Old Dogs, New Tricks

Since language classes start back up on Monday, I'm trying to get caught up on some blogging before I'm back to the old grind with not much free time.

Don and I have been learning a lot of new things and I was thinking about how different life is for us in a lot of ways now and one is simply that we are not just "car" people anymore. In fact, for most of the time, we often don't use the car on loan to us, but we use our feet, the metro, and just recently the bus. I'd never even been in a subway but just a few times in my life and now it is almost a daily occurrence.

Here I am at the ticket/recharge machines in our neighborhood metro stop. It is a an 8 minute walk from our apartment at a brisk pace. We use a card that we recharge for a set rate for the month and can ride the metro and certain buses as many times as we want. I know the different lines (they go by colors - green, yellow, blue and red) and I can read the maps and see where the exits take you. The first few times we rode the metro were like an unreal experience, but now, it is just another part of a normal day. I do have to admit that I still prefer to use the English screen on the machine to the Portuguese one, but some day...

More Pictures of the Castle

Inside and Out

On the post from Sept. 18, I mentioned about how they can't take down the outside wall of a building when they are remodeling or renovating. The law says that they have to keep the original face (well, it can be restored but not changed) so that they keep the traditional look of the city.

In this picture you can see how they do it, propping up the outside wall while tearing out all the insides of the building. You can't tell by the picture but there is noting on the inside of that building. We will have to go back sometime and see how the work is progressing.

Sometimes I feel like that - that God is propping me up on the outside (or I would be flat on my face on the sidewalk) while He is working on the inside of me. This winter has been difficult with a lot of sickness and a lot of long dark, wet days.  Just this last week or so,  I'm beginning to feel a little stronger with a lifting of my spirit and a lightening of a load. Psalm 94:18 says, "When I said, 'My foot is slipping," your love, O Lord, supported me."

I think the next time I see one of these scaffolds holding up a building, I will be thinking of God's support.

Cookies Made With Yellow Sugar Just Don't Taste The Same

Dons favorite cookie is chocolate chip. I have not baked chocolate chip cookies since we've been here (in 4 days it will have been 6 months). Well, I had not baked them for quite some time before that as our daughter, Anna, is a much better baker than I am and we would just wait for her to come home for a visit if we really wanted some.

We did happen to put several bags of chocolate and butterscotch chips in our crate, as they don't sell our kind of chips here (and I haven't found any small chips yet). I guess that I have been holding out for a while before opening a bag...

Last night I felt like baking and went in to make up a batch but as I was getting all the ingredients out, I realized that things might be a little different with what I have to work with here.

The butter is wonderful, creamy, flavorful, from the Azores. The baking soda - about the same as ours but packaged differently, and flour - ditto, but only sold in much smaller packages. But brown sugar is so expensive and it only comes in tiny little packages, so I've just been buying the yellow sugar. It is natural cane and I think the translation would be "yellow sanded" sugar. It is like a cross between brown sugar and white sugar.

So last night I used more of the yellow and less of the white than the recipe called for and even though the cookie dough tasted nice, somehow the cookies didn't turn out the same or taste the same as the traditional Toll House cookie from home would.

Still it was a nice "familiar" but not exactly the "same" treat. Maybe it was just that Anna wasn't here to bake them. I did have one "same" with these cookies - I overcooked the last batch just like I always did back home.

Anna's Christmas Visit ( a little late in posting )

Wow, it is already February and I am just now finding time to post these pictures.

We are so glad that Anna was able to come and visit and looking through the pictures makes me miss her even more!

New Year's Eve

We had another surprise for the holidays. Rui and Susana called us the other day and invited us once again to come eat with their family on New Year's Eve. Don was wondering what the traditional food would be for that meal and night, and I had to laugh to myself when they put the same meal (newly cooked, of course) on the table as we had on Christmas Eve. They eat this meal other times of the year but the Christmas dinner and New Year's dinner are always the traditional "boiled" bacalhau, greens, and potatoes. I liked it even better this time but I'm not too sure about Don (I need to ask him) - he did eat a lot of potatoes though. They had more desserts and sweets this time and several traditional dishes from other parts of the country.

Anna could not come with us as she has just come down with some kind of flu but she wanted us to go on and not miss the time with them. Susana sent home a bag of desserts so that Anna would be able to enjoy some of the things we had. We got back in time to talk to Danielle on Skype and watch the New Year's celebrations on the television.

Today they want us to come to the New Year's lunch that they share. It has been such a blessing to be invited in to their family circle and even though we can not speak much with the parents and sister (well, Susana's father does speak enough to have conversation with), we left last night feeling that we know them all a little bit better. Our hope and prayer is that by next year, we will be able to sit at a table and speak only in Portuguese and be able to share our love for the Lord with them.

Hopefully Anna will feel up to coming with us today. We will have to wait and see.

This is Sissy. She is a lot of fun. She loves bread, cheese, and coffee, and probably a few other things that we don't know about. She likes to put her head on your lap hoping a few things will come her way.

Our First Christmas in Portugal

The Lord was so good to us and blessed us beyond expectation, this first Christmas in Portugal. Even though we were unprepared and not ready this year (dealing with sickness and changes in "our" plans), God went before us and gave us a Christmas that we will always hold dear in our hearts.

Don and I were both sick the week before Christmas (on our vacation days from language class) with bronchitis and flu. It was on those off days that we'd hoped to shop and get ready for Christmas (language school made it very difficult to have any extra time to do much other than the absolutely necessary errands). We'd not had time to decorate, get a tree, or even get a bed for the extra bedroom for our daughter, Anna, to sleep on when she got here. Anna's flight was canceled and rescheduled to be in on Christmas Eve, another thing out of our control (and at the time disappointing) and something we just added to the list of "acceptance", giving it to the Lord and thinking "we knew this would be a different Christmas".  But that didn't mean that the Lord wasn't already working on a special Christmas for us.

Our Portuguese friends, Rui and Susana, asked us to come for their Christmas Eve (both sets of their parents and Rui's sister were there, too) and we experienced a traditional Portuguese Christmas dinner. The meal consists of bacalhau (cod fish), couve (a type of cabbage) and other greens, peeled whole potatoes, and traditional bread. The fish, greens, and potatoes are all boiled together in the same pot. They serve it with a sauce made of olive oil, onions, garlic, salt and pepper and vinegar. Not what we were used to at all, but we were pleasantly surprised with the flavors and enjoyed the meal. They then cleared the table and set out an array of soubremesas (desserts) and doces (sweets) - all different from what we had ever had and all were home made except for the Bolo Rei ("King" cake) which is somewhat like our fruitcake in the States. 

Their tradition is to eat late and we started around 9pm and stayed at the table until after 11pm. They knew we were going to slip out before the evening was over because of Anna's having come in that afternoon and needing to get some sleep. When Anna's head began to bob, Rui's father gave Anna a Portuguese word. He said, "Anna - Cama! (bed)" As we got ready to leave they said to wait, and proceeded to pull from under their tree, gifts that had been wrapped and had our names on them. They sent us home with gifts to open and later when we had opened them, we found that they were not just small gifts but ones that made us almost embarrassed  with their generosity. Anna said something about our coming to Portugal to help others and then said, "but it looks like it's the other way around."

Then a few days before Christmas we were invited to go to another family's home (an American couple with two young daughters) in a town about 45 minutes from Lisbon for Christmas Day. We rode over with another couple and had a traditional American Christmas meal (with just a few improvisations on some of the dishes). It has been just long enough that having the "familiar" food and fellowship for our first Christmas away from home was a needed blessing. It turned out to be a cold, rainy day, but the food, fellowship, and time spent sitting in front of the fireplace was just wonderful. Don was even able to "re-live" time spent with our children by playing with Legos and Polly Pockets with the little girls. Watching them was like a trip back in time to the days when our youngest daughters were those ages and another reminder of how much the Lord blessed us with our own four children.

How good the Lord has been to us. It has not been easy to adjust and adapt to another culture but as we go, we are finding that God is providing for us in unexpected ways and always has a plan for the moment. This was a Christmas that we will never forget.