botellón!

so im pretty positive i have bronchitis. ive been coughing/hacking for 2 and a half weeks, have lots of phlegm, its usually brought on by smoke, which there is ALOT OF here, it is worse at night/when im trying to sleep, and it usually lasts between 3 and 4 weeks..thats what webmd told me lol. i am SO SICK of this cough, its so annoying and every once in a while it will get so bad that im hacking and basically sounds like im choking. blahhhhh.

a couple weeks ago one of my friends here, lauren, wasnt feeling too hot and went to one of the 4387543075 pharmacies here and asked for amoxicillin and got it for a euro haha. so crazy. and it made her feel better in a couple days. so ive been using the target brand of mucinex that zandra so nicely gave me, and it helps for a couple hours but then goes right back to coughing a bunch after. so i thought i might as well try some amoxicillin, its worth a try since cough drops/mucinex isnt doing anything. but amoxicillin is for bacteria, not viruses, and only rarely is bronchitis caused by bacteria, sooooooooo we'll see if it helps lol. but if webmd is correct that it usually lasts about 3 to 4 weeks and then just goes away on its own, then im pretty close to freedom! :)

it also said that you should just stay at home, rest alot, and drink lots of fluids. does wine/beer count? haha. and about the staying home part..i dont think that'll be happening much lol. althought i did stay home last night and feel great today, though of course ive still got the cough. im just hoping ive only got maybe another week of this!!

oh also..its such a fall day today!! i LOVE IT. fall is by far my fave season, and its about 57 degrees right now. perfect fall day. :)

ok so i just realized that i never blogged about the nightlife of lisbon, and that's definitely necessary. so the night ann and i stayed in lisbon we ate dinner then went to find this area of town called "bairro alto", which we were told is where all the bars and such are. so we went to find it but really couldnt find anything. we found a few bars, but not many, and there were very few people out. so like an hour or so later we came back to the same area, but walked a little further down the road and hit this street that was paaaaaacked with people. ok so the streets there, alot of them are really skinny, and in bairro alto several of the streets were just lined with bars. and all the bars were super small. so what they do is go into bars, order drinks, then go outside and just stand in the streets and drink. its called a "botellon". we learned that in class lol. we passed this girl carrying a wine bottle, and this guy drinking liquor straight from the bottle. it was nuts. so we got 2 gigantic mojitos for only 5 euros each, which were soooooo delicious, and took them into the street. it was seriously packed with people just standing around drinking and talking. so we met these like 50ish year old guys from the US and they were NASA test pilots hahah. they were funny, and one of them introduced himself to me as "mr. white", and later another guy said he is called "commander white". it was all so confusing but hilarious. and they said they were in portugal because they were sent there to learn portuguese, then were going back to the US soon. it was really great. then we met some portuguese guys who, like basically everyone else there, spoke good english, so we chatted with them for a while. so basically everyone has a giant botellon in lisbon and its totally normal. it was a really cool experience, and im super glad we got to have it. :)

haley