In Medford we had a few “non-work” friends, but every year or so we’d talk about making a concerted effort to expand out to new social circles. We made amazing and hopefully lifelong friendships with coworker and work associates but those gatherings almost always circled back to endless conversations about our job. After almost 20 years we wondered if maybe our dark humor and jadedness and not our actual jobs were to blame. Would we arrive in Portugal and find ourselves forever friendless in a foreign land?
Thankfully the answer is a resounding “NO!”. We find ourselves juggling fun and interesting social options, meeting new acquaintances and fast friends; life long bonds will take a while to forge of course. Our language skills haven’t always kept pace with these social adventures, for instance our neighborhood seamstress tried to clarify what she should do with a pair of Andrew’s pants, we thought she was talking about two pairs of his shorts that needed to be patched. Unfortunately now his favorite jeans have been hemmed to Michelle’s height (whoops, definitely our fault – not yours lovely neighbor). For today’s post we are going to highlight a few of the groups we have been getting to know.
New arrival expats. When we were working on the move we joined one major and multiple smaller Facebook groups set up to help with the technical process of moving and also to arrange meet-ups of expats in Portugal. Most people that we’ve met through these groups have been in the country for a year or less. Only a few have been here a decade or more. Some people only live in Portugal half of the year, some travel extensively, and others are on scouting trips trying to decide if they will make the move.
The plus and minus of this group is that the majority of people are, much like ourselves, in transition and trying to figure out their new life situation. Oftentimes conversations seem hyper-focused on technical situations, bureaucratic complaints, forays into American politics and news, tour guide observations and suggestions, and complaints about how Portugal isn’t the same as their previous home. While these topics have merit, they also can be a barrier to forging stronger friendships when they dominate the conversation. There is an inevitable feeling that conversations at too many of these meet ups will rehash the same worn out topics, in many ways it feels like our new unwanted “work talk”.
Board gamers. This group is almost perfectly suited for us to make friendships in. A board game store with an amazing owner who loves getting people together to play games is a short five minute walk from our house. It has been a challenge for us to consistently get involved in meet ups with this group. I will posit the lame excuse that our daily lives have often felt like a puzzle and sometimes a long afternoon of boardgaming has pushed our craniums into the red zone. Andrew squeaked in one afternoon of Splendor at the game shop in November.
Classmates. Now that we are a few months into Portuguese language classes we have started to meet up with classmates socially. Our early friends in class are a Ukrainian couple who sit next to us and pair up with us during group exercises. In class we are some of the newest arrivals in Portugal, several of the students have been here five or more years. In class we ONLY speak Portuguese and many of the other students don’t speak English which challenges us to form bonds using our burgeoning language skills.
The first time we had our Ukrainian friends over for dinner we realized how much brainpower and energy it took to communicate solely in Portuguese for 3-4 hours. We speak in class, but it is often contextual and easily anticipated verbal exchanges. The dinner party pushed the bounds of our vocabulary and sentence construction as conversation pushed into race relations in America, travel throughout Europe, and the horrifying situation in our friends’ homeland. Our friends find speaking much easier since they have lived and worked in Portugal for 5 years. While this is excellent practice to improving our spoken language skills, using so many neurons had repercussions. Michelle had a headache for two days after this party, and it wasn’t from drinking too much wine.
Neighbors. With only a few exceptions the people we are closest to in our neighborhood speak no English. We have built relationships almost solely through our actions which is an experience that we certainly haven’t had before. This has led to some silly situations caused by misunderstanding things but has also made us realize that caring about a person, even “friendship”, can be made over time almost solely through interactions and observations of a person – even if you don’t know their name or any of the other things that would historically be introduced at the start of most relationships. Our neighborhood is a tangible social and communal microcosm. People check in with each other almost daily, if we are absent from our cafe for a week, neighbors start asking each other if we are OK.
Overlap and Other People. Through the new arrival expats and language class we’ve met multiple long term residents of Portugal. The owner of the property we rent has been wonderful and helpful and we hope to get to know her and her family better with time. Our teacher is very interested in Alaska and we likewise think he seems like a very interesting person. We’ve exchanged numbers with numerous short term contacts (like a goofy waiter at an Italian bistro, a French man who is super intense about a specific card game, and a lovely group of people we met at a Thanksgiving potluck) and met scads of interesting folks. Solidifying relationships with some of these communities will simply take time and effort – nobody can be blamed for waiting to see if we truly will stay in Portugal since it isn’t at all uncommon for people to come for a year or less then move.
