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.

Portuguese - the language

I was reading The Language Hacking Guide website put together by Benny Lewis. I went ahead and bought the book he has put together based on his experiences learning to become fluent in a language within three months as an adult.

I am about half way through the text in English and I would describe it as good but not fantastic. I would say his 'new' idea is not to let the polish of speaking in a native fashion get in the way of enjoying connecting with people in another language. Then he follows this up by identifying (correctly in my mind) that the difference between the polyglot and the monolingual is not some innate talent or brains but rather treating language learning as a project with specific, actionable and time sensitive goals and a classroom setting may or may not be helpful towards those goals.

So the first step is broadcasting one's goals, so here they are for the month of March:

1) Complete grammar book, Gramática Activa nível A1/2 by end of month. That is 35 additional worksheets and I must complete them with 95% or better.
2) 1 random interaction on the street in Portuguese every week day for a month.
3) Find two additional language partners - enough to meet 4 times a week

Caving in the Iberian Peninsula

Caving in Portugal and Spain.
Today we went to the cave complex at Maire d'Aire(grunta). This is a cave in the Serra de Aire and Candeeiros about an hour north of Lisbon via the A1. Tickets were around 6 Euros.

Over the past weekend we went to the Caves in Nerja on the Costa del Sol in the south of Spain along the Mediterranean coast.

I would describe the two caves as similar in kind. Spain has a well developed (perhaps over developed) complex complete with an amphitheater in the cave and the obligatory gift shop and restaurant. In Portugal the caves struck me as decidedly less developed. Both are worthy of a visit. The Portugal caves do not have prehistoric drawings but you don't get to see the drawings in Nerja so that doesn't really matter. In Nerja there is the obligatory display showing an artist rendering of how the people who lived in the cave lived and played in the stone age including some colorful drawings of funeral rites (haunted caves haunted by cavemen [and women and maybe a cave dog]). In Portugal there is a glass case containing some animal bones that where found in the cave. I recognized some grazing animal jaw bones however it was pretty much a leftovers from the dustbin and no explanatory effort.

The other big difference is humidity. In the Nerja cave it was a bit damp with some collected water. In Maire d'Aire this is really an underground river so it rains underneath. Nothing to worry about - just don't wear stuff that cannot get wet. The other thing - and this was a little fun - is that Portugal emphasizes that humans are visitors in this world, there is some obligatory safety lighting but the lights are on a timer. IF you lollygag you will find yourself in the near darkness. I don't think this is to protect the cave fauna (which was not present) but to prevent any flora from the outside setting up shop and contaminating further down the watershed.
The difference between the two experiences was stark but probably indicative of the differences between the countries.


As far as taking a child to go in the cave it was fine but I or my wife was carrying him the whole way. He liked feeding the goats and donkey so the petting zoo was definitely a win.

I got to figure out just how badly my Portuguese has gotten over the past week of not speaking because there was a short 5 minute film about the discovery and exploration of the cave in the nineteen forties and fifties that was totally in Portuguese. I had gotten the high points from reading about the cave in the guide book but it was still hard. Fortunately our guide spoke wonderful English and was able to give us the run down of the cave in English after explaining to the Portuguese family what was going on. It was essentially the same thing.