Portugal Part 2 - the funny stories

1. I had to use the bathroom.

You'd think the one word a woman who's had four kids would learn to say in a foreign country is 'bathroom' but no, I was otherwise engaged I guess.

So, we wander into one of the many 'dollar stores', of sorts, and proceed to try and ask where the bathroom is.

In my defense I'd like to interject here that this shop owner was not Portuguese, she was from somewhere MUCH further east.

I go down my list of languages.

English,

Spanish,

German,

Hand signals....nothing.

so, then I moved on to charades.

I went and pointed to the toilet paper.

nothing.

I pointed to my bladder area.

nothing.

I think I even went against the rules and made sound effects ;-)

nothing.

and then there is was....a pile of plastic toilet seats, sitting there in all it's glory.

I picked one of those puppies up, squatted, 'sat' on it and DING!!!! she got it,

showed me to the toilet and then she used her 'hand signals' to tell me that I had to manually fill the toilet with water to get it to flush ;-)

I'm still giggling!

Jake is still embarassed.

2. The house we stayed in belongs to a dear friend of ours who's family is from Portugal and so we were surrounded with neighbors who were beyond adorable and helpful.

Our main 'helper'/neighbor lived right across the street with her husband and elderly mother.

We had no clue what the Portuguese etiquette was as far as offering drinks/something to eat/invitation to stay/etc....so, one day they were over working in the gardens around the house and we pulled up from one of our excursions.

We did our best to communicate with them, offered them some water and gave them flowers as a thank you for all they'd done.

well...turns out you only give flowers when you go to a funeral ;-)

and the elderly grandmother, after speaking all the French to us she knew, and me just speaking back as much French as I knew through my giggles, took her water, was convinced by her daughter to just take it (amazing how much you can figure out just through body language!), took one sip of it, spit it out and then dumped the cup of water over her shoulder with the best 'disgusted' face ever!

she 'said' Merci, but I'm pretty sure that's not what she wanted to say ;-)

3. um...we had a washer....and a clothes line.

I learned a lot....let's just say, there is a WAY to hang your clothes and a way NOT to hang your clothes.

stay tuned for Portugal Part 3!!!

a few pics of the adorable house.