If you are an erasmus in UBI architecture

Everything will be in Portuguese

We know that you exist, we know that you are there, we know that you don't know anything about Portuguese, but we are too shy to go talk to you. This is the truth; we never see people talking too much with us in the room, so we dont know if you want to talk with us.

So please talk to us and if you aren't lucky and find someone that doesn't speak English, don't give up; we are nice, but we are not that good in English.

Let's talk about lessons:

Portuguese, Portuguese and Portuguese, so problably they will tell you to do some work, search stuff, etc. but if you want to work better and be part of the group choose practical lessons, they will make you speak directly with the teacher and that way they will talk to you in English.

For example in architectural design you will do it alone or in teams, but they will talk to you in English.

Our presentations will be a little boring if you don't know Portuguese.

You can choose to learn Portuguese; it's an easy way to know better the country and you will hear it around you 24h, so if you stay a year, I would say it's a good shout and in the end you learn a new language.

Winter semester:

If you come in September, you will notice everybody is crazy about seeing each other; they spent some months without seeing each other, so everybody wants to celebrate and party.

It's the time when new students arrive and we we call them "caloiros"; we celebrate the famous tradition "praxes" in which you will see people screaming and singing on top of their lungs in the streets. The old students dress with the tradicional clothes named "traje" and walk in the city. This time is when you can see the university tradition. We call it "espirito académico".

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One of the most important times is when we have a party week: every night with concerts and every day with hangover, but Wednesday is when you have the biggest chalenge. The "caloiros" have to make a car that represents the course that they are studying and they have to make a "percurse", during which everybody sings and drinks, so you finish quite wasted (some people don't even finish xD)

In that night you have the music groups from the university playing and the result from who won the competition are announced, what we call "Latada".

During the year, it's very cold, so you can go up to the mountain (here you'll find the tallest mountain in portugal) and play with the snow or snowboard and ski.

Spring semester:

Finally the cold goes away and the flowers bloom. It's the perfect season to see the mountain and because of the snow melting there are a lot of lakes and small rivers: it's a very beautiful the landscape.

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You can go hiking, camping or you can choose more activities to connect with nature.

In the university, in May, we celebrate the blessing for whoever finished the course and of course another week full of party, but without "latada".

In June we celebrate the traditional festivities in the city: St Jonh. They play music in the park and everybody joins there for drinking and talking.

The weather is good, you have warm nights and it's very hot during the day.

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