Language and Looking

This week has seen us doing a lot of boring house hunting.  Pat set up a cloud notebook to keep track of likely properties, their good and bad points, and whether we want to pursue them.  It's amazing what a blur it all turns into after you've looked at a few dozen of them with a sixty-something brain.  We have identified three of the best-looking places and our real estate agent is setting up visits for next week.

We've been trying to get a little more language practice too.  Gerrit is starting on the beginner mystery book we mentioned a few posts ago and is finding it fun, educational, and interesting.  We have several online teaching resources which we are trying to exploit too, including a new one by a young polyglot named Leonardo Coelho: "Portuguese with Leo".  He speaks clearly and a little slowly, at an intermediate level, in order for beginners to stretch their comprehension skills.  He has an amazing facility with accents.  He is born and bred in Lisbon, a native Portuguese speaker, but when he switches to English he sounds like he's from Seattle.  We hate him.  No, he's actually great.  He has a number of interesting videos where he goes into Portuguese history, geography, food, and culture, which he delivers with patience and care, so we get to learn about Portugal along with learning the language.

Polyglots have great ears and mimicry (natural gifts), but they're also obsessed with language.  They probably spend way too much time learning new languages, because they love them and they're obsessed.  Well, we can emulate the part about spending as much time as we can spare on a new language anyway.

There are many words in English which have completely different meanings for the same word, like "pretty":  "We were pretty close to the pretty picture."  Or "might": "The might of the king might be his downfall."  You don't think much about them in your native language but they're a source of confusion and mirth in a new language.  Aspirar in Portuguese, for example, means both "to aspire to" and "to vacuum" (as with your vacuum cleaner).  If you translate "I aspire to vacuum the floor", you get Aspiro a aspirar o chão.  Who says learning a new language isn't hilarious?

Pat has been investigating health insurance here.  Our traveler's insurance is probably not good any more since we are demonstrably living here, complete with retirement visas, even though we're not officially residents.  Portugal provides good free coverage for residents, but we need private insurance as non-residents.  This is something residents often buy too, for more options and faster service.  Pat is finding things like the copay for an MRI at a private hospital is only €80 ($84) and for an ultrasound it's only €30 ($32).  This is for the middle plan option with the only insurer which covers aged clients like us, regardless of pre-existing conditions or anything else.  It costs €436 ($459) a month, total, for both of us.  She's signing us up right now.

And speaking of boring, here's an update on our dehumidifier: it's working great!  We've nicknamed it "R2D2" for obvious reasons.  We run it all day and leave it off at night.  It runs quietly in the bedroom with the door open, and brings the humidity in the whole apartment down from 80% to 50% so it's much more comfortable.  We can dry a load of towels and jeans closed in the bedroom in about 8 hours.  It's brilliant!  The electric bill has gone up a tad, but not much.  A clothes dryer would bump the bill up too.  (By the way, "dehumidifier" is desumidificador in Portuguese.  Seven syllables!  Gerrit loves saying it.  It's even more fun to say "the dehumidifier is available": O desumidificador é disponibilizar.)

On Friday Pat had a hair trim and blood test, so Gerrit ferried her around for that.  It's amazing how comfortable we are with stuff like this now.  It isn't a big intimidating unknown now, it's becoming part of our routine.  Even dodging through the narrow and convoluted streets, we're getting to know our way around.

Then we took a long drive out to a potential home site on the Douro river to check out the noise level and the neighborhood.  The weather was clear and not cold.  We went out along the non-highway route, following the river valley, and it was a really beautiful drive.  On the way back we took the highway route because is was getting a little late.

Douro valley drive

Douro valley drive

 (As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click in the black area outside a photo when you're done.)

Home