Hello from Amherst! I’m back on campus for J-term as of Friday evening. In this post, I’ll be writing more about my study abroad experience from the spring 2024 semester (my junior spring).
I spent the semester in Lisbon, Portugal with CIEE Lisbon. I stopped in Germany en route to Lisbon to visit a friend, and made the mistake of flying out of the tiny Hanover airport. After four different flights and a lost bag, I arrived to my apartment late on the Sunday night before my program began, with no toiletries or food. I showed up bedraggled at 7am the next morning for the first day of the program.
The first two weeks would be orientation, with a couple of safety and general information sessions before diving into our all-day intensive Portuguese classes. CIEE is run out of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa (usually called just Nova), which was only a 15 minute walk from my apartment. The intensive Portuguese class was genuinely intensive, but a great way to get my grammar really into shape before starting my direct enrollment courses. My professor felt strongly that those of us familiar with Brazilian Portuguese grammar and vocabulary should still learn the Portuguese way of doing things. Since it was so many hours per day, the course counted for 3 credits, allowing me to take just 4 courses/12 credits the remainder of the semester (Amherst requires 15 credits while abroad, and each course in my case was 3 credits). These first two weeks were also a great time for me to get my bearings and explore the city. I found the closest Pingo Doce for groceries, got a bit better at deciphering Portuguese from Portugal, and learned how to order coffee like a native Lisboner (if you just say coffee, you will get espresso, so you have to be specific).
Courses started in early February. I took two classes with my program, Portuguese language and art history, and two classes at Nova, 20th Century Portuguese Culture and Introduction to Literary Studies. I was lucky that I didn’t have to worry at all about getting credits for my major, and was able to focus solely on language and culture courses. The only thing I had to do to make Amherst happy was submit all my courses to the registrar before the end of add/drop period to make sure they all counted as liberal arts courses (so things like business and accounting would not count, even while abroad). Since the program classes began before the university ones, I had extra time to explore. I also took a trip north to Porto with a friend I made from the program.
Honestly, I didn’t really enjoy my direct enrollment courses. They were large, the lecturing style was dry, and even though the classes were in the humanities, everything was lecture and test-based. They were a great experience for genuinely being an outsider in a Portuguese environment (especially as tourism is on the rise in Portugal, meaning that people increasingly speak English and cater to Americans) and getting a sense of what the education system is like. My university was public and tuition was about 800 euros per semester, which is almost unimaginable to the American mind. Something important to keep in mind, though, is that salaries are generally much lower in Portugal than in the US, so while it seemed like a low cost of living for someone with an American budget, it is increasingly harder for many Portuguese people to get by—especially as more and more foreigners are coming in to work remotely or to retire. Some other culture shocks regarding university culture were that the campus was just a collection of 5 academic buildings and 1 coffee shop, people identified themselves as students in their faculty (Social Sciences and Humanities) rather than of the university at large, the faculties were all spread out around the city instead of being in one centralized campus, most students lived at home, and there were constantly giant loud music shows in the main atrium of the biggest academic tower in the middle of the day—even during exams. There was definitely a big arts culture at my school. Also, the cafeteria lunches usually included some sort of tentacley stew (seafood is central to Portuguese culture); but, since they were priced only at 4 euros due to government subsidies, I ate and did not complain. Another thing is that exam grades and final grades are posted to the entire class with names attached so you can see how everyone else did. Genuinely, though, I would not have had nearly as much of an immersive experience without taking these classes, especially because I was not in a homestay. Discomfort is necessary to actually have a new cultural experience, and that can include sitting through some boring lectures and taking long essay-based exams. I also gained a real appreciation for the amenities we have as American students, especially at Amherst. It is a much more independent experience to be a Portuguese student, without even a fraction of the resources that schools like Amherst can offer. My professors were very nice, and knew that I was an international student, so made themselves available for me to ask questions. There was a small gang of other Erasmus students in my classes, and so we kind of banded together to try to understand how things worked.
Academics are only a small piece of the study abroad experience. A lot of my learning happened outside of those classes, and next week, I’ll write more about navigating life in Lisbon, my travels, and other aspects of living abroad.