Portuguese Life (we love it!)

What have we learned about life in Portugal in a month and a half of calling it home? A whole lot! Firstly, let me say that we ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT HERE! This place fits us soooo perfectly. It moves slow, has an incredible beauty, and is much closer to the life we came form in America. We truly feel that if it wasn't for the fact that we have family back in America, we could live here for the rest of our lives.

Other things we have learned?

1. The Portuguese are very “Italian-like” (self-described) in the way they communicate with each other. They are loud and animated and passionate. Our landlord is an eldery woman. Her kids and gradkids help manage the home. More than once two of them have come together to visit us and an arguing match ensues. It's quite funny and uncomfortable all at once.
2. The driving is not nearly as bad as Turkey but it's still a bit uncomfortable for me. This is due to very narrow roads, very narrow parking spaces, and people who don't slow down when the road is narrow or when they see you walking on the side of the road.
3. There are next to no stoplights on the island. In fact, during the 10 minute commute that JB has to work, he has no stops at stoplights -- instead there are roundabouts at all the intersections.
4. The most common traffic congestion problem is cows! There are twice as many cows on the island as there are people, and they are all free-ranging and moved via main roads.
5. There are absolutely NO fast food restaurants on the island. Not a single one. On Base there is a Subway (if you count that as fast food.) I’m actually happy about the lack of options. You really just have to go home and eat or sit down at a healthy restaurant.
6. Milk, until just recently, has only been sold on the island in boxed form. They have just started selling litres of milk. They are actually much cheaper than the organic milk available on Base. ($2.00 per half-gallon vs. $4.50 per half gallon.) But it's so strange at the Portuguese grocery store to see two rows of yogurt and only one tiny section of milk.
7. People here love children almost as much as they do in Turkey. They are often kissing our kids or rubbing their heads; however they do seem to ask before they pick them up.
8. The people are very nice; many people smoke; overall people seem to have "normal" bodies -- in other words not a ton of obesity but no plastic surgery either. People at the beach look like real people, and they don't seem embarrassed by that at all.
9. Many people speak English on the island. It has been very rare that we feel trapped by our lack of language.
10. Unlike Turkey where going "into the culture" was incredibly overwhelming and uncomfortable due to extreme cultural differences, here it feels just a "little" different than America. It really is so much more European here and so much more comfortable in so many ways.
11. The biggest issue with our house is that there are no 110 volt outlets. This means that everything must be plugged in through a converter (if it can handle 220 volts) or using a transformer. It's quite a process to figure out how to plug things in and where it can plug in.
12. In addition, the wiring in our house in one section appears to have some major issues. This resulted in JB's new IMac being fried ... we believe. The landlord has been wonderful, but honestly, so have we. We told them that while they are working on fixing the wiring, we would work on fixing the IMac and maybe seeing what our insurance would cover before we asked them to replace it. Apparently this is NOT the Portguese way as our landlord told us that if we were Portuguese we would "want a new one yesterday!"
13. The pace of life is much slower here; crime is nearly non-existent (other than petty theft), and people seem to really take the time to smell the roses.
14. Overall it seems that the Americans have a good reputation off-Base. Senor Carlos who has become our "fix-it" guy and helps us with our yard tells us that he loves working for Americans because we never haggle him over the price and always pay him what we've agreed to pay him. Why wouldn't we?
15. People stand in lines the "normal" way here. Oh how I hated that in Turkey!
16. Because we are only a 4.5 hour flight from the USA, people are often going "home" for a baby shower or a wedding -- things that people really couldn't do in Turkey with the length of time and money it took to reach the USA.
17. People definitely start things later, stay up later, and arrive overdue as a rule here.