No Inicio-Part II

My day to day has been considerably better although last night I couldn't sleep because of some dog a floor above me across the street and a motorcyclist who constantly went up and down this tiny street I live on with his engine full blast. What a fucking retard. Anyway, I'm in class with my French friend and flatmate Gerald, because I switched to a higher level which still seems a bit slow and redundant for me, but I know I need to get the basics back down again in order to produce the language. We are reading these tiny texts to check for comprehension and I'm used to reading novels or large socio-historic studies in Portuguese and resuming them in English so it is kind of hard for me to show that I can read Saramago in the original Portuguese when I have a hard time saying "I can read Saramago in the original Portuguese" and I understand why they don't believe me. Its just the different modalities of the language are so far out of whack for me since I take in enormous amounts of written and spoken Portuguese yet never am forced to produce it myself. Oddly enough, I am living example of how this can be a problem that seems an illogical one at first. Also I am almost getting over the jet lag still so my mind is a bit slow. I'm going to see the castelo de Sao Jorge this afternoon. It dates back to 1147 as a Portuguese posession and is actually older as a moorish one and the fortifications are pre-Roman!! This castle is only a 5 minute walk and it literally towers above my apartment so I should see it before I do anything else. Also there is a simulator of the 1755 earthquake that hit and destroyed most of Lisbon which sounds pretty rad.