Clearly we needed more of a “permanent” address than an airbnb for arrival of a winter clothing shipment from home. Our airbnb host Tiago kindly offered his office location for delivery. Turns out his workspace is a communal office sharing area for solo entrepreneurs and small startups.
Of course the huge box arrives with a COD customs tab of €142. That’s $163. if you’re keeping score at home. Some young woman (no affiliation with us or our host) opened her wallet and paid to accept delivery for people she’d never seen or even heard of.
Glowing with gratitude on a brisk early winter’s day, I wanted to thank her. A gratuity seemed out of place. So I confided to her the secret meaning of the letters F-I-A-T on our uber vehicle. Her laughter lit up the plaza.
Speaking of kindness from strangers, back in Rome we found a Mailboxes Etc. near our airbnb. Giorgio the manager kindly agreed to keep a 20 lb. box of personal items for free, until we found a temporary home that could accommodate them. We sent him a shipping address 6 months later and the box caught up with us, no problem.
I’m not at all suggesting these things wouldn’t happen at home. But it is quite heart warming to a stranger in a strange land.
We have now had 3 Portuguese language lessons with our teacher Lucia. Sessions are 90 minutes and cost €15 for the two of us. We are of course experiencing all the usual language learning foolishness. I think the best idea is to just try, just speak. Go for it! If you stall around waiting until you can pronounce everything perfectly with pristine grammar, nothing happens.