Mass in Portugal

It's Sunday, January 4th in Portugal, which is where I find myself sitting in my room overlooking Praca de Ribiera and the Douro river. I am preparing to teach a set of master teachers on how to use Intel's Classmate PC in the classroom. The government of Portugal has worked with companies in the country to buy a large number of these small, ruggedized notebook computers, specialized for use in classrooms and with kids. Their ultimate goal is to put a PC in the hands of all their kids!

A small group of Intel folks have volunteered to spend a week in Portugal teaching the 'master trainers' how to get the most out of the Classmate PC and how to best implement it in the classroom. I feel fortunate to have gotten this opportunity for a couple reasons. One, I continue to enjoy teaching at Intel. I have been teaching a management/leadership class while I am in PRC, and am looking forward to the next few days. Also, this has given me something to focus on while I am looking for the next job at Intel as we ramp down my last business group and products.

The flight here was better than it could have been. I got lucky and my coach seat had no one next to me and no one in front of me... this meant i could at least rest, although not really sleep on the 12 hour flight from Shanghai to Frankfurt, before connecting to Porto, Portugal.

I checked into the hotel at about midnight last night, and was able to get right to sleep, thanks to the Ambien prescribed by my doctor in Shanghai last week!

This morning, I got moving earlier than I expected, not being able to get back to sleep after about 7am. So after checking in on the situation in the middle east on CNN, I got some breakfast (included with the tariff for the room), and then headed out to explore Porto. I grabbed a map from the hotel just to get my bearings, and more or less just headed off to explore with no real direction or agenda.

There are a number of very beautiful churches here in Porto, but what I didn't think about was the fact that it's Sunday, so all of these churches are in use! This is what lead me to going to Mass for the first time in years... I stumbled into a beautiful little church just as Mass was beginning. Having no real plans for the morning, I decided to stay. Having grown up Catholic, it was very easy to follow the service... Although this church did finish the service with some odd ritual that involved everyone coming to the front of the church and kissing a baby Jesus figure that was held by the priest... I can't say if this was a normal part of weekly services or just for the holidays.

I continued to wander around the old part of Porto, and it is truly a beautiful old city. Although on a Sunday morning, it was still pretty sleepy! A colleague and I are about to head out to lunch, then a little more walking around this afternoon, maybe even checking out a 'winery' to see how Port is made - turns out as you might expect, Port was first made, and continues to be made in Porto, Portugal.

Hope all is well with you, and that you had a safe and happy New Year celebration!

Cheers,
Joe