My first day in Portugal ...

was a little bit frustrating. After being completely ripped off by a cabbie driving us from the airport the night before, I managed to loose the posters I had been entrusted with. I found them after walking around Lisbon with a pack on my back and backpack on the front for an hour. I had hoped to dump my pack at a hotel where work-people were staying but missed them after getting lost. Out of frustration I decided to find the hotel where I was staying during the conference. After some drunk (did I mention it was 10am on Sunday?) boys told me I needed to ´return the favour´after asking them for directions, I managed to find the train station leading me to the town the hotel is in. Reached the town in good shape, but due to a combination of horrible instructions, poor road signage and lack of bilingualism outside of Lisbon and lack of taxis, I ended up wandering around town for an hour and a half with my pack on. The day improved drastically after I finally landed at ´Inatel´ (pronounced ´Inatelé´with large hand motions by an elderly Portuguese woman). Once I had settled in, I took the train back towards Lisbon to the town of Belém (pronounced Belé) where I had some world famous custard tarts. While sitting in the tart-restaurant by myself, I made 2 random friends. A chatty girl asked me if they could join since it was busy (lineup down the street) and they were in a hurry to see the town. While eating, I heard her life story (she was quite chatty) and we ran into some other ´plant people´. It was pretty funny, cuz they joined us and my chatty new friend told her life story to one of the people (LB from AAFC Saskatoon to anyone from the business who is reading this -- very funny to watch her reaction to my new friend). After tarts, my new friends and I checked out the art gallery and a local landmark the ´toure de Belém´. After parting with my new friends I went to the monastery in town (v. beautiful but didn´t spend too long there as their was some kind of boy-scout reunion mass going on) before heading back to ´Inatelé´. Close to the hotel, there was a marina with some really nice cafés and restaurants where I had a couple glasses of wine, supper and crepés for desert while watching the soccer game between Lisbon and Porto. I´ve looked into going to a game while I am here, but don´t think it is going to fit into my schedule. Too bad.

Some strange things I have witnessed while being here is young girls figure skating on roller skating, professional ´sand soccer´ and a ´beach tennis´club (on the beach). I am still figuring out how to use bedéts and am finding Portuguese time is pretty horrible (I waited for a cab for 30 minutes this morning before getting annoyed and just walking to the train station!).

I am now in the 2nd day of the conference. It is not as good as I expected, but am not sure if I am totally engaged as I would be if I hadn´t travelled 20 hours overnight to get here. There are more interesting talks scheduled for the next few days, so I expect thing to get better. Anyhoo, better go. So glad I found this ´free internet´ room at the conference -- otherwise I´d be paying a lot of €s just to post!

PS sorry for the grammer -- in a hurry!