Trips, Sand Traps, and Happy New Year

On Saturday Mar 14 the first of the painters came by to take a look at our job.  The three of them went through the house with Gerrit, who did a passable job of communicating in Portuguese.  They had to resort to Google Translate a couple times for complex questions, but overall Gerrit was pretty pleased with himself and with the painters too.  Two more to go, and then we'll sort out the quotes.

Sunday Mar 15 was clear and sunny, so we took a little road trip around the country roads here in the afternoon.  Most of the country roads turned out to be rutted and rocky quagmires we had to creep along, and Google Maps got us very lost a few times, so it was the world's lamest road trip.  At least we got a few nice photos.

So the following day we tried again, with much more success.  We followed a different figure-eight route on some familiar favorite roads and discovered some new ones too.  It was a beautiful day and a long, beautiful drive.  The first photo here is above the town of Ponte de Lima, looking back at it.  You can see the Lima river and the Ponte de Lima medieval bridge on the right there.  One stop was at a viewpoint called Miradouro do Castelo de Santa Cruz, with a commanding view of the entire area.  There was a steep stairway leading up to the top and Pat didn't trust her knees coming down, so Gerrit climbed up there and took a photo to show her (and you).

Ponte de Lima on the right	Pat at the Miradouro
Steep stairs for Gerrit ...	but he made it (notice the white knuckles)
View from the top	Family photo on the way back

In the morning of Monday Mar 16 we had another visit to bid on painting the place.  This was from the most established company we have lined up.  One of the two painters spoke English very well, so Gerrit could relax a little.  The quote should be here shortly.

Gerrit finally finished up our Portuguese tax documents and sent them off to the CPA.  Now he has to turn to our US tax documents and get them in shape.  In addition to this soul-sucking time sink we will owe the CPAs about $2000 altogether, not to mention possible actual tax owing.  What a racket.  Many expats relinquish their US citizenship as soon as they are able to do it, partly to avoid all this extra expense and time.  The US is one of about three countries in the world who tax their citizens regardless of where they live (that is, whether they actually receive any benefits from their tax dollars or not). 

Gerrit bought seven bags of pool-grade sand for the big filter in the pool equipment room (shown at left), and he and our hired hand Andrew began draining the filter and sand on the afternoon of Friday Mar 20.  Getting the old sand out was a matter of sucking up a couple dozen wet/dry vacuum containers full of sand and water and dumping it in an unused part of the garden, very tedious and heavy work.  Gerrit was grateful for Andrew's sturdy help.  We had a nice lunch after the draining, which was a delicious new recipe of Pat's, and then fortunately filling the new sand after that (all 175 kg (386 lb) of it) went quickly and fairly easily.  

But it looked like trouble in sand land.  After Andrew left, once everything was put back together and Gerrit was testing, he noticed that a little tube seemed to be hanging further out than he remembered.  He panicked that it had come loose from its connection at the bottom of the filter tank and sand was leaking into the place it had connected to.  He shut the pool equipment down and hyperventilated a while. Two days later he drained almost all the water from the filter, plus some sand, to get down to the bottom... and it was fine.  Good grief.  Well, he tie-wrapped it, refilled the tank sand and water, and slept well that night knowing his tube was well secured.

On the afternoon of Sunday Mar 22 we went to a Persian New Year (Norouz) celebration at an Iranian friend's house, a celebration of the start of spring.  That seems like a good time to start a new year!  It was planned before the US and Israel started bombing Iran and both Americans and Israelis were there, so it could have been awkward but it wasn't.  No one there supported the war and it didn't come up.  The food was delicious, very exotic flavors, and we all had a great time talking and laughing.  A custom of Norouz is the Haft Seen or "seven S's", a display of seven symbolic items starting with the Persian equivalent of the letter S, representing growth and rebirth.  Here is a photo of Pat and our hostess Atena standing next to the Haft Seen on a table, above which is a picture by an Iranian artist, and then a few of the early guests.

(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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