to use, since there were only 3 I needed to connect from the power supply in total, the computer started working.
When I got home, I waited for Márcio so tht we could both go buy somethng to eat for lunch. We both ended up going to Mercadona and buying 2 tuna, egg and tomato sandwiches, they we're, as always, good. I also bought a "fanta" to drink for a couple days with my lunch, since it's very cheap at only 70 cents for 2 liters.
As for dinner, I asked for the "Hamburgesa con queso y bacon" but I ended up getting without bacon, that itself isn't too bad, but unfurtunately, the fries were a bit too fast when leaving the frier and ended up being almost raw for all of us. Still a good dinner altogether though.
Today I ate breakfast while in the car towards work so I ended up not taking photos, but as usual, I ate a "pain au chocolat" aswell as a snack bar. Work started with me trying to fix a connector in a pc, but it turns out I am going to need to use another pc that has that same part since it was the connector from the front panel's button to turn the PC on. Next I Installed Ubuntu on another PC that still needed to have some stuff added.
Followinf that, I was tasked with making a google sheets with the version of image 2 different types of PC in the school, one was X PCs the other one being F PCs, all of them needing a new version of the ISO respective to their letter. The google sheets is going to be used as a secondary mean of seeing what computer has or doesn't have the new version, since it does take a while to clone an ISO into a PC. To clone an ISO into a disk a pen drive with something called clonezilla is used. I also installed a bunch of SSDs with the help of Carles and both my supervisors, Magdalena and Josep Maria on the 006 Classroom, exchanging them for the ones the computers already had
My lunch was from Olympia today, a pizza and kebab restaurant which isn't too expensive but tastes good and delivers a very good amount off food. I endedup forgetting to take a picture today, but it's the same kebab as the other day when I went there.
My dinner in Venecia today was "Pechuga de Pollo Empanada" and as usual, it was vey good. Today I was the one to pay for the drinks for everyone so I'm am now free until we do another full rotation.
Today I, yet again, forgot to put food in my backpack, so my breakfast was nowhere to be seen when I was going to eat it.
Work was extremey calm today, I barely left the Office, only leaving it once or twice to help teachers with a computer or projector that wasn't working, it's extremely nerve wracking entering classrooms full of people, as soon as you enter everyone looks at you, it's especially bad, in my opinion, for people like me who hate being the center of attention, even more so of strangers
I started by testing an SSD to see both if it worked and if it had the right image version, turns out it did which was pretty nice.
Next, I installed windows updates on a computer for a long while, that being followed by the installing of Ubuntu in the same computer as it had corrupted when the Windows 10 was installed, it doesn't take a while, but remembering that to update it you need to do the commands: "sudo apt upgrade" & "sudo apt update" is a bit weird for someone like me who used windows most their life, it makes it seem like Linux is a OS (Operative System) made more for the hardcore computer users.
Finally, I started cloning the image from a computer to an hard drive and a bit later I was told to start the 2 SSD clonning machines that were ready so that the next day we will have them ready and be able to maybe start relocating them to the classroom where they belong, switching them with the old and smaller in terms of storage, SSDs.
For lunch today I ate 2 tuna sandwiches as is now common, bought in Mercadona, as they are pretty cheap and relatively healthy in comparison to other ready to eat food items in the store, 2 of them end up being 3,20 € so I can try to save up a bit, since I only "need" to buy a beverage once in a while.
For dinner today I ate the "Hamburgesa con Queso y Bacon", it was very good today, and almost all the fries were completely fried, Venecia seems to sometimes be hit or miss in terms of the food and how well it's cooked, but being cheap, us having this agreeiment here and it being extremely close to the mostel are all too good of factors to pass up.
This day started off with me discovering that I didn't have any more "pain au chocolats" and Mercadona wasn't open yet, so I had to eat 2 snack bars like the first days we were here, well, atleast it's better than not eating breakfast I guess. Later, at around 9:40 when we took a break, I ended up buying a "Pain au Chocolat" there together with a coffee with milk.
At the start of work today I, together with Carles, went to a room to put SSDs in computers, all of them who had been readied yesterday trough cloning.
Later I, together with one of the teachers from the Informatics Office went and saw/updated the inventory of 2 IT classrooms, one of them having 13 PC while the other one having 24.
After I got home I went with Márcio to Mercadona like usual and ate, also like usual, 2 tuna sandwiches together with a beverage and some potato chips that were in our room.
Today almost no one wanted dinner at Venecia so Lucas talked to the manager asking for the possibility of instead of eating there today and not eating there on Sunday, we would not eat there today and would eat there on Sunday, as to not waste money.
Since we didn't go to Venecia, I ended up "saving up" some money with buying only a pizza from Mercadona and and drinking some water, which ended up being much cheaper than the 8,50 € each one of us would technically have paid.
Today I ate 2 "Pain au Chocolats" as breakfast, since today is a weekend day, we all got up only after 10:00, as we all wanted to sleep "5 more minutes" or maybe just we were just being lazy since we woulldn't have to work today.
As Lunch I had an Hamburguer from Mercadona, aswell as some potato chips, with the drinks being the previously bought Lemon "Fanta".
Today we had agreed to go to the Palma Aquarium, but we got late to the bus which would take us there, with later ones reaching the aquarium only after the maximum hour to buy tickets, which meant that we couldn't go there anymore today, so we decided we would go tomorrow.
We then decided, of course to go to the most recurring store in this google sites, well, except for Mercadona, Neko Neko, the anime shop, we saw a lot of mangas of anime we watched, or would like to, it's amazing, we also saw a katana expedition, with all of them being from different characters which used them, also all of them having their own little spin on the traditional japanese sword. Today I ended up buying a Dragon Ball shirt, being a fan of the anime and the t-shirt itsself being in a style that I like made it "necessary"
Our dinner in Venecia today was good as usual, I had the "Pechuga de Pollo Empanada", aswell as usual, today though, I drank water in the dinner instead of the usual Iced Tea, Fanta or Coca Cola I usually tend to have there. This was because I felt like I needed to drink some more water and less beverages and since I had already drunk one for lunch, I chose water.
I was hungry so I ended up forgetting to take a picture so the one I put up here now is one from a previous day since I still wanted what I ate to be visible.
Today, as weekend day, we all woke up later, though today was the day we had said we would go to the beach, it ended up raining so we didn't go, but we agreed that since we couldn't go to the beach we would go to the Palma Aquarium considering we didn't go yesterday.
I ended up not eating breakfast today. At lunch me, Márcio and Volodymyr went to "Olympia", the Kebab Pizzeria, I ate a "Durum Kebab".
When we went to the Palma Aquarium, we ended up going divided in groups of three, being me, Márcio and Volodymyr in one and Lucas, Luís and Christian in the other, we did this because the groups wanted to go in different times, so that was the easiest way to solve the problem.
In the Aquarium we saw, as expected, lots of different fishes, some sharks, jellyfish, turtles and many others, we were honestly not expecting much going in, but we had a lot of fun talking, making fun of weird fishes or just looking at animals like the axolotl which we had never seen before that up close.
It was definetly an experience I, as someone who never went to an Aquarium, found extremely enjoyable and it's something I'm definetly never going to forget.
We had to take a bus to get, being 4 € total going and coming back, and to enter the park with a normal ticket we paid 27,50 €, I believe it was definetly money well spent as even if there wasn't anything "special" we still would've found something funny to joke about.
As for dinner, our group of 3 went to Venecia to ask if we could have the meal we ended up not eating the other day todaym since we had technically paid for it already, though it obviouly wasn't supposed to be eaten today.
I had the "Hamburguesa con Queso y Bacon", the meat today was a bit medium rare from what I could tell and the fries were well fried.
Today I ate my breakfast in work, I ate a "Camaiot" and tomato sandwich and drank a coffee with milk, it's a very good breakfast and since I forgot to bring my own the school's bar came in insanely handy.
I, as usual now, started work at 7:45 and ended at 13:45, with a break in between as always (of course the break is allowed and even the teachers that work with me come too).
Work today started with me, Carles and a teacher looking for carts and checking wether what the inventory said was correct or incorrect. In the cases it was incorrect we would just update the inventory and carry on.
Later I tried to install Ubuntu on a computer but there was a weird error so my supervisor Magdalena took over trying to install it. She ended up also not being able to install it so it was left for tomorrow.
After that we took 2 computer karts, which didn't have computers, only chargers, and started taking off the old chargers as we would be replacing them with different ones specifically for chromebooks, since most of them charge with USB-C. It took a while but after some you catch a rhythm and it accelerates the process a lot.
My lunch today was yet again 2 Tuna sandwiches, but today with water instead of a beverage as I decided from now, since we're already almost going home, there's no need to buy anymore 2L Beverages as I would probably not be able to drink all of it comfortably.
As for dinner, I had the "Pechuga de Pollo a la Plancha", this time there was something weird in Venecia though, because even though the Restaurant was not even close to full, our food, instead of taking 15-20 minutes to be prepared and served, took 1 hour to get served, meanwhile a person who asked much later than us, and the same as atleast one of us, got their food fast. Atleast the food today was extra good, even the fries were crispy.
This day started off normal, with me eating a "Pain au chocolat" and a Snack Bar in the morning, in this case already while in the workplace. But my day today was pretty weird, I had a lot of free time between tasks, but was asked to stay until later to help with another one, even so, I do understand, because the reasoning was that they needed to change the Projectors and "their screens" in 4 of the Prebuilt classrooms in the school, and there were classes there all day so i would be very disrupting to do it while there was someone trying to teach there.
In work today I learnt how to change IP adresses in PCs, both in Ubuntu and in Windows 10, as there were some in TIC classrooms that couldn't connect to the Internet, it turned out to be very easy if you have the right values somewhere to be able to easily access them and see what to put in each space
Today's lunch was also different, since I had to stay and work until much later, Sr. Josep Maria let me go get lunch in a nearby Snack-Bar, asking for takeout and then eating it in the workplace. Since it was a Snack-Bar and not a restaurant, the only things I could buy that could be considered lunch were sandwiches, so I ended up asking for a Large Chicken Sandwich, which cost 4,50 €.
After I had lunch, I went back to work, adn started helping by connecting the projector to the PCs in the Classrooms and trying to make the best cable management I possibly could while maintaining, obviously, full functionality. We were also planning on putting some speakers, but most of the Prebuilts already had speakers me and Carles put the other day.
Dinner today was "Pechuga de Pollo Empanada", which means I ended up eating Chicken twice in a day, without even noticing until I started eating. Today I also forgot to take a picture of my dinner plate, and I would put an older picture, but since I've already eaten it so many times since I got here, I feel like it would be a waste of space. With my dinner I drank a Coca-Cola.
As my penultimate work day today was pretty slow, I forgot yet again to bring my own breakfast so I only ate it when we had a break in work, where I ate a "Pain au Chocolat", as always, and a Coffee with milk. The pain au chocolats from the school bar are much better tasting than the ones I buy from Mercadona, but they're also much more expensive.
I started off my work today by updating windows in a computer while testing to check if another one worked completely as last day there were apperently sometimes problems when booting up in which the computer would get blue screened, try to do the windows automatic repair and fail continuosly. I ended up not getting that problem as I restarted the computer a total of more than 10 times and in all of them the boot was normal. I also checked the command "sfc /scannow".
A bit later both me and Carles did some more physical work, we moved speakers from the office to the lower floor storage room from the school auditory. It was pretty tiring going up and down all those stairs.
I also ended up helping the final setup of the 4 projectors that were changed, they were new smartboards, so I turned on wifi in 2 of them, the other 2 I couldn't as there were going to have classes, and found the setting to be enable the teachers to use their fingers to write on the board, instead of needing to use the specific pen.
I also found out today that apparently someone's iPhone got lost or stolen, so we tried to find ways maybe to stop the person who "found" the phone and maybe didn't turn it in from breaking into them, or maybe even tracking them.
I ended up going to the Apple Support site which showed some ways to either block, track or even maybe mark as lost..
The last thing I did before going home today was divide the remotes and pens from each projector in the right place, it would be easier to use the projectors efficiently with them.
Today I also forgot to take photos of both the lunch and dinner, but I chose to have the usual 2 Tuna Sandwiches from Mercadona and "Hamburguesa de Queso y Bacon" from Bar Venecia today was a very simple yet still a fun day.
Today was my final day of work, I, much like yesterday, ate the "Pain au Chocolat" and drank a coffee with milk, also, since I worked about 2:30 hours extra the day before yesterday, today my workday was much shorter as I ended up being allowed to leave about the same amount of time before my normal hour to leave, I caught the 11:14 Train back to Palma.
With such a short day of work, I ended up not working that much time, or doing that many tasks, as a lot of time was also used up talking. I spent the rest of the time taking things from the storage room and putting them in the Informatics Office, putting the right settings on the 2 other projectors and trying to fix a printer.
My lunch was also different today, me and Volodymyr went to a small japanese food vending machine shop called "JaPoint" we ended up buying one ramen pack for each of us and a "matcha mochi" to try out.
The ramen we chose was a spicy chicken flavor, it ended up being a bit of a mistake as it was very spicy and we both had some difficulty eating it.
As for dinner, I had the ""Pechuga de Pollo Empanada" for the last meal we would have in Bar Venecia. We ended up having to pay today though, which was pretty weird as we had supposedly made an agreement to pay for the rest of the time we would be here, maybe it turned out to be a misundertanding, or misintrepertation.
These were the two final days of the Erasmus+ I participated in, they were mostly spent traveling as we had to finally check-out of the hostel at around 17:00, the time before which we had to store everything, maybe buy/make some food to eat while traveling back to Portugal, and spending some free time on our last day in Palma de Mallorca.
The first point on our journey back was already a bit hard as the bus we had agreed to go on was almost completely full and only 3 of us (Márcio, Lucas and Luís) were able to go there, we were right before the doors as they closed. So the 3 of us had to stay back and wait for another one, which would already mean we would be late to our agreed time of reaching the Airport of 2 hours before the 20:15 time the flight was supposed to take off at. We reached the Airport finally after a lot of waiting, at around 18:30.
Right after we got to the airport we regrouped with the other 3 and went straight to the enormous line to check-in the bags, we stayed there for around 1 hour until we were able to get to the front and check the big bags in. After that we went as fast as possible to pass the metal detector, being sure to not have anything like a water bottle that would make us waste time.
After being checked we were afraid we would not be able to board the plane in time, so wanting to reach the right entrance quickly, we ran for a bit. We got to the right line around 10 minutes before the time at which boarding would start, but as it turns out, the flight boarding got changed from the C60 that we were into the C48, which was basically on the complete other side, so after some more running we got there and went straight to the line thinking we would be boarding soon.
But yet again, as it turns out, the flight was delayed, and our flight, instead of leaving the airport at 20:15, would start boarding at 21:45, another 1:30 more of waiting, most of us then went and bought some water from a close vending machine, because of all that running to try not to be late as it would mean being stuck there.
Finally, after all this waiting, we were able to enter the plane, which then departed at around 22:00, a whole 1:45 hour after the original time.
The flight itself was very good, there was only a tiny amount of turbulence and I, as a second time flier there, without chewing gum to help, was unable to sleep even though I had slept in the other plane, which was in plain day.
We got to the Sevilla Airport, we got our bags and with more than 6 hours to wait for the bus, which we would take to the Sevilla Bus stop to yet again wait, all of us, with the exception of Volodymyr, slept for atleast 1 hour, but it was extremely uncomfortable to sleep on the hard seats.
After all that waiting, we finally took the bus to the bus stop, we re-checked which bus we were supposed to take, aswell as which bus stop number we needed to go to and waited there. We were finally in the last stretch until we were home after 1 month in another country.
After we got to the bus, it was a short, 2:30 hour bus trip back to Faro, where our family would be waiting for us, when I got there, my sister was already waiting there for me, and we took Márcio together with us, as we lived close to one another and it would be easier for his family not to do that extra trip.
It was an extremely fun and beneficial experience for all of us, I believe, though being so far away from my family and home for so long did leave me a bit homesick since I had never been outside of the country before this.
I got to try a bunch of new things, I learned a lot in my internship, We all got along really well and i even learned a bit o spanish though I think it should be classified more as "Portenhol", all things considered.
During this trip I also got to try some food, that while it might be sold in Portugal, it always has it's own spin in another country. Venecia was a very good restaurant, and while the food wasn't always perfect, since there's always some variables that might change from day-to-day, the customer service was always incredible and it all went without a hitch.
I think another thing that really stood out to me was the beach we went to, even though it wasn't the "best" beach in Palma de Mallorca, it still was very nice, it wasn't full to the brim with people, it had a good amount of space, it was relatively close to our hostel, being the closest beach to it, and the water, as I mentioned in a previous day, was incredibly nice and warm.
I also learned a lot of things in terms of my course while on the internship, I learned how to setup new Projector Smart Boards, how to connect projectors to computers, how to connect a RJ45 header into the respective cable, aswell as one of the used order to put the cables, that being: white-orange; orange; white-green; blue; white-blue; green; white-brown; brown, and finally, I also learned some more details about how to repair computers and how to check the hardware to be able to pin down the problem, if hardware-wise.
I also want to thank both the Erasmus+ Foundation and the teachers for enabling me, aswell as other students go to another country for this amazing experience, it is something I will definetly hold close to me for the rest of my life.