Hey brother and sister of mine! (and m&d, wizards both)!

Molly, this is pretty genius. I love that picture of our old house, it almost made me cry when the webpage first loaded. It looks like its time for me to mow the lawn.

So it's morning in Europe, now. I'm sitting at my desk in my office pretending to do some work (typing furiously). My day here in Lisbon goes like this:

• Wake up, make coffee in the little stovetop espresso maker. Drink together with bread (the incredible "Mafra" bread, baked in wood-fired ovens every day by some woman 50 miles outside of Lisbon) and jam and honey.
• Walk down the hill to the metro stop, past Praça Alegria (little park with a fountain).
• Take metro 4 miles north to Cidade Universitária, the University of Lisbon stop and walk over to my building (Complexo Interdisciplinar).
• Work in my little office (alongside 2 or 3 of my fellow postdocs from France, Spain and Portugal).
• Eat lunch in the cafeteria here in the building (my Portuguese is so far limited to alfaçe = lettuce and pepino=cucumber, but I'm working on it).
• Have a café.
• Go back to work and then head home.
• Go to the grocery store (Pingo Doce... the sweet drop) with Saša to buy fish/meat/potatoes and more Mafra bread.
• Talk to Hardil at the base of the Elevador da Gloria, where he stands from 6 to 11pm passing out business cards for his uncle's Indian restaurant hidden just off the main street.
• Cook dinner, watch some CNN international, study some portuguese, eat and go to sleep.

Last weekend Saša and I happened to be at the grand re-opening of the Rossio train station (see above) where they were passing out free tickets to Sintra (woohoo!). We took a ride there last Sunday and wandered around in the pouring rain for 4 hours. Apparently there are some beautiful palaces and the ruins of a Moorish castle (see pics of cat and me, below) but we couldn't really see anything through the rain and fog.







Moor later! Love,
Ben