De Perros y Limones

Home Again

The clocks have gone back and the village looks quite dreary compared to how we left it back in August.  No bar in the plaza during the winter months of course and the xmas lights are yet to be erected to bring that explosion of colour every evening. 

Still, it is good to be back even if it is just for a week.  And it is good to see our friends who we love to gossip with.

The house is still here and in relatively good shape.  It seems to us to be huge because we have been living firstly in a studio flat on the farm and now in a one bedroomed apartment since August.  This week we have three bedrooms!  And so much stuff!  How did we end up with so much stuff? Seriously, where did we get all this from?

The dogs aren’ t keen on the 8 hour journey to get here on some of the most boring roads in Europe but they’re very happy to be able to step out into the campo for walkies.  It is fair to say that the cat absolutely hated every kilometre of the car ride.  Not that I blame him.  In the space of four months he has been moved from Morocco to the heat of an Andalusian summer to a Portuguese farm full of hippies to a flat in the city surrounded by houses all containing dogs and back here again.  I think he has some right to be pissy. 

  • Poets Park is a very interesting place to reflect

You will be glad to hear that I can confirm that Portuguese drivers are actually worse than Spanish ones.  No, really.  There is a sense of entitlement with many Portuguese drivers that is slightly reminiscent of Moroccan drivers.  We have had a few near misses in Lisbon already.  Driving in any city is never going to be a pleasant experience but you really do have to have your wits about you constantly in Lisbon.  True, not as bad as Rabat but then that would be difficult.   

We have had visitors in Lisbon – my sister and my niece and partners.  It was lovely to see them and a reminder of just how shitty the pandemic has made life for so many people.  Seeing family again after so long brings it home just how much you have missed such contact, something that I think we all took for granted before covid. 

I mentioned to my colleagues that I would like my niece to follow in our footsteps and work in schools (she’s a science teacher) abroad to see what an incredible world we live in.  After a couple of days exploring the city with her boyfriend, Emma joined us on a Friday night for the end of the week drinkies that has quickly become a tradition amongst some of the staff.  Bless my fellow teachers; they all took time to explain to Emma just how amazing working abroad is as she sat there wondering:-

  1. Why were they all bigging-up working abroad (they took me literally)
  2. Just how much they had all drunk (a lot)
  3. what kind of school is my uncle working in if these total strangers harp on in their slurred speech about living in foreign climes?

Well, the school is a for-profit one which means compromises left, right and centre.  We are employees doing the best for our students but always knowing that the bottom line is making money.  We teach the privileged of a major European capital city and that brings very different pressures from being in a council estate school with half of the students on free school meals. 

  • The citadel of Monsaraz by the Spanish border
  • An absolutely stunning place

Are some of the students the best example of spoilt brats who make you yearn for the days of corporal punishment?  Undoubtedly.  And are some of them absolutely adorable?  Of course.  It is a real mix with some students you enjoy spending time with and others that you give the bare minimum to.  This is human nature no matter how you say you act professionally. 

The end of a Sunday stroll

The pay is not astounding in any way; the school is in the middle of bloody nowhere so we have to drive to get there and the days are long and busy. 

And yet. 

We play football after school every Thursday and have a good laugh on the Friday about just unfit we all are.  There are free school lunches every day for us all and I have not been bringing home anywhere near as much work as I used to in the UK.  Most of the kids are  good and my department is blessed with people who actually get along really well.  My bosses, as far as I can tell, are good at their jobs and not nasty pieces of work.  This last point is most definitely the exception in my career rather than the norm so you can surmise that I am grateful for this.    

  • Sparky being pissy.
  • Again

I’m also learning a lot.  This is my first time as a senior school English teacher and I am always aware that my wife, who has been doing this job for two decades, is so much better at it than me.  I do have that fear that someone somewhere is going to find me out and wake everyone up to the fact that there are lots of times when I simply don’t know what I am doing.  I think that if I keep my mouth shut then perhaps no one will notice that I am not really qualified for this job.  So, please, don’t you tell anyone.

This is our local dog friendly beach.

A lot of the staff ask me if I am enjoying being in Lisbon and working at the school.  And the answer is always, yes I am.  It is really nice to live near the beach, near the train station and in an area that has such obvious examples of multiculturalism as restaurants from around the globe.  There is a different kind of energy in city living and it is enjoyable to experience it, possibly because we know that it will not be a long term thing. 

One of the things about city living in a major capital is, of course, that it is expensive.  We have gone from ‘we will not make any money from this’ to ‘we will be lucky to just break even’.  What to do?  Well, we will enjoy our time there.  Sonalee is taking the adjustment into being a ‘trailing spouse’ more and more in her stride and the dogs are enjoying the variety of the walks in the city, on the beach and in the local countryside. 

The cat, naturally, hates it all because he’s a ginger cat. 

We haven’t seen anything of Portugal outside of Lisbon (we really haven’t even seen much of that either) apart from the places that we have driven through coming back here.  I did go on one camping field trip with the year sevens for two days.  We camped in a village car park near to the Spanish border with two toilets for nearly a hundred humans.   The place we were staying in was an old Moorish town on a plateau that is simply stunning. 

It really was beautiful and I am glad I did the trip even though it was exhausting.  One other reason for liking it was the food.  OMG, as many of my students would say.

When the Portuguese do lunch and dinner out, they do not muck about.  They’re a bit like the Spanish that way.  If you’re going to do food do a lot of it, keep it basic and cook it brilliantly.  And have wine with it.  Lots of wine.  And make it last at least two hours.  This last bit is important. 

Ten minutes walk away from our flat.

Bearing in mind the last time I drank on a school trip was probably about fifteen years ago and that it is highly frowned upon to do so in the UK,  the assertion from the trip leader that we were to get the adult menu at the only restaurant in town and that included any wine we wanted was a bit of an eye-opener to us Brits on the staff.  He looked puzzled at our astonishment. 

After a tentative wait for some courage during the meal at the restaurant we nervous Brits ordered a bottle of white for us all which was duly delivered and then drank.  As was another.  And throughout, no one batted an eyelid.  None of the students gave a flying one – they were quite used to it.

What to do? These foreigners have different ideas to us Brits. Some are good, some less so. Whilst we appreciate the relaxed attitude to a couple of glasses of wine, we deplore lack of decent tea bags for that proper cup of tea. That, and the extortionate cost of chocolate Hob Nobs.

Portuguese wine is even better than the great stuff Spain produces.  I do not say this lightly.  I may have mentioned it before.

Sonalee and I often find ourselves discussing the things we miss about living in Asia.  One of the main thing is our friends.  We keep up with them on the facebook but they do things that we are no longer part of and it is natural to be wistful about the times that we spent with them on the beaches of Sri Lanka and in the bars and events that the island provided.  The major one for us both is missing the food. 

  • You don’t get street art like this in Fuente Tojar

We miss curries.  Whether they be Sri Lankan, Indian or Thai, we miss them being an integral part of life.  Once you have lived with chillies for a number of years, their absence speaks loudly.   If we can take one thing from living in Lisbon is that we are lucky to be able to engage with the humble chilli once more and that our lives are richer and hotter because of it. 

Back in the campo

We have nine more months in Lisbon before we have to embark on yet another adventure.  We will be better for it culturally if not financially just as long as there doesn’t come that moment at school…

“What a minute!  He’s not a proper English Teacher!”

“Bugger.”

Long may it be avoided.

Hasta Luego, inshallah.  Tchao

Ayubowan

Paul

PS:  And I would. 

Paul

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