Dr. Biswas reminded me to close my bank account before I leave Portugal.

Today I visited Dr. Paulo’s Computer System class.

It may seem outlandish to talk about a mobile app while recording my expat life, but it makes sense in its own way.

Today we had the final exam of the Portuguese class.

Portuguese students are lucky that education is heavily subsidized.

I lost my bus card.

Today is yet another Monday.

We were not able to go to Ponte de Lima because the computer system at the bus station were not working and the bus left without us.

We signed up for the charity work at a Longo Doce. Students distributes bags to shoppers and they would purchases food for homeless people.

Yesterday I woke up with a headache and had a scratchy throat throughout the day. It got better this morning but had some serious muscle pain in my back. I guess I just had a mild flu. Perhaps William passed that on to me.

Today I submitted the survey for my Fulbright experience.

Our Speak Class hosted a Secret Santa night.

I picked up William from CLIB at 12:50 we rushed for the train at 2:05 pm.

William had a headache when he got up in the morning. We has the first sick day.

William made a huge Christmas card for homeless people in Portugal. It is part of his school project with three other students at CLIB.

We took trains to Vianan, transfer at Nine.

We got up late and it was raining hard. Fortunately, Uber was still available. However, a six minutes wait turned into 12 minutes. The driver took a short cut we still got to the CLIB on time.

Today I went to a Data Science Meetup event held at the Departamento de Informatica, one level downstairs from the lab I worked at. A professor from University of Porto gave a talk about using mRNA sequencing to identify gene expression profile postmortal. A researcher from the CS Department of University of Minho talked about using DL on compound structures.

When I went pick up William from CLIB after school, he said he would need to skip the swimming practice today in order to prepare for a math exam tomorrow. A little girl was using her umbrella to poke William. I told her to stop because that was dangerous.

I got off the Portuguese class at 4:47 pm. Google Map says there will be a Bus Route 24 at 4:58. I rushed to the 500 meters away bus stop by 4:49. It was chilly and it was drizzling. An old couple was already there. Both of them would be older than 70 years old. The bus did not show up at 4:58. It did not show up at 5:10. I said something to the old couple about the never coming bus, and he said something back. We don’t know what each other said, but we were able to communicate our frustration on the bus schedule. It was freezing. I was worried about the old couple, even though they were in heavy coats.

Time to tighten up some loose ends from our walking tour yesterday.

Dr. Biswas asked us whether we would like to join them for the Free Walking Tour during her visit to Braga. That’s a good idea. We haven’t done that even though we had lived here for quite a while. The tour starts at the New Gate which is 2 minutes away from our apartment and ends at the Republic Square 3 minutes away. It would be a great opportunity to review and reflect on our community.

There are many cats roaming around in the city of Braga.

William was so nervous about the Fit Night event that he texted me a hundred times while I was riding a bus, urging me to get to his school now, as if I had a way to teleport myself.

On the way to the Portuguese class, I saw people were setting up a vegetable and food stand. I thought it was a farmer’s market, but it turned out to be a co-op.

Today is the Guanggun Festival, a man made shopping holiday invented by Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba. Alibaba, a major online shopping mall, breaks its own record again with $38 billion single day sales. It completed $1.17 billion sales within the first minute of the day opening. It’s not only an impressive achievement in marketing, but also a technical miracle for their servers and infrastructure. In comparison, the entire US online shopping made about one fifth in Black Friday, Thanksgiving, and Cyber Monday combined.

We triggered the fire alarm in the building when William cooked burgers in the oven.

We watched the movie Midway at the Nova Arcada Mall.

There are many ways to describe the distance between two points in a city. It can be expressed in terms of meters or minutes it takes to travel across. However, many factors may make one particular metric inaccurate. When we talk about driving time, we would need to factor in traffic condition and parking. Uber time, we also need to factor in waiting time and availability.

So we got to go watching a football game in the stadium. It was SC Braga vs. Besiktas of the Europa League in Group K. Braga won by 3 to 1.

Today I gave a Infoblender talk to the Departamento de Informatica.

William lost two teeth in the past two weeks. He asked the tooth fairy for two dollars which I happily complied.

In the morning, William woke up with a sore throat. We decided to stay home for the day just to be safe. William had a lot of water and more sleep.

Today is our second day in Marrakesh.

Atlas is the name of the room we stayed a night at the Riad of Rubis in Marrakesh.

Contrary to some online sources, the origin of the name Casablanca is Portuguese, not Spanish. I was happy to learn about this because it seems to bring it closer to home.

We took the now familiar GetBus shuttle to the airport.

Although Braga doesn’t have an airport of its own, taking the airport shuttle only costs 8 euros and 45 minutes. It’s actually easier than getting to a major airport from our home in Frederick, MD.

On Wednesday, the 30th of October we took the Getbus to the Porto Airport.

I probably have taken buses in Braga for over one hundred times so far and have gained some basic sense of how it works.

We walked along a creek to the back of the swimming pool a couple of times when we took bus. Anna, a parent at the CLIB, mentioned that it was a good place to run.

Today when I woke up I was extremely tired.

We have been passing by these rows of huge white tents in front of the municipal government building at least twice a day without going in. We always wonder what was inside. When my colleagues took me back from the group dinner midnight, Joao casually mentioned that it was “the market” that had been under renovation for quite a while.

My school (CLIB) has interesting breaks, at the end of the term we have a one week break from school and that time has now come.

Twenty-five years ago while I was working for the National Meteorological Center in Beijing, I hanged out with a group of American expats through my colleague David Hueslbeck. Now I am a lone American expat in Braga.

Today was a normal day.

Deep inland, Braga is surprisingly an international city. Many local mentioned they were surprised to see a huge influx of Brazilian population in the past few years. A Brazilian boy proudly told me they had a nick name for Braga: Bragasil.

People in the US have been used to the idea that anyone can be local. Within the first couple of days after I arrived in US for the first time decades ago, I had multiple people asking me for directions. That hasn’t happened in my stay in Portugal.

After non-stop rain for an entire week, weather forecast shows Monday to Wednesday rain-free.

On the second day of our stay in Aveiro we went to Costa Nova (A beach town).

Over the weekend, Dad and I went to Aveiro.

Today when I walked into the science class I was filled with joy because today was the day, today was the day that I would get to DISSECT A HEART.

At first everything was great, warm and sunny days. But then, the clouds came. For the past week it has been raining non-stop. The bright, sunny days turned into gray, stormy downpours. Several times this week I’ve shown up to school looking like I just stepped out the shower. It’s even worse when we’re traveling, we’ll be walking around site-seeing and then all of a sudden bam, now its coming down in buckets. Of course we’ll have left our umbrellas at the hotel because when we left it seemed fine and now, we’re rethinking our life choices. I think you have an idea of what I think about Portugal’s rain but I’m going to continue. WHY, my school uniform has nothing to combat the cold rain or Portugal. Even our rain jackets have nothing on the the rain. I can be wearing every single article of clothing my school uniform has and still be literally frozen.

I took the Portugues class offered through the University. It’s quite a shock to hear the instructor speaking differently from Duolinguo, which uses Brazilian Portugues.

CLIB (Colegio Luso International de Braga), aka Braga International School,is a nice place.

It’s the first day when rain caused problem in our morning routine.

Because of the rain, we stayed as long as we were allowed at the Stay Hotel, before we got a Uber to the go to the Palace.

Guimaraes is often referred to as the cridle of Portugal. Twenty-five minuts away by bus from Braga city, Guimaraes is another major metropolitan in Portugal.

Hello World!

When we got off the bus after school we noticed a Chinese store right across the bus station. It has an interesting name Trevo Da China which is completed with green clover leaves, one on each end.

Today is my bump-into-random-people day. I did not find a water cooler point, so I just walked into some offices if the door was open.

After having breakfast at the IBIS hotel we walked to tour the University of Coimbra.

Our train was over one hour late when it arrived at the Coimbra-B station. We then took another five-minute train ride to the Coimbra station which sits at the center of the city.

I learned some Portuguese words from my friend Sergio.

The CLIB school is about 15 minutes uphill from the University. I often cut through a narrow path that only allows pedestrians. In the middle of that path, there is a house I often hear sound of a childcare or school. It may be a canteen. It is possibly also a day center for seniors.

Today is the last day of our stay at the Imperio Roman on Liberdade. It’s really at a primer location. We will miss it. Nelson the owner told us to leave the windows open on our way out. I was worried about the incoming rain but Nelson said he would be there soon before the rain came.

Today we went to the all familiar IKEA. It’s the first store we visited in Portugal that we had known before and it felt like home.

I arrived at the Embassy at the wrong gate. The security and the guards were kind to let me in. The PR Office sent a guy to pick me up.

We took the early train to Lisboa for the Fulbright Orientation. We barely caught the train with a couple of minutes late. We had our breakfast at the dining car.

William has been complaining about his right ear. There was a small pimples that appeared in his ear. He kept rubbing it for days and now it was an infection.

We received a letter from the President, a nice pat on the back.