A day in the Life of ….

Of course we had to go for classes, how else would we acquire the finesse, the veneer expected of us? A lot of blood, sweat and tears had been expended to get us to Aveiro.
So it was toe the line or else……
All of us, sigh, well not all of us were down for breakfast. The invariable question was ’Quem é que não está!!!’
And Dhruv spreading his hands with an air of resignation
‘Quem pode ser!’
And we all agreed with smiles of resignation, it was our Le Hottie who the previous night, must surely have had a great time……Imaginations go wild. Various methods were tried to wake Le Hottie up, to no avail. They ranged from a suave “Hermanito, jagho re jagho” (Sonia). GET UP, YOU ARE LATE AGAIN, this accompanied by violent pushing and pulling (Scarlet). Trouble is one cannot pull off the duvet, Le Hottie, may not have had sufficient or any clothes on; I blush at the thought of it….
We just gave up; of course we had our customary discussion on the pros and cons of whether we should still try to wake Le Hottie or not.
Our caminho to the Universidade de Aveiro, took us through a park, the stillness of the park, the dew drenched flowers, gardeners raking leaves shouting a greeting as I passed by, the wind tossing my skirt. For those of you ladies who always wore jeans, the pleasures of a skirt are innumerable; ask Dona Flor. But most of all, the pond with ducks, ducks waiting for bread, aggressive drakes pushing all the other ducks and then gobbling everything in sight, submissive ducks and best of all the mother duck, ducklings streaming behind her, you could not start your day any better
A pedestrian crossing, a short walk and we were in the Campus, the roads are lined with huge chestnut trees, and I always wondered how it would be when the chestnuts ripened. On our next trip maybe….Oh how I loved those pedestrian crossings. What power they gave me. All I had to do was place the tip of my toe on one of them….and zap all the cars just stopped. Oh the power, once I and Alexandre got a huge cement mixer to stop for us. Never had I such power over a cement mixer. Never.
And at the Universidade we had our Professora Rosa Maria Faneca; what do I say about Professora Rosa? That she was beautiful! That she was kind? Professora was all this but most of all Prof. Rosa was the most amazing teacher. Prof Rosa entered the class with a lesson plan in her hand. A lesson plan for us! Weren’t we the guys who had completed a Post Graduate degree, after studying, huge tomes of Literatura; Pessoa, Garret, Camões. Hadn’t we completed thirty two projects? And what about those books we had waded through, including that terribly sappy, romantic ‘Amor de Perdição’. Sadly no, we were in Aveiro to grapple with the finer nuances of Grammar. How we worked at Grammar, we conjugated verbs, we probed the Pret mais que perfeito, we played around with Pret Imperfeito and most of all we broke our heads over the Conjutivo. How the Grammarians in our class shone! If the going was tough we just had to take a look at Maria Helena and Dhruv! Sigh, how they had grammar at their finger tips. We ambled on, we worked hard.
We discussed and analysed various aspects of the Portuguese Culture. What happens to the Common Civil Code, Who could have asked such a question?! Why are women so submissive in India? Now which woman wants to know that?! Are gay marriages permitted in Portugal? Everyone wanted an answer!! No way did Prof Rosa allow us to slack, behind that cool exterior lurked a tyrant. At the end of three weeks we did satisfy her very exacting standards. It was Scarlet however, who was the star of the course, with her very precise writing, she could encapsulate a great deal. My skin gets a green hue, every time I dwell on it……..