A Jon Post
Hello From Porto,
This week we’ve been thrown into the city and language at a breakneck pace. We’ve been studying with our tutor for three hours a day and going out with other students or simply on our own in the afternoons and evenings using what little we’ve learned so far. We found out that Porto is full of incredible sites and culture. Gustav Eiffel (of that one well known tower in Paris) began his career here
in Porto designing bridges. The one in this picture is a well traveled bridge and it turns out people are allowed and often do jump from the edges (the lowest line in the picture, not the highest) into the water below. Upon seeing some people jumping, Layne and I immediately made plans to do so ourselves some time in the next three months.
Our lessons have been going very well and we have been told we are learning very fast. My Spanish language background and Layne’s French have helped us quite a bit (though some times they just end up confusing us). Last night, after one week of classes, we were able to converse enough in Portuguese to explain what we want to do in Angola, why we want to do it, and that we want to raise a family there and live there indefinitely. There are still plenty of words and terms and tenses we don’t know but we were encouraged by our first week.
Our tutor, Ana Raquel, is a wonderful woman and is currently studying to graduate in December with her PhD in teaching language (it has a longer and more official sounding name but it’s in Portuguese and I don’t remember it). She is a perfect fit for us and, after meeting and spending some time with all the other tutors, we like her the best.
Today we went out and explored Porto more than we had all week. We actually went on quite an adventure because many of the bus routes were closed or changed for a car race/show/some-kind-of-event down at the beach. We had no idea it was there until we got there and found rows and rows of incredibly expensive cars. We jumped at the chance to get our pictures with a supped up Ferrari and an antique Lotus.
Please continue to pray that we study and learn well and that we progress to the level of understanding our staggeringly fast speaking host named Maria. At the moment we are able to get OUR point across but she responds with a flurry of words we’ve never heard of or can’t understand for about five minutes every time she speaks.
Also, please pray we find a church that is alive in Christ that we can plug into while we are here. We have noticed some in town and we will try one out tomorrow.
Enjoy our pictures. Click on them to see a full size view. Please pray, send us emails, comment here, or just remember we’re here.
God bless!
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- View from our veranda
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- Jon on the bed in our room
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- Layne with a Lotus
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- Jon with a Ferrari
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- Across the river Douro with Porto in the background
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- View from the top of the Eiffel Bridge
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- The last tower left in the Porto City Wall
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- Standing on the Porto “City Wall”
Thanks for the update! Great photos. We’ll keep praying for you. Sounds like you’re learning really fast.
Hey Jon and Layne
Love the “Vanna white” poses by the cars!!! Sounds like you are having an exciting (sometimes frustrating – but hey – that’s normal) adventure. I’m sure Maria loves to repeat things – but the next time louder as if you were deaf – in hopes that you will understand. We had a dear granny who would do that to us in Cree when we lived in Shamattawa, Manitoba. She was convinced that if she repeated things louder we would get it!!!
Nate and Rachel are here this weekend “babysitting” me after my surgery while Kevin takes Zach to a Christian adventure camp in Colorado. My parents are cooking there for the 130 high school kids. Rock climbing and white water rafting are two of the planned activities.
Love you both
Lynne
hey! thanks for the pictures :) fun seeing some of your life there. your room is much nicer than i was thinking….?!
Hey, good to hear from you. Will and I spent 12 hours in Lisbon (a great layover) and we have a picture just like the one of you two on the City Wall, but we were up in a castle. We loved Lisbon–had no idea how beautiful Portugal was until we ended up there for that layover. Enjoy your time! Language will come quickly for you, I can tell.