Changing Countries

Today is my last day in Valencia. A little sad but I have enjoyed all of my time here. Especially going to the beach so often! Tonight, I will be taking a bus with our group back to Madrid and from there I will catch a bus to Lisbon, Portugal tomorrow morning. Unfortunately, this means that I will be in transit for about 18 hours but it will all be worth it. I don't think I am quite ready to return home yet but I am ready to have a change of scenery. In my free time at the beach, I have been reading up on Portugal and Lisbon specifically and I think this trip will be a lot of fun! Since I already have the language mindset this summer I am going to try to learn as much Portuguese as I can in a week but I don't expect it to be easy, even though Portuguese and Spanish seem to be similar on paper. The fact that I haven't ever heard Portuguese spoken in my life is probably not going to make it any easier but hopefully my phrasebook and the family I will be staying with will help me out. Also, I am now flying out of Lisbon instead of Madrid because I figured its worth paying to change flights to be able to stay in Lisbon an extra day and get a good night's rest before being flying back to North Carolina.