Flatmates' finde

I'm writing in English this time cause I'm tired of not speaking a foreign language. It's hard: some expressions sound better in certain languages, so throughout the day I'm always embarassing myself either by say expressions in English (sometimes French) or by not saying anything at all. Stupid simple words such as "enjoy", "have a nice day", or "flatmate" make me nervous because I can't seem to find a nice replacement for them in Portuguese. "Flatmate" is a special problem, since the only thing I could say in Portuguese is "colega de casa", which sounds long and boring, and I say that word a lot.

Speaking of flatmates, mine and I had some fun this weekend. We all went out together for the first time on Friday and then again on Saturday. The weekend was great, but I can still feel the consequences in my aching body from the rowing classes and my sleepy eyes from Saturday night. On Friday, in spite of the rain, we went to see some live Fado at one of my favorite places in Lisbon: Chapitô, and then we did the classic Bairro Alto aftewards.

On Saturday my flatmates and I gladly decided to cook an authentic paella valenciana! Happy me, I learned a great authentic Spanish recipe and my friends had a great dinner. It was lots of fun, from beginning to end, especially cause we got to buy the Spanish paella pan! After an amazing combination of Brazilian caipirinha and tuna dip for tapas, Spanish paella and wine for dinner, and English apple crumble and Portuguese bolo de bolacha for desert, half of us went clubbing. The night was great and went by very quickly as we came back home and sun was already rising.

On Sunday, even though I was kind of in a sleep mode, my dear flatmates helped me to take off the horrible green carpet that kept my room dark and ugly and we were all day cleaning and waxing my brand new wooden floor!

Lots of fun, lots of bonding! The weekend is over already! Now I'm about to finish the review of the dissertation chapter I wrote last week so that I can start working on the next book: Zola's Germinal. Last week I was so into Oscar Wilde, Dorian Gray and the Victorian society that I almost lost the reference of time and space. The weekend brought me back to the 21st century for a couple of days but now I'm travelling all my way back to the 19th. Hopefully my week will be as productive as the last one, and the weekend as nice!

Non-dissertation plans for this week are the Lisboa Indie Festival, theatre on Tuesday, and our Open House party on Friday! Wanna come?

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Soundtrack: Foo Fighters (isn't Dave Grohl really cute or is it just me?)

PS: More pictures at my Picasa Album here!