Olá!

I'm extremely lucky to be able to spend time in Portugal, a place I love and one day hope to make my home - at least part-time if not permanently. I thought I'd share some odds and sods/titbits about what my time there is like. That's the reason for the blog name - petiscos (pronounced 'pet-ish-coosh') is the word for titbits or snacks. I'm sure a native Portuguese speaker will correct me somewhere along the line, but I checked with my good friend Isabel if I had the meaning right for this blog, and she said it was fine, so here goes.

Let's start with the basics then. The Portuguese refer to the Brits as "os bifes" (pronounced 'oosh beefsh') just as the French call us the rosbifs (spelling? I don't speak French, sorry!). That means that as a female, I'm a "bifa" (pronounced 'beefuh'). It amuses the locals no end that I call myself the bifa as they think we don't know what they get up to calling us names. Hah! Little do they know. They also think I don't know what they mean when they try telling me to go and find "gambuzinhos" (gamboo-zeen-yush) which they claim are some kind of creature to be found along the shoreline. Gambuzinhos don't exist, so if ever a Portuguese person (particularly an Algarvian I think) tells you to go and find gambuzinhos, they're basically telling you to toddle off and stop bothering them. They also use it in the sense of faffing about doing not very much at all. 'What are you up to today?' 'Oh, I'm off looking for gambuzinhos' pretty much means I'm doing alot of nothing much. Make any sense? And they wonder why I have trouble learning the language :-/

We stay in a place where there aren't really any other Brits so I've done my best to learn the language (and STILL have a lot to learn). We have 2 wonderful families living either side and the kids come round for a swim or just to spend time with us and without them I doubt I'd speak as much as I do. Kids have no fear or embarrassment when it comes to correcting my mistakes whereas an adult would probably be too polite to tell me I've royally made a mess of my verb tenses etc. Oh, if anybody out there knows of an easy way to learn/remember the hideous subjunctive tenses would they PLEASE let me know?

Well, that's about it for the first post. Shall I carry on with this blog or not? Please let me know! I was once accused of bragging about/going on about Portugal. I don't mean to by any means, it's just a place that I love.