Soup of the day

I got pumpkin soup. It had alphabets in it.

I thought that was super weird until a friend said the most famous soup in Portugal that usually comes with alphabet noodles has chicken hearts and kidneys in it.

Faulty clothespin

I was taking in my laundry from the line outside my window. I was thinking how disgusting it was that the girl downstairs was smoking on the balcony right under all my clean clothes. But when I looked down at her (figuratively and literally), to my horror I noticed that a pair of my underwear had fallen from the line onto her balcony! Not just on the balcony, but it miraculously landed directly on the small side table next to her. It looked like it was some kind of doily on the center of her table that she should set her ashtray on.

I apologized profusely and told her to throw it down to the ground so I could get it later but she insisted on the most awkward stairway-underwear-exchange ever. Lesson learned. No more unmentionables on the clothesline. And judging the neighbors brings bad karma.

Butcher

I've been building up the courage to try to ask for different meats at my butcher shop even though I don't know what they are called or how to specify the cut. This week, however, I noticed a mural of grazing animals painted on the tiling. Now I literally point at the lovely artist's rendition of grazing sheep and I get mutton. At least I haven't had to resort to actually making animal noises . . .

Evora

I mostly wanted to go to see this ridiculously 'metal' cathedral made of bones. I'm pretty sure no one died in the making of this cathedral. I think they were all already dead. Seems someone took the bones of the people that had died in the village and used them as a reminder that we all croak so we should value our lives while we have them.

Cute city! Although I almost had my computer run over by a car. I think the car was proving a point, and that point is: don't take selfies that require you to balance your camera on your computer bag in the middle of an intersection unless you want me to run over your stuff.

In my defense, I was done with the selfie and was standing right by my giant BRIGHT RED bag. A passing old woman was on my side too--she was quite complimentary of my bravery since I yelped and jumped in front of the car. She agreed: red bag = car probably saw it = what a jerk.

Tearful goodbyes at the bus station

I found a kindred spirit in a bus driver.

After running around the metro station trying to find where the distance buses are located, I finally run breathless up to the bus to Evora with 8 minutes to spare before departure. I see people with printed tickets and really hope I can buy a ticket on the bus. I start the game of charades with the driver--
"ticket! (pant pant pant) bus! (pant pant pant) uhhh money!" . . . pointing at tickets, pulling out money . . .
"No . . . ticket. . . uhhh. . . blah Portuguese blah blah" . . . points at ticket office. We both mumble what seems like encouraging words to each other and I think I'm to go quickly and he'll wait if it is just a few minutes.
"Obrigada!"

Damn. I literally run over to the office to find lines of 10 or so people for every window. With two minutes to spare I get to the window ("round trip please! what time will I return? I don't know! I don't have time for this. . . just one way then. . . for what time? quite obviously right exactly now!")

Hoping the bus driver remembers I'm coming, I run back to the bus and triumphantly present him the ticket. He looks at me with a look of despair and says "Oh no, problem!" I'm crushed. How could I have gotten the wrong ticket?

He points to the bus next to his. Oh! Not my bus driver! He's going to Fatima! Even funnier, the whole time "Evora" was printed in huge letters on the front of the next bus.

We laughed and then both said long silly lamentations with our hands on our hearts! "Oh No! I'm not going with you?! That's terrible!" "Ahh you won't be on my bus! So sad!" I waved goodbye to him sadly out the bus window as my much-less-friendly bus driver started our trip to Evora.