Preparing and Hoopoes

 Our first scheduled meeting with the immigration authority AIMA to get our residence card was scheduled months ago for May 2, which is now coming right up.  Then a couple weeks ago we got identical appointment email notices to the previous ones, but with a date of July 4.  No explanation, just a duplicate appointment.  What??  Does this mean the May 2 appointment is canceled?  Was it a mistake and May 2 is the actual date?  It is impossible to contact AIMA, so it is impossible to know.  So we are gathering the required documents and will drive to the city of Vila Real on May 2, with all our documents and a recent screen shot showing both scheduled appointments.  Our native Portuguese fixer Rita will accompany us, and we will hope for the best.

We put together an Ikea buffet for the kitchen, and it was really disappointing.  Worst Ikea furniture we've ever seen.  The frame is loose and wobbly despite cinching the pegs and locking screws down as tight as they will go, pieces don't fit together well, the instructions are for about a dozen different variations and are very hard to follow, and it turns out that "white oak effect" means plastic veneer.  Ugh.  We're going to write this one off and head to the nearby little town of custom furniture makers.

This just in from the Bird Nerds: Pat saw her first Eurasian Hoopoe in our neighbor's vineyard, and again the following day out our back window.  It's a beautiful, dramatic bird, especially when it's raising its crest  like the stock photo here.  Pat's specimens were more relaxed.

Stock photo

Pat's photo

On Sunday Apr 27 we had some Portuguese friends over for lunch.  We served whole baked sea bass, new potatoes, olives, Portuguese cheese, green salad, and local Loureiro wine, with pasteis de nata (Portuguese custard tarts) and Pat's homemade limoncello for dessert and espresso afterward.  It was a wonderful time with a local menu and local friends.

You probably heard about the massive power outage on Monday Apr 28, which blacked out the entire Iberian peninsula.  Our power was out from 11:30 AM to about 11:00 PM.  We were fine, the weather was pleasant and about the only effect was to have to throw out some food afterwards.  We were not able to get into the garage at all though, which is a little disturbing.  We found out the following day that the manual door release is not working right.  We had a renovation project manager out though (coincidentally just before the power failure), to quote on adding a guest room and a people door to the garage.  So hopefully that will be done before the next Iberian blackout.  This experience makes us serious about installing a solar panel array too.

We're developing our own little ecosystem here.  As the weather warms we leave the doors open more, so flies and little lizards come and go freely.  At sunset we close the doors, Gerrit swats the flies which remain, and the lizards eat the fly corpses that night and the following day.  It's a beautiful thing: a fly-free house, happy lizards, and a clean floor.  Well, except for the lizard droppings.  That's part of an ecosystem though.

Tuesday evening Apr 29 we went to our local village Junta de Freguesia (like a parish council) to get our certificates of residency.  This proves that we actually live where we do, and is essential for getting our residency approval from AIMA.  We brought along the documents we thought we'd need but we had no idea what bureaucratic labyrinth we would have to traverse.  We met with a calm and qualified civil servant who spoke not a word of English.  He smiled when he saw we had purchased Peter and Caroline's house, since he knew Peter from the local hangout Café Martins.  Within a few minutes he had prepared and signed the official certificates and we were on our way!  This bodes well for our fateful meeting with AIMA on Friday May 2.

The next day, today, Pat finished up gathering some documents for our AIMA meeting and Gerrit signed the contract for a solar panel and battery installation and transferred some money for the down payment.  Next time the Iberian peninsula blacks out we'll be sitting pretty.

(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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