the welcoming

Today there should have been the ERASMUS student welcoming at the rectoriate at 3pm so I went to the "Automatic Control" tutorial at 8:30am (tutorials in Portugal are obligatory) instead of the 2:30pm class where I'm registered, then at 2:30pm told my teacher that I had already attended in the morning, then I took the metro (paid extra) to go to the rectoriate. When I arrived there was nothing! But I met Görkem who told me they was a misunderstanding and the welcoming was only at 5:00pm.
The ERASMUS Student Network (ESN) had told some students the wrong time. Only yesterday though I had talked to a girl from ESN and she didn't tell me anything about it, she actually said 3pm... (well, we're in Portugal...)
I walked w/ Görkem who wanted to go to his faculty (faculty of pharmacy), they have beautiful glass work inside of the main hall. I then went home and took a shower, I was 5min late for the welcoming then and was surprised that the doors were already closed (punctual?!), I had to sit on the stairs. A woman presented the University of Oporto w/ a confusing power point presentation (her English was confusing too). When the two ladies of the Foreign Relations Office were presented everybody loudly clapped there hands and JUBELTEN.
The presented some institutions and showed a film on Oporto in Portuguese, at the end they gave us plastic bags w/ information on the university, the city, a small flask of port wine, a basecap and this ORDNER in all the colours of the faculties that I always wanted to have!!
There was a line for the Brazilian students (most studentes came from Brazil, about 125) and another line for the ERASMUS students (33 from Germany). You had to say your country, faculty and name to receive the presents. Rita Sinde asked me whether I was Brazilian (I get mistaken for that sometimes since there's a Japanese minority in Brazil).
It turned out later I'm the only German student at the faculty of engineering.
A jet black haired girl asked Adriano about the content of the bags (since he already had one) before standing in line.
She said "Is it wors it?" I thought she must be German from her accent (and she was, strike!)
I think until today (15/10/05) I guessed at least 5 Germans correctly from their accent speaking English (or Portuguese), ha!
At night there should be a dinner and afterwards a party. So now after the welcoming we were standing in the court without anything to do... there wasn't enough time to go home in the meanwhile and it was a hell of a long time to wait. (Well organized, guys...). I chatted a bit w/ a Swedish and a Finnish Portuguese student, when we finally started to walk to get our dinner I made friends w/ some Brazilians. (... see next entry)