Being Thankful

It is becoming clear that the recent "storm train" (one storm immediately following another) that has been pummeling Portugal has caused some serious damage.  Since January 20 Portugal has seen storms Ingrid, Joseph, Kristin, Leo, and as of Feb 8 Marta, all directly following one another.  About two dozen deaths have been reported, hundreds are injured or displaced, flooding and power failures are widespread, and up to €4 billion in damages are expected.  People are banding together with donations and support, but emergency services are stretched thin.  We and our friends are lucky, we have not seen significant damage.

And now here is a story which can be told.  A few months ago Gerrit's doctor saw his blood PSA rising, which can be an indicator of prostate cancer.  Gerrit went in for an MRI, and the radiologist identified a small nodule which he said was "highly likely to be cancerous".  This is not what the patient wants to hear.  Gerrit then had a guided biopsy by his urologist on January 22, which is the most accurate available, and the samples were sent to the pathology lab.  Then on Monday Feb 9 he got an abrupt automatic text message notifying him that he had an appointment with his urologist for the following day.  He began to dread the worst.  It sounded like his doctor had gotten bad news from the pathology report and wanted him in there immediately to break the news to him and start planning for treatment.  Or worse.

But no!  There was no cancer found at all!  19 samples had been taken, including on and around the suspect nodule, and everything came back clear.  Gerrit went from mortal dread to euphoria in about ten seconds.

Later he realized that everyone can have a little bit of that feeling of euphoria all the time, if we would only be grateful for all the good things we do have and the bad that we don't.  Here are some examples: We don't have cancer!  We don't have any number of other dread diseases!  We have normal good health!  We have loved ones we can be with!  Our brains are functional and alert!  The list goes on and on.  There is so much to be grateful for.  Just regularly pretend that you thought you had awful disease X but you suddenly realize that you don't.  Gerrit assures you that it feels pretty great.

Back to the biopsy though.  It required general anesthesia, so no food or drink was allowed following a light breakfast.  Unfortunately the procedure was delayed by about four hours, to six PM (someone else apparently had the nerve to have an emergency), so Gerrit sat in the hospital room for hours with nothing but his pathetic gown and panties on getting hungrier and hungrier.  Good thing the Pope didn't drop by.  Pat had brought some embroidery at least, but Gerrit got awfully tired of his phone after a while.  Finally he was whisked down to the operating room, and he lay there for a while listening to all the very Portuguese activity going on.  People were joking, laughing, and talking.  It was a pretty relaxed atmosphere, which helped to lower his anxiety level.  His urologist came by, soothed him, and told him what to expect.  After the anesthesiologist administered his drug, he was gesturing and joking with the nurses on the other side of Gerrit's bed.  There was none of that ominous "count backward from 100" stuff (like you'd get any further than 97 anyway).  Gerrit began to go under and said "estou com sono" (I'm sleepy).  The anesthesiologist said "com fome?" (you're hungry?) and the last thing Gerrit remembers was trying to say "não fome, sono" (not hungry, sleepy), even though he was in fact hungry too.

Pat got texts when Gerrit went to surgery, when he emerged from surgery, and when he was to return from recovery.  The whole time she got to wait in his room, not some waiting room.  It was all very reassuring.

When Gerrit came to in the recovery room, he felt no pain whatsoever.  There was no pain at all, even for weeks afterward, and with no pain medication either.  He doesn't know how his urologist managed to puncture him painlessly, 19 times in a very sensitive area, but he was thankful for it.  He also got the most wonderful sandwich in the world there in recovery after 14 hours of foodlessness, and about midnight we drove home.  Pat drove home, that is.

Overall the biopsy experience was great.  We used the private healthcare system, since that's what our insurance provides.  People were helpful and sympathetic, most spoke at least a little English, and the facilities were top-notch.  The urologist was very competent, spoke English well, and had a great bedside manner both in his office and at the hospital.  Our experience of Portuguese private and public medical care has been excellent, from routine office calls to this fairly major procedure.

So, enough drama, back to the mundane.  On Saturday Feb 7 our hot water tank began showing an error code and failing to heat the water.  This is not what you want in a hot water tank.  We started taking morning sponge baths, Gerrit called the technicians early Monday, and late Tuesday afternoon our favorite tech Filip (he's been here a couple times before) worked for a couple hours here to repair the tank.  It looked like multiple failures had occurred, possibly due to power surges, but he got it working again and hot showers were back on the menu.

(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click outside a photo when you're done.  Also, you can click on the bold underlined phrases to play the audio.)

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Daily Life, Daily Downpours

Now that we have all our Seattle goods in boxes in the garage, waiting to be unpacked, we have decided to paint the house interior first.  Good grief, you'd think we would have planned that a little better.  We guess that the recent wine explosion all over the walls and ceiling gave us a little extra impetus to paint, but also we realized that it would be quite a bit more difficult to move everything out of the way for the painters once we'd loaded the place with our stuff.  Right now the china hutch is still wrapped up beautifully for shipping protection, for example, so all we need to do is slide it out from the wall to paint.  No tarps or fragile china rattling on the glass shelves involved.  And the new cupboards and shelves we'll need in the rest of the house are still figments of our imagination, which are easy to paint around.

Pat keeps up with a large network of support chats, and she found us some local references for painters right away.  Gerrit will follow up with them in the next few days.

On Tuesday Feb 3 Gerrit had an appointment for his free tetanus vaccination in the public health clinic in Ponte de Lima, so we both headed down there.  When we got there the entire lower floor of the clinic, where vaccinations were given, was torn up for construction and the whole building was being refaced.  We didn't know where to go at that point, so we went upstairs and began getting a ticket to ask someone.  A kindly security guard approached Gerrit, and from Gerrit's halting Portuguese the guard learned what we were there for.  He verified our name on a list, directed us to another room next door, told the nurses we were there, came out to tell Gerrit "one minute" in English, smiled, and touched him on the shoulder as he left to help others.  It's another example of the kindness of the Portuguese.

After the appointment, on the way home, a phone call came in for Gerrit.  It was the plumber he had requested just the previous day.  Gerrit told him he spoke only a little Portuguese, and for the first time he kept his head and asked the caller to repeat, more slowly.  The plumber did, Gerrit did a passable job of understanding, confirming, and responding, and he completed his first actual phone conversation totally in Portuguese.  (The phone is the worst.  It's in real time, the audio is often bad, you can't see gestures, expressions, or body language, and you can't watch their lips as they speak.  It's a communication nightmare.)  In twenty minutes we were home, with the plumber waiting there as Gerrit had asked.

He was there to fix a clog in our garage bathroom drain.  He did a great job, and he even mopped the floor afterward with disinfecting cleaner.  Gerrit was able to communicate and make small talk with him pretty well in Portuguese most of the time, too.

On Wednesday Feb 4 we went to Viana do Castelo, about 30 minutes from home, to the equivalent of the Department of Motor Vehicles so Pat could complete the transfer of her driver's license.  (For some reason Gerrit's is held up.)  It was in a slightly dingy governmental-looking building with a dozen people waiting.  Typical DMV, in other words.  Pat was called within a few minutes though, but the clerk spoke no English and had some complicated questions.  She recruited the next-door clerk, and as soon as the English-speaking clerk was free Pat moved there.  There was something wrong about the appointment Pat had made, we couldn't quite make out what it was, but the clerk cheerfully said she could process Pat anyway.  After a few minutes with the friendly and helpful clerk Pat handed over her Washington license and received her interim Portuguese license.  (Transfers like this require that you hand in your existing license.  We could have gone through the long expensive process of a complete driver's ed course, written test, and driving test, but opted to just do the transfer instead.  The Portuguese license will still be usable in the US.)  All in all, it was about the best experience either of us has had at a DMV in any country.

As of Thursday Feb 5 the rains have been heavy and continuous for most of about two weeks.  The Lima river is seriously flooded.  The parking lot adjacent to the river is under about 3 meters (10 feet) of water, and water is even over the new walking path (the yellowish stripe in the foreground here) by about a half meter (1.5 feet).  Everything is fine up at our home's altitude, but water gushes from every culvert and drain pipe between there and Ponte de Lima and floods everything downhill.  It's like little rivers in the road in places.  This flood is nothing compared to some historical ones though.  There are arrows and dates on the sides of buildings in the center of town showing flood levels a meter or two above the street!

(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click outside a photo when you're done.  Also, you can click on the bold underlined phrases to play the audio.)

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Indoor Cozy and Boxes from Overseas

It's hard to come up with an interesting blog post with the weather as it's been lately and with our activities being so boring.  It's been quite stormy for most of the week prior to Jan 23, with another week of rain and wind ahead.  We've been venturing out a little but mostly holing up at home, enjoying the fire and the dramatic storm views and doing indoor things.  Pat's been doing some beautiful embroidery work (see below), and Gerrit has been upping his game of Portuguese language study.

Gerrit continues to struggle with the solar power people too.  They admitted the couple big problems he's been harping on a couple weeks ago, but nothing is being done about it and further problems are cropping up.  We continue to have long backup load failures, and we now have an extension cord blue-taped to the floor so the internet stays up when they do a firmware upgrade.  It's ugly and a trip hazard, but it's necessary until we get an automatic transfer switch installed.  The vendor's answers to questions are vague or incomprehensible, but that is at least partly due to English being their second language.  Gerrit is nevertheless suspicious that they are trying to wear him down until he gives up.

On Tuesday Jan 27 the city of Soure in central Portugal saw the highest-ever recorded wind gusts in Portugal: 209 km/hr (130 MPH).  Holy cow!  This is part of Storm Kristin which is sweeping over the country, including here.  A typical day for us during the past week has varied from pleasant, calm, and partly sunny to lightning, thunder, wind storms, and torrential rain.  We are due for a lull on Saturday Jan 31, but then another storm will sweep in the following day.  It won't be as bad as Kristin, though, they say.

The big unloading day approaches!  On Thursday Jan 29 we cleaned the garage, laid down some blue tape boundaries, and parked the car outside so the truck can unload our Seattle goods.

The following day the movers arrived with our Seattle stuff.  They shuttled three loads into a smaller truck from the container truck a few kilometers away, wound up our narrow streets, and unloaded them into our garage.  They were cheerful and friendly, despite the occasional downpour as they worked, and they carefully and quickly unloaded and stacked our boxes.  They spoke English well too.  Pat had some boxes she wanted to leave exposed in order to unpack them first, and the movers checked where she wanted each box as they unloaded.  They even enthusiastically carried her huge, heavy, and fragile china cabinet up the stairs to the living room.  One of them then asked, "We take it upstairs?", ready to go up another flight.  We laughed and said, "This IS upstairs!".  They were perfectly willing to take anything and everything up from the garage too.

Getting started	Pat watching for special boxes
It took three truckloads this size	The full garage, and starting to unpack

We had had two special crates built in the US for the couple pieces of furniture we kept.  You can see part of one of them above.  To pass customs the wood must be specially treated and dried to be perfectly pest free, so we had contracted the work to some specialists.  Gerrit had a jolly time specifying the crates and dimensions in CAD (Computer Aided Design), and they looked just wonderful and strong.  In CAD at least.  Unfortunately they were way over-designed, way heavier than they needed to be, and they were complete monsters to move.  We don't know how the movers did it, and now Gerrit is having to haul them around to uncrate them.  Boy, everything inside is perfectly preserved though!

Our goods all seem to have survived almost four years in storage, trucking and unloading to the container, a trip across the Atlantic, customs, and trucking to our door, completely intact and in good shape.  Amazing!  It is such a relief.  International Van Lines took care of the whole door-to-door shipment (except that we packed our double-strength boxes ourselves), and we can recommend them highly.  Now that everything is here, we feel like we have officially moved to Portugal.

(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click outside a photo when you're done.  Also, you can click on the bold underlined phrases to play the audio.)

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Companies, Good and Bad

On Tuesday Jan 6 we thought we'd open our gift bottle of homemade vinho verde tinto wine to have with lunch.  It was bottled using a champagne bottle and cork, because vinho verde can be slightly carbonated.  Gerrit untwisted the wire basket and began easing the cork out, as usual with sparkling wine, when KAPOW, the cork and three-quarters of the wine exploded, spraying all over the kitchen and dining room!  This was a cork explosion like Gerrit had never seen, and he certainly didn't expect it from a mildly effervescent vinho verde.  Somebody must have been fiddling with the recipe.  There was pink wine sprayed on the ceiling, all over the walls, and on the floor.  We mopped the mess up as quickly as we could, but the paint is matte and porous so the wine soaked right in.  Here is a picture of a small part of the carnage.  We tried a couple cleaning methods to no avail, so it looks like we will have to repaint earlier than we'd planned.  Or maybe we should just spatter wine all over both rooms so it looks like new wallpaper.  "Wine Splash" we'll call it.  The latest design trend.

Gerrit was awakened at 6 AM on Friday Jan 9 by a text from our solar panel vendor asking him to reset the solar system inverter.  Which was in the garage.  Which was inaccessible because the backup power which the garage door requires had failed due to their firmware update turning off its own internet access.  Thus began a four hour ordeal: breaking into the garage, marching back and forth between the house and garage (which are separated by about 10 meters (yards) and a large boulder), stringing up extension cords, rebooting the inverter, until the system was finally operational again.  The firmware update had started about 2 AM and got stuck in a failure loop, so the refrigerator, water pump, lights, etc, had been out for 8 hours altogether.  This is our new more secure solar power system, more robust, providing extra backup, giving us some grid independence.  How do you like it?  We don't.  Problems just keep cropping up with this thing and our overall electrical situation is more fragile now than it was before we installed it.  We must get this thing under control.  Bad company!

There is a thriving custom furniture fabrication industry in northern Portugal, notably in the town of Paços de Ferreira where there is a high concentration of companies building everything from off-the-shelf to full custom in exotic woods and styles.  We want to upgrade our beds to a storage type, where you lift a hinged mattress platform on gas struts to access a storage area underneath.  Pat found a retailer here in Ponte de Lima which sources from local furniture manufacturers, and we spent a little time shopping with them on Friday Jan 9.  They have a great showroom and we found just what we're after, including customization.  A saleswoman there was very helpful, spoke excellent English, and sent a dimensioned computer sketch (CAD) of beds and nightstands based on our specific wood choice, design, and sizes.  Good company!

Wednesday Jan 14 was nice, mostly clear, and our gardeners were here for some more progress on the irrigation system.  It's going to be very comprehensive and will take good care of the plants during the hot dry months.  They had a good idea about re-routing some of the piping for better aesthetics too.

And vindication is almost as sweet as revenge, MWAH-HA-HA-HA!  On Thursday Jan 15 Gerrit got a message from the solar panel vendors that, yes, in fact, the problems he has been screaming about for months are indeed problems and not the "perfectly normal" behavior they have been insisting on.  They have been dragging their feet and denying all this time while Gerrit has spent hours and hours logging, documenting, pleading, explaining, and doing technician work, but finally it seems to have sunk in.  They installed new firmware last Friday (the fiasco which is described above) which supposedly fixed the problems, but it has caused another which cropped up last Tuesday.  At least they are admitting this one, and will release another firmware fix.  So we are not out of the woods yet, but the vendors have at least admitted culpability and are on it.

Incidentally, no one has apologized or explained.  They thought they could just slip a fix in with new firmware while we weren't looking.  It reminds us of the Portuguese work culture we described here ("never apologize, the fix is the apology"), but these guys are Dutch!  What is this, a pan-European trait?  Frankly, it's probably just human nature.

Friday Jan 16 we heard from our shipping liaison that they can truck our Seattle goods to our home as early as the following Thursday, Jan 22!  No word about whether duty or fees are owed, but we've asked about that and probably won't hear until Monday.  Unfortunately we're busy on Jan 22 with something we can't get out of, but hopefully they can deliver shortly thereafter.  Good company!

On Saturday Jan 17 our local furniture store had received bids on our beds, so we returned, went through all the details, and made our down payment on two custom storage beds and two nightstands.  It may be up to two months before they're built, but we're not in a hurry.  It's great to have this taken care of!  The beds are very nice, and the extra storage will be a great place to stash some of the Seattle junk we have coming.

(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click outside a photo when you're done.  Also, you can click on the bold underlined phrases to play the audio.)

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Fireworks and Fires

Wednesday Dec 31 was New Year's Eve, of course, and we were determined to stay up for the fireworks.  We had heard that we would have a good view of them right from our balcony, so that's about as convenient as it gets.  We watched a movie and a half and had snacks and wine, while trying to keep those drooping eyelids open.  But boy was it worth it!  The whole Ponte de Lima valley was a bowl of colorful sparkling skyrockets, with booms and bangs echoing from all sides.  We haven't been this delighted by fireworks for years!  The video here doesn't do the display justice, but you can get an idea of how the whole area was erupting.  Everyone, including our next-door neighbor, seemed to have huge commercial grade fireworks, and they shot them off with gusto.  And best of all, fifteen minutes after the show was over we were snuggled in bed.  Gerrit, as usual, was hopelessly awake right on schedule at 6 AM, but with a bleary smile on his face.

The evening before the fireworks display we visited Luna and Christiano, some new young friends in their twenties, at their apartment in downtown Ponte de Lima.  Luna is teaching Pat and friends Portuguese, and we hadn't met her boyfriend Christiano.  They are both from Columbia and have been in Portugal about as long as we have.  Their English is good and we used some Portuguese too.  They served us homemade croissants with a cream cheese, jam, and blueberry spread, and gave us a bottle of artisanal vinho verde wine made by friends of theirs.  It is the vinho verde tinto variety, which is kind of a rosé.  We played games, mostly in Portuguese, had a great time, and parted good friends.

We forgot to mention that on Christmas day our goods from Seattle arrived at a port next to Porto.  They have made it through the Panama Canal and across the Atlantic Ocean!  Now we wait, for their journey through customs.  We have a Portuguese liaison who will handle all that, and also getting the goods trucked to our home.

We found out from a friend here that fireworks are manufactured right here in northern Portugal.  There is a family-run fireworks factory in the town of Lamego, due east of Porto.  (The factory actually exploded in 2017.)  We thought all that stuff came from China these days!  There are also a number of fireworks retailers in northern Portugal too, so there's no shortage of pyrotechnics available for the fireworks fans out there.

On Sunday Jan 4 the weather was okay and we wanted to take the afternoon off, so we took a little drive to some lagos (lagoons) a few kilometers away which we hadn't gotten around to finding yet.  There was a very nice interpretive center and you could walk around the lagos if you could make it for 7.5 km (4.7 mi), which was out of our league.  We got a few photos instead.

On the way back we wandered around till sunset so we could get some shots of some local churches, which were still lit up for the holidays.  Check out the rolling dot-matrix message of "Feliz Ano Novo" (Happy New Year) followed by the scrolling martini glass!  Maybe this church offers a special communion service.

About sunset on Monday Jan 5 we saw smoke rising from the ridge across the valley from us, just above the granite quarry.  It didn't look like a forest fire, the smoke was dark and we thought it was an industrial or home fire, but it turned out to be a forest fire after all.  Pat found that it was being reported on fogos.pt (a website for real time fire reporting in Portugal).  We kept a wary eye on it for a couple hours as it faded and flared.  The ridge was a hard fire line, fortunately: a steep drop with nothing on our side but granite.  Our remarkable bombeiros (firefighters) here got it under control and the blaze dimmed by about 8 PM.  We are so thankful for our all-volunteer fire department here, which is common in Portugal, and we are enthusiastic supporters.

And Gerrit captured this photo of the rare Portuguese Rainbow Snake slithering along our hallway.  Oh, wait, that's from the sunshine hitting the beveled edge of the bathroom mirror and reflecting down the hallway.  Never mind.

(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click outside a photo when you're done.  Also, you can click on the bold underlined phrases to play the audio.)

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Sight-seeing Photo Gallery

This is our 100th blog post!  Holy cow, that's a lot of adventure in 18 months.  The blog has become pretty unwieldy to take in all at once, but you can scan for dates and search for specific things by clicking on the hamburger (three horizontal lines) in the upper left corner of each post.  It's fun for us to review too; it's like a big diary.

Saturday Dec 27 was clear and bright, so we took the day off and went on a road trip.  Pat plotted a route along the small byways, roads we had mostly not been on, north to Valença on the Spanish border to see the Fortaleza (fortress) there.  It was a beautiful drive through the Portuguese countryside.  The fortress is a huge well-preserved medieval castle, including walls, grounds, and a village within, but was completely overwhelmed with tourists on this sunny Saturday during the Christmas holidays.  Gerrit said it reminded him of Venice: a beautiful tourist attraction except for the tourists.  We crept through traffic into the little village inside the castle walls, found that parking was already overflowing, and crept back out to try again when the crowds are thinner.

Next we drove to Mosteiro de Sanfins, an ancient monastery which is a little southeast of Valença.  This was the complete antithesis of the fortress we had just seen.  It was tranquil, natural, and we were the only people there.  We wandered around the moss-covered ruins of the medieval monastery, peering into the small, unheated, stone, monks' cells and admiring the ancient walls and arches.  We thought about the incredible work that would have been required to raise and set the granite blocks into position in the middle ages, or to build the beautiful, ornate self-supporting archways.  There were narrow vertical slits (archer's windows) in the monastery itself, too, evidence of the need for self-defense even in a monastery.  There were indications of cannon ball strikes on the outer walls too.  Such a soft, easy, and luxurious life we lead now, we reflected as we eased back into our comfortable automobile and drove off.

The original monastery	Outside grounds
Inside the ruins	Arches
Corridor of monks' cells	A monk emerges from his meditations

Torre de Lapela was the next stop: the tower which remains from a medieval fort.  The castle itself was demolished in 1706 to provide stone for a nearby project, but the tower was left intact.  We walked around and gazed up at the imposing granite structure, but the steep stairs were too much for us so we restricted our admiration to gazing.

Granaries in front of the tower

Seems a little steep

We took another winding beautiful drive home following unfamiliar back roads through unfamiliar villages in the Portuguese countryside:

Not far from Retorta (2F4M+FGV map coords)

Village of Castanheira (seen from XG4G+MFH)

As the leaves began to fall, we noticed what looked like a huge hornet nest about 10 m (30 feet) up in a tree in the neighbor's lot across the way.  Here is a seriously zoomed-in photo.  A couple weeks later this red and white ribbon appeared, attached to the bottom.  Pat found that this is a sign that the authorities have destroyed the inhabitants of an Asian Hornet nest and not to touch it.  They also place a marker at the base of the tree.  We thought this was a nice example of the government responding to a reported dangerous condition and taking quick action.

The weather has been very nice the past few days and Christmas lights are still up, so after sundown on Sunday Dec 28 we took a drive to see some more of them.  There are only a few houses which have significant lights up, but Ponte de Lima looks like a birthday cake.  You see "Boas Festas" (Happy Holidays) all over.

There are lights at each entry road into town.  Here are all but one, which we couldn't get a clear shot of:

And here are some of the other light shows in our village and downtown.  2025 is the 900th birthday year of the town of Ponte de Lima (the oldest chartered town in Portugal), and you can see banners and lights commemorating that.

Our village church	Ponte de Lima old town
Happy 900th birthday!	Wishing you 900 more!
Downtown historic district	Nativity scene downtown

We also got some shots looking across the Lima river and back at the town and medieval bridge:

(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click outside a photo when you're done.  Also, you can click on the bold underlined phrases to play the audio.)

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Christmas II

This is our second Christmas in Portugal.  A year ago we were in our apartment in Vila Nova de Gaia, and now we're in our home in Ponte de Lima.  Much has changed, but much is similar too.  We hope you all had a good holiday too!  

Pat has been beading more than a dozen Christmas ornaments for gifts.  It's a tricky and exacting job, but she loves it and the results are beautiful.  Since this post will appear after Christmas, we won't be blowing any surprises by posting a photo here.

Here is our wee tabletop Christmas tree and a cozy fire at home.  Pat strung some nice icicle light strings along the balcony too.

On Christmas Eve we drove an hour or so south to Porto and checked into a beautiful hotel which Pat had found, just a kilometer or so from our friend Bernardo.  He had invited us again to his consoada, or Christmas Eve dinner get-together, the peak of the season in Portugal.  We checked in to the hotel and hopped an Uber to Bernardo's place.

Most of Bernardo's family was there: his mom Lígia, brother Pedro and sister Rita.  His dad, the good-hearted doctor, had agreed again to take someone's shift at work, so we missed him.  Some other guests were there too: Carolina, Bernardo's Uruguayan girlfriend who had just earned her Masters in Fine Arts, Natalía, a Uruguayan friend of hers, Martín, a fellow tour guide and colleague of Bernardo's originally from Macedonia, and Ann, an American from, incredibly enough, Seattle!

Bernardo met Ann when he helped her find an apartment about a year ago, in his role as a real estate agent.  Some time after that she was diagnosed with colon cancer.  Bernardo visited her in the hospital.  The cancer spread and she was pronounced terminal.  She is shortly leaving for Seattle to say her final goodbyes to her family there.

Bernardo, our friend with the heart of gold, invited her to his place for this, her last Christmas.  She is weak and barely able to stand.  He and his brother picked her up in their car, and literally carried her up three flights of steep winding stairs to his apartment.  She was a joy, proud of the life she has lived and facing her final goodbye with quiet courage and a sense of humor.  We had a great time talking about Seattle and Ellensburg with her, and her love of dogs and horses.  We had some wine and, courtesy of Rita, Carolina, and Natalía, an excellent meal of Bacalhau à Brás, salad, and a Uruguayan dessert cake.  Then Ann grew very tired.  Bernardo and his brother carried her back downstairs and, along with Carolina, drove her home.

Natalía, Carolina, Ann, and Lígia

Ann and Lígia

Lígia, Pat, and Martín

Our hearts were full, and our admiration for Bernardo and his family was boundless.

Pat had baked her delicious shortbread as gifts for everyone, and we had bought little jars of local Ponte de Lima honey to share some of our new home-town pride.  We distributed gift bags of all this, and other gifts were exchanged all around.  Pat got a luxurious warm scarf, and Gerrit got a cool simulated-sunrise alarm clock.

Then some of us played a board game from the Azores called Marralhinha (photo Board Game Geek) while others drifted into conversations.  The game was fun and fast-moving with quick reversals of fortune, and Bernardo's siblings were aces at it.  Gerrit started to get it after a while and had a great time too.

Finally, about 1 AM (way too late for us), we said fond goodnights and Bernardo's sister gave us a ride to our hotel.  We collapsed into the cozy bed for far too few hours of blessed sleep before we awoke at our normal time.  As usual.  Welcome to old age.  We took a coastal route home, took care of some chores, Gerrit had a little siesta, and we did some Christmas Day family calling.  When it works, video calls are astounding.  It's just like sitting in a couch across from your loved ones, but you're thousands of miles away.

There are three suspicious things about the solar panel system right now, too, things which don't seem right.  Gerrit is spending hours investigating and wrangling with the vendors, who deny everything.  Probably nothing will happen till a while after Christmas.

(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click outside a photo when you're done.  Also, you can click on the bold underlined phrases to play the audio.

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Travel and Gravel

Saturday Dec 13 was clear and sunny, so we took a roundabout road trip to Soajo, one of our favorite circuits.  We already wrote about Soajo here, if you're interested in some details.  It was another gorgeous drive, much of it through the beautiful Peneda Gerês national park, with wild forests and mountains, remote farms, and horses and cattle wandering on the road. We even saw a small herd of long-horned cattle resting by the side of the road, with two dogs resting nearby and keeping an eye on them!  No shepherds were to be seen (except the dogs).

Spectacular Peneda Gêres scenery	A medieval bridge over the River Vez
Watch the River Vez go by from your porch swing	One of the famous cachena breed, serene in the sun
A lovely little one-car bridge over the River Vez	Beautiful stone fences in Peneda Gêres
A terraced hillside near the village of Sistelo	Our delicious cachena beef lunch in Soajo

We enjoyed the same lunch at the same restaurant: cachena beef steaks, "punched" baked new potatoes, steamed vegetables with zucchini, carrots, cabbage, and red pepper, seasoned rice, and a half liter of vinho verde.  It's literally some of the best beef we've ever had, and this time we took our own photo.  We were even at the same outdoor table we were at last time, and Gerrit actually got a little sunburn on the left (sunny) side of his face.  In mid-December!

As Gerrit prepared breakfast the other day, he held up the empty yogurt container and pensively quoted Hamlet: "Alas, poor yogurt!  I knew him..."

It looks like our long-suffering bungalow project might be on its last legs.  We just learned that wildfire safety laws don't allow structures within 50 meters (55 yards) of a forested area.  That means there is definitely no place on our lot on which it is permissible to build.  Gerrit looked up the actual law, and it is quite clear.  We started thinking about alternatives, like a raised platform with a roof suitable for campouts, or something.

But wait, a little further on in the laws it says that trees and branches must be 5 meters from structures.  So which is it, 50 meters or 5?  And how is it that existing structures, ours and the neighbors', are nowhere near 50 meters from forested areas?  The patient is still on life support as we get to the bottom of this.

Wednesday Dec 17 the gardeners began the next phase of our renovations.  They transplanted a couple fruit trees for better exposure and soil with less competition, and they cut down a dead cypress tree and bucked it up for firewood.  Next visit they will begin on an extensive irrigation system for the front yard.  Last summer the trees suffered a bit from their irregular watering, but not this year.  This will allow us to travel during the summer, too, and know that the plants will be well taken care of.

The guy who operated the little backhoe they used was a true artist.  He carefully guided the piece of heavy equipment on its rubber tracks over our cobblestone walk and between plants, eased it into position, and was as delicate with the operation of his machine as a watercolorist with his brush.  A pleasure to watch!  He spoke very little English, and showed up with a Santa hat on.  "Bom dia, senhor Santa!" we called out from the balcony when he emerged from the truck.  Alex the horticulturist referred to Santa's backhoe as his "reindeer".  Gerrit got a chance to use a few Portuguese phrases with Santa, too.

Here's a puzzler for you: "santa" in Portuguese means a female saint.  So what do they make of a jolly old bearded elf named "Santa Claus"?

Pat's coughing and sniffling turns out not to be due to the HVACs (heaters), and the HVACs are plenty clean inside too.  Yet still it continues, coming and going under all conditions, inside and out.  We visited a doctor on Thursday Dec 18 who found that she seems to be in good general health and prescribed some nasal spray and cough suppressant.  Pat couldn't wait for bedtime to try them out for the first time.

(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click outside a photo when you're done.  Also, you can click on the bold underlined phrases to play the audio.)

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