movingtoportugal

It was when I was in London a couple of weeks back that I got to thinking about the ways in which we were becoming “more Portuguese.” I had just bowled into my hotel, smiled, said “Ola, bom dia” loudly to the receptionist, then gone very red when I realised I had spoken in Portuguese instead of English.

It wasn’t the only time I did it during that trip to the UK. In fact, after that initial embarrassing experience, I started to over-think it, and found myself saying “good afternoon” before beginning a checkout transaction in Tesco Express, because I was translating the Portuguese “boa tarde” INTO English in my head before saying it. Saying good afternoon in a London Tesco may be polite, but I was looked at as if I was trying to parody a city gent from the 1930s.

Now, I know people say “when you start thinking in the language that’s when you are fluent.” Well, I am still very very far from fluent. But, in these day-to-day interactions, it has obviously become instinctive, and to such an extent that it feels more natural in some situations speaking Portuguese than speaking English. This realisation made me think about the other ways we are now “being Portuguese.” It must be time for another list post:

Being Portuguese

1. 10pm now seems to be a perfectly sensible time to do the weekly grocery shop. Midnight seems like a perfectly sensible time to light the barbecue.

2. If we are due somewhere at 2pm and have still not left the house at 5 past, I don’t really see that as being late, as such. (Although to be honest, my timekeeping has never been particularly good, I just now live somewhere where a lack of punctuality is more ingrained!)

3. If a person dawdles in front of me in a shop queue, I don’t feel an instant blood-pressure rise and begin seething and silently blaming that person for all the problems in my life. I just wait.

4. The same applies when the car in front stops for several minutes to chat to someone they’ve just spotted walking along the road.

5. The other day I saw a sardine recipe which called for the sardines to be gutted, and my horrified reaction was: “WHY would you gut them? How silly.”

Sardines are not usually gutted in Portugal

6. Still on a fishy theme, I actually find myself craving bacalhau at least once per week.

7. I now know which days of the week the butcher has lamb, so I don’t end up sulking because I can’t find any on a Tuesday.

8. 27 degrees Celsius is no longer defined as a “hot day.” In fact it is more likely to cause us to remark that “I’m sure it was warmer last year.”

9. I no longer check the weather online every single day. It’s summer, and therefore it will be sunny.

10. Carpets feel weird (that one was my wife´s contribution).

Just another Sunday in Portugal

Settling in another country is like getting older. When you are about 25, you look back at your 21 year old self and think “I can’t believe how little I knew.” Then you get to 30 and think the same about your 25 year old self. After 20 months of “being Portuguese,” I look back at posts I wrote after just six months in the country and can’t believe I thought I was already settled. It’s all a learning curve, and I feel that even after this long we still have a long way to go. It´s a good job that a fair proportion of it is jolly good fun.

Image credit (Portuguese flag): tiseb

Technorati Tags: becoming portuguese, being portuguese, going native

It was a few days ago, sitting in one of our favourite restaurants, Sabores De Ria in Cabanas, that it struck us that in some ways we are becoming “more Portuguese” after living here for nine months.

Given that the discussion was prompted by the fact we were enjoying a plate of prawns and sucking the juices from the heads as well as enjoying the meat of the prawns, we decided that in some ways we are indeed “going native.”

Here is a list of a seven ways we are becoming more “local”…..

1. As previously stated, we now suck the heads of prawns. Disgusting to some I am sure, but very tasty indeed.

Prawns

2. Still on the subject of food, our mouths seem to have developed the ability to hunt down small stray fish bones and move them to the front for discreet removal.

3. We now insist on parking as near to the hypermarket entrance as possible despite there being plenty of easier parking spaces a little further away.

4. We (finally) walk more slowly than we did in London – it’s hot.

5. It now makes perfect sense to us that people do a lot of their shopping when Brits would consider it to be “night time” – it’s hot.

6. It is fair to say we drink wine like it is water – thankfully it doesn’t cost much more than water. We also struggle to understand why anyone would order anything OTHER THAN wine to accompany a meal.

7. We are starting to get irritated by tourists – just the odd quiet five minutes in the communal pool that we have to ourselves the rest of the year would be splendid

Not a complete transformation but some early signs. I wonder if we will be complaining that it’s cold by November when the temperatures are down to the low 20s?! Time will tell.

We have a run of a lot of work and family visits coming up over the next week or so, so I may be a little quiet for a while – I’ll be back really soon

Photo Credit: Glen MacLarty

Technorati Tags: becoming a local, going native, prawn heads, tourists