Gonçalos's Week

In the morning we said goodbye to our families and went to the airport by bus.

Our flight was delayed 40 minutes because of the French strike.

When we arrived, we were picked up by another bus to meet our host family at the local school.

We parted ways to go lunch at the families’ house. I ate cauliflower soup with bread, American style potatoes with meat and spinach, and some candies, fruit and a coffee for dessert, and I absolutely loved it.

After lunch, I went for a walk around the neighborhood.

Then, we all met at school and did some activities.

Next, I went home and ate a goat cheese pizza for dinner.

I took a hot shower and prepared myself for the next day.

I slept like a baby (as if I was hit by a truck in the middle of the night) and got ready for the day ahead.

We went on a trip to an old volcano (which we climbed like mountain goats) and the view was amazing *****.

Next, we went to a restaurant to have lunch, after that we visited a glass art museum (Sklarske Muzeum Novy Bor) and a destilary owned by Pepca's brother.

After that, we all met up at the bowling alley where we played for hours and had dinner.

We said goodbye and went home to prepare ourselves for the next day.

Today I woke up better than yesterday (thankfully), I got dressed and had breakfast.

We walked to school today while it was snowing (it was my first time seeing snow falling), once there I watched a German class while they were having a test (it was boring).

Next, we went to the auditorium and got a personalized and signed T-shirt as a gift, and we also gave them some presents as well.

We went to a classroom to attend a lecture about climate change.

Then, we had lunch (It was so fancy, I wish our school was similar), it was really good!

We went back to the classroom to do some presentations about "Porto Wine" and "Czech beer".

We went home and had dinner, and talked with the family for 2 hours (it was fun and enlightening).

I started assembling a 1000-piece puzzle so wish me good luck.

I also talked to my family through video call (I introduced them to Pepca as well) and got ready for the next day.

Today I woke up really sad because I knew I had to say goodbye to my host family.

I got dressed, had breakfast, went to the train station and said goodbye to Pepca's parents.

We went to Prague by train. There we went to our hotel, to put our things there.

We went on a walk through the city, seeing the old architecture of the city.

Next, we had lunch at the closest shopping center.

Then we said goodbye to our host.

We went back to the hotel and got ready for dinner. Which was amazing (I had a street "hotdog"*).

We went back to the hotel, had a long conversation with my travel companions and got ready for the next day.

Today I woke up really sore, because the bed was not very comfortable.

I took a shower, got ready and went downstairs for breakfast (I had an American style breakfast).

We packed up our stuff and went on a walk through the city (we bought memorabilia for our families and ourselves).

Then we got horrible news, our flight was cancelled. We had a fast lunch at McDonald's and headed back to our hotel to get our stuff, and then waited in a park next to a statue for almost 4 hours waiting for better news. After a long time, we went to a hotel where we were supposed to have a reservation, but we didn't, the owners were kind enough to let us stay in their "bar area" till we solved our problem.

Some hours later we had some pizza and got the news we were waiting for, we had a hotel to stay for the night.

We gave them a tip and went to the hotel by tram.

There we went to our rooms and prepared ourselves for the next day.

(We still didn't have a flight home).

I woke up amazingly, because the bed was really cozy and we finally had a flight home. The flight was on TAP airlines, but it's better than nothing, I guess.

We got ready and went downstairs to have breakfast.

We got our stuff and went on a walk through the city. We had lunch at an Italian restaurant, and the food there was amazing (I had the best lasagna in my life).

From there we went to the airport by metro and bus.

We waited there for some hours and finally after a 1h30m delay we entered the plane and flew home (to Lisbon).

In Lisbon we got our suitcases (some were broken) and got on a bus.

The bus took us to the place we had left our families 9 days before, our school, we arrived there at 4 am on Monday (so technically we were on a 10-day trip).

We finally were back to our families and our homes after so much time away.

I loved this experience, even with the problems we had on the way. I would do it again, who knows maybe next year.

Either way I am happy I accepted this opportunity and have no regrets on doing so.

This is the end of the journey, for now...