A new endeavor

Howdy all,
As many know I am living in Portugal a country where they speak Portuguese.  In an effort to learn and document my understanding of the language. I will be posting about the 90 grammar lessons found in my grammar book.  So if you are not careful you may learn something.  Of course there is much to say about the language and I am not pretending to be an expert (note I did not say fluent) speaker.  I would say that I am already fluent (in a small range of topics I can hold my own in Portuguese) but I am not fooling anyone with my accent (I have heard it described as a bit Rio and a bit Spanish and a bit Italian) but there it is.
I am not going to worry about my accent.  I figure my accent is the way that I can tell people to be gentle, it may not be dignified to have the giant "L" on the car but as long as the coffee does not get spilled we still get to pass. Or at least the Governator does not have to worry about it so why should I?

bom dia, hoje a equipa portugal ganhou republica czech.  Para mim, hoje foi um quinta-feira como um outro, mas tive um aula de português.  Falámos sobre um plano para me consigo o exame DIPLE.

Também tenho um livro de exercicios gramatica.

How it all started or I really shouldn't eat so many sweets

So if it can be said to start anywhere it started with a dame..that dame may be my wife, as she prefers to be called, but a dame none the less.
So we get married and I follow her because she gets a job in a college town in Indiana and as I wasn't terribly excited to make military ammunition so it wasn't that hard to leave. Besides it gives me time to pursue an errant master's thesis.

So a new puppy, several week trips to my alma mater to edit the thing and I have a newly minted master's thesis and we are about a month pregnant. My wife has a job that will end right around the time that we are due and little old me is jobless and trying to reconcile the fact that that condition runs counter to ever moral fiber in my sensible Midwestern soul. Such a thing, pregnant and jobless was a state for 16 year-olds and pot heads so I head out and try to do the most sensible thing I can - find a job that pays as much money as possible. Which I do and accept the position despite finding the offices completely sterile and walking out from the interview with the boss thinking, "he is a jerk but I have worked with jerks before and I can lead up". The cost of this decision: about 7K per year.

That sounds like a lot - I wouldn't want to leave that money just lying around - but I ended up gaining about 20 pounds out of the deal which I have only just recently lost. I wouldn't have run screaming but I failed to get in touch with the employer I turned down which was a real mistake when on my second day the senior engineer in the department - 5 years experience on the job - and my trainer tells me that she may not be back as she was going to give her two week notice. I thought that responsible adults stuck with things like this; it didn't even occur to me that this particular plant hasn't found its footing yet and that such low morale is not something an engineer can fix - in this case it is a tone that starts at the top and hopefully the plant manager will figure it out.

To recap: took the worst fit job for me and then proceeded to have a son (kids are awesome) and do all the first time parent stuff (here is a tip: it is a lot like woodstock: I don't really remember it but I have pictures) when 2 years ago my wife came to me and said, "There is a job opportunity in Lisbon, Portugal, should I apply?" Having no idea what I was getting in to I said yes. 16 months ago we packed up an 18 month old child, a two year old dog, sold our cars and set about living out of a suitcase for a while. It ended up being six months as we had already made plans to say goodbye to dear friends and family around the US; to spend Christmas with my wife's family in the States; and our hilarious introduction to our first Portuguese neighbor - 'the dragon lady' - meant we started looking for our second place to stay within moments of locating the first. Did I mention that while there is a down economy in the US there is a really down economy here, that I had a stable if somewhat despotic job and that neither one of us spoke a lick of Portuguese? No? Well, it makes for interesting times.

So one of the perks of living in Lisbon is being an immigrant and dealing the the bureaucracy which comes along with. Or to quote the nice lady at the health center, "this is were we wait" and this is where I would like to talk about the trials associated with that.

I will start with my own story in brief.

I am here under family regrouping as my wife has a job here. Neither one of us has any claim to Portuguese blood or ties to the US government which makes us more the exception rather than the rule.

My wife applied for the position here in the fall of 2008 and waited and waited and waited and had honestly forgotten about the Lisbon job until February 2009 when they asked if she was still interested on a Friday and if yes could we have something signed, notarized, and in the mail to them the following Monday.

It was then we started the application process in the US. Since we were east of the Mississippi we dealt with the Portuguese embassy in Washington, DC. By comparing notes with others the list of documents that the east coast office asked for was pretty different from the west coast but basically: proof of birth, proof of marriage, criminal background check from local municipality (sometimes they want the FBI to do the checking), and employment contract.

We also wanted to take our dog with us - which wasn't too bad - she just had to be inspected by a veterinary doctor who has credentials with the USDA within 3 months of departure. We forgot to check with the airline which wanted the inspection within 3 weeks, oops, back to the vet.

Then we crated her up, went to a back room in Logan International Airport and gave a guy in a TSA uniform cash (no receipt) and our dog and then walked away hoping that she wouldn't get misplaced or wind up in Acapulco. When we arrived we were lucky. Our dog was waiting for us in the baggage area AND a vet was there. Did I mention the vet did not know that there was a dog on our flight?

Then we collected ourselves and moved to the Bica neighborhood in Lisbon, but that is another story. Tune in tomorrow for "Enter the dragon lady"

The challenge

Okay so here it goes.  We have been living in Lisbon for three years come this August.  I have gained employment, our son is doing well, and my wife loves her job.  However I want to be better at Portuguese, specifically I want to take the DIPLE, which is an acronym for the intermediate level of Portuguese, in November.  The DIPLE is the Portuguese test which corresponds to B2 level.  C1 is more or less fluent but you have a strong accent and you get lost occasionally, with C2 having essentially native skill in the language.  In theory I could take the C2 in May 2013 should the spirit move me.
Now I have been thinking how to get there.  The US State Department estimates that it takes on average between 500-600 hours of instruction for a motivated English speaker to get to this level, or do the math, 15 weeks going full time.  I am embarrassed to say that I am not there yet after three years.
So here it is, my challenge, for the next month, July 20th, I will post a notice in Portuguese every day, complete sentence.  Então, o meu desafio, proximo mês, até vingismo de Julho, vou escrever uma noticia, em português, cada dia em frase completo.   

So here is crazy - one ca

Camões, or Luís de Camões is the other pillar of Portuguese literature.  As is the case with most works deemed literature it is important to have a handsome bound copy that you never read sitting in your library (I have a complete works of Shakespeare that is very impressive).  However I am one of those crazy people who has picked up and moved to Portugal and through no fault of my own has decided it would be fun to learn Portuguese.  Ha!
So I thought I might take these two things and try them together. 
Os Lusíadas is available in Portuguese and English as a public domain and a complete wiki in English as well though the English translation is the Mickle version done in 1775 which is supposed to be okay.
So here is the goal:  a verse a week

Canto Primeiro

1
As armas e os barões assinalados,
Que da ocidental praia Lusitana,
Por mares nunca de antes navegados,
Passaram ainda além da Taprobana,
Em perigos e guerras esforçados,
Mais do que prometia a força humana,
E entre gente remota edificaram
Novo Reino, que tanto sublimaram;

More Portuguese language stuff

This week has been a little bit of a short week, with Mardi Gras.  I spent Monday working on getting enrolled in "recibos verdes", green receipts which is the system in Portugal for free lancers to pay taxes.  Up until this year it was more or less an account book you bought from the government, now it is electronic.
Boring immigration part: I don't have a social security number (don't make any money, don't pay into social safety net, don't take from social safety net) so I thought I needed to get this first.  After 5 hours of waiting I found out this is wrong.

Good news is that I had a lot of time to work on my worksheets.  This week I got six done.  Which is a little bit behind schedule, since I slacked the rest of the week.  My biggest hurdle thus far has been committing the irregular verb conjugations to memory for the present and simple past.

I haven't found more language partners but I will be trolling the electronic boards looking for people to practice with.  I have also been posting signs up around the local campuses but this may not work too well either. I have thought I might instead try to use the power of the printer (impressora de computador) and make up a sign to post in one of the student cafes, (procuro pessoas para practicar português) while I do my worksheets.  I have this vision that I will get someone like Phil Hartman's character Susan in Love Werks but it could be really cool too.

I have also been slacking pretty hard core on doing my own random speaking opportunity generation.  I have asked a few folks and had a cool conversation with a woman and her son. He wanted to know what soccer team I liked, (que clube?) the mom had to explain.  I said "benfica" I hope that was right.  I usually do better on multiple choice questions anyway.

So to recap I need to finish about 20 worksheets in 18 days, find a few more people to speak with, random conversation generation, and job hunting.