University of Lisboa

This year we had a slight change to our language learning. Hannah is going to a small, private school next to our apartment and I'm going to the University of Lisboa--well, actually the Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa. They have a special section for foreigners who want to learn Portuguese.

So far the semester is going well. We have many students from different countries; France, China, Spain, South Korea, and such. It's a challenge sometimes for all of us to understand each other--although the common language is Portuguese the pronunciation is vastly different depending on where you're from. Americans tend to have a more neutral accent than Indians, for example. The Spanish girl in our class is probably doing the best--although her cadence is way off and she can't get the "shhhh" sound down, she does know a ton of vocabulary as Portuguese and Spanish share a lot of common words. Yet, don't be fooled. Portuguese is VERY different than Spanish. Oh, and just for the record, I think it's prettier too! :) That was for all you Spanish speakers out there.