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