A nice taste of home....

Hey everyone! It's Alli. My mom has arrived! She has been here for 5 days and how nice it is to have a taste of home! I mean obviously it is so great to see my mom, but I mean a literal taste too. Not only did she bring jars of peanut butter, but half her suitcase was stuffed with the essentials: ranch dressing packets, taco seasoning, tortillas, gum, deodorant, granola bars, trail mix, and the best part... a leopard printed Snuggie for me!! Now she realizes what a great gift this is since our apartment is as cold as I told her it was... we are working on getting a heater :)

Portuguese is a very hard language... maybe harder after some serious jet lag. Dan and I have been trying to teach my mom the basics here, but she continues to say, "hello! how are you? gracias. peso." The best part of the language barrier/confusion/frustration/attempts happened on Saturday late at night. Dan, my mom, and I were coming back to our apartment after a few drinks and I was talking to Dan about 20 stairs up to the 65 and my mom reminded me to be quiet because my voice was echoing and not to wake the neighbors. By the time we got to stair number 65, my mom's adrenaline was flowing, and she slammed our door so hard on accident that I am pretty sure everyone in our building woke up. To make it all better and to apologize, my mom continues to open the door and yells, "mosquito". After ten solid minutes of laughing/crying, we cleared it up with my mom that "desculpe" (desh-coolp) is sorry, not mosquito. It was really funny... maybe you had to be here. Good times.

My mom is amazed with our fishing village. The women in our village are what we like to call Fishmonger Wives. They dress in all black, are all very overweight, it seems very difficult for them to smile back at you, and often times carry fish on their heads. My mom and I were walking into my favorite bakery the other day and a Fishmonger Wife was leaving... she proceeded to ramble on to us in Portuguese. After what we thought was politely telling her we do not understand, she hit my mom on the leg with her bag of bread about three times, continued to talk in Portuguese, and then left. Yup, we are still confused about what happened, but got a good laugh.

On Thursday we had a great day touring the city of Porto with Rui and Lia. We had a great lunch of sardines, duordo (some sort of fish), potatoes, meat (for Dan) and then walked all around. It was a "quick" tour of a couple hours.. just enough to let us feel our way around and want to go back for days at a time! It is a beautiful city with more history than I could imagine! We will be heading back to shop, wine taste, maybe take a boat ride, and stay in a hotel.

Friday market in Vila da Conde! My mom got to experience the crazy Friday market with everything imaginable. We just bought some scarfs and Portuguese pot holders, we tried to stay away from the skinned rabbit, salted/dried codfish, and ducklings. Then we went to Dan's game. My mom enjoyed it because after our 1.5 mile walk, a cold beer for one euro was delicious. Unfortunately, Dan's team lost to the team that is tied for number 1 in the league :( Anways, Dan played well and my mom had fun whistling since that is normal at games.

We had a relaxing weekend. Sometimes a Catholic mass can be difficult to follow/pay attention the whole time. I know a lot of you agree. Well, input Portuguese plus sitting under Jesus nailed to the cross with blood and guts showing... it was a little bit distracting/confusing/scary?
My mom enjoyed the mall. It almost felt like home... except when we bought whole shrimp, heads included, for dinner. That is the major difference. Oh and that Mc Donalds has beer.

Today we walked up to Povoa de Varzim and did some shopping, staring, tourist photo taking, sunset watching, etc. Another great day! It was raining all morning and then cleared up for us to go explore! We even took the bus home... after mile 5 of the day,we were desperate for a ride home and figured it out. Now we are making dinner for Dan... he is so spoiled having two Dillon women live in his apartment! haha. We are having so much fun but the time is going by too fast! Too much to do and too little time :) We hope everyone is doing well and has a very Happy Thanksgiving!

Ciao,
A & D (&M)