It was another early alarm call today as I had a dental appointment for 9am in Fundão which is an hour away from us. The drive there takes us up and around a mountain. As we got higher, the mist came in and the rain started.
When we were here before the summer, I had to have an emergency appointment and it turned out I needed a root canal doing. Today was the final appointment to conclude the work. In all they saw me for two and a half hours and the service was first class. The bill…a total €105. Amazing.
We came back home to wait for the electrician who arrived promptly. I’d lined up a few questions to ask in my best Portuguese. We use an app called DeepL which is a highly recommended translation app. Although we’re learning the language with another fantastic app called Practice Portuguese (which is specifically European rather than Brazilian Portuguese unlike most of the well known apps like Duolingo), vocabulary regarding the installation of electricity is not your everyday conversation so we resorted to DeepL. In the end the rain came down heavily while the electrician was here and the technical questions mostly went out the window. I managed to ask if the work was all good – it was – and when Joey started barking, I asked if he would like a dog to which he replied he had two cats. It wasn’t much, but it was a start. I am making progress in putting sentences together and reading and writing, but the fear rises up when I have to speak and my mind goes blank or throws up the French or Korean word instead – often words that I’ve not even thought of for years which shows what an incredible brain and memory we all have. I’ve decided that instead of saying this is what happens – because this is not helpful self talk – I’ve got to visualise having comfortable conversations with people that flow well in Portuguese. Easy!
For those of you who haven’t got bored 
of the electricity story, the next step is to go back to the electricity distributor’s office next week to see if the final certification has been put on the system before we can try to set up the account again.
Rain has been forecast for the next couple of weeks and it arrived torrentially this afternoon. Our campervan – where we currently live – is parked under a large shelter we had constructed last year to give us shade from the sun and shelter from the rain. It works really well except that as the rain was coming down in buckets, it was running down beside Tut 
so it was like a muddy river each time we stepped out of the van. Always looking for a solution, Phil got the mattock out – like a pick axe 
– and started to dig little channels to divert the rain. It looked like fun so I got in on the act too. It worked!
The rest of the day was spent cosied up in the van with an early dinner and early to bed to watch a movie listening to more 
rain – a real treat!
