Today started off as a normal day of work–whatever that means. I came to the embassy and soon, me and some other interns were shuttled off to attend a speech that the Assistant Secretary for African Affairs was giving at the University of Lisbon Institute for Political and Social Sciences. In the car ride on the way there, I got to listen to a lively debate about Portuguese politics, which is vastly interesting from the outside perspective, having been raised in a two-party system. topics ranged from student activism to bull fighting, which was fascinating. Anyway, the speech given by Ambassador Nagy was very high-level and broad, but his ability to make the Q&A session afterward work for him and for the United States even when questions were pointedly accusatory or aggressive or tangential or not even really questions, just commentary, was extremely impressive.
See link to the Embassy facebook post here
Anyway, later in the day, on my way to the airport, I saw this sign, which is for the Left Block party about climate efforts. It fit well with the political themes of the day.
Then, it was tchau to Lisbon and Hallo to Dusseldorf as I am spending this weekend with my family in Germany. It was kind of weird to watch the ocean and sunshine world of Lisbon fade away and emerge, two and a half hours later, in a forested/agriculture/city area where the roofs aren’t all red. So here are the obligatory plane photos 😉
The airport 🙂
The ocean in Lisbon–the other side of the Tagus is pictured (this is the side the Jesus statue is on, but it’s just barely out of the frame of this photo)
Coming into Dusseldorf
I am so happy I managed to see my family here–it almost didn’t work out with days off–and so these weekend blog posts may be a tad briefer as I spend time with everyone here.
Much love!