Daily Life

Week 3 Woes

Shoes and Clothes Woes

The maximum shoe size I’ve seen in stores for women is a 42 (roughly a 10 1/2 in US sizes), but they don’t stock that size. When I ask about larger sizes, I’m not getting a warm and fuzzy “yes I can help you” response. I feel like it makes me even more American.

Clothing I can completely forget about, at least in the stores around me. I looked at an exercise shirt and saw the XL equates to a US 8/10. Oh dear.

Package Delivery

In my long week 2 rant about receiving packages in Portugal, I focused on delivery to the apartment and delivery to a lockbox. This week, I tried delivery to the post office — BIG MISTAkE!

It starts with a text message saying to pick up my package. The landlord was here making some fixes to the apartment, and we told him that we were going to run down to the post office to pick up our packages and would be back in 5 minutes. Oh, how naive we were.

Arriving at the post office is fast, as it is only 250m and we found a secret shortcut that makes it even faster. When we get there, there are quite a few people inside, and we go to the Kiosk to get a ticket. Faced with the menu of choices, we decided NOT to choose “GENERAL” because that has gotten us in trouble before and instead chose “PARCELS” because that seemed logical. I had my B-0021 ticket in my hand and noticed there was only. one person working. Many minutes pass and we decided that Tom should head back to the apartment to help the landlord.

About 20 minutes pass, and B-0021 is called. I feel guilty as only the “B” tickets have been called and when I go up, it should be no surprise to you all — I CHOSE THE WRONG TICKET. During the 20 minutes of waiting several more people have entered. I was now A-0142 and they were stagnated at A-0129. Oh dear.

The transactions going on at the counter seem to be mostly financial as lots of cash is being counted out and given to clients. There is the occasional document exchange, and over to the side another woman appears to handle a notary appointment.

About 10 minutes before closing, they call A-0129 and the women quickly retrieves her package and is on her way. Then they call A-0130. We are on a roll! The next number is a B or C. We all groan. People start getting mad, and arms sweep the area indicating “look at all these people.”

It seems that they were purposely deprioritizing the package pickup because there was only 2 called over the course of an hour. Suddenly the As were going, lots of people had left so we were going through the tickets rather quickly. One women was told her package wasn’t here. That went over well, and I think a few words were exchanged. Someone gave me A-0139 ticket and it was called immediately.

The notary helped me and even though she located the packages quickly, I still had to wait for the counter person who was helping A-0138. She calls A-0140, and I was like “oh no” but remembered that I was holding A-0142 too. A man seemed to say “she’s next” pointing at my packages and then at me.

The counter woman seemed annoyed to see me. She scanned the boxes, and asked for my document. I showed her the pickup emails and guess what? WRONG CHOICE. The document she wanted was my identification. Thankfully I had it. Then I signed two papers and was out on the street. The street was all lit up with cheery Christmas lights, and I trudged along with two large-ish packages. Mission accomplished.

Update: not all my order arrived so I got a notification on Friday that there was another package for me. This time I went at 14:00 right after they re-opened after lunch, I was A-0072 and they started at A-0065. This time, it took only 20 minutes. The person who helped me yesterday did not seem too pleased to see me, but luckily I got the other person when my number was called.

Week 2 Woes

Stories from November 22-29: Settling into living in Tavira Portugal involves getting items to make the living space functional and comfortable. From other people’s experiences getting things off of Amazon and switching over utilities are very easy tasks. Not for us apparently. Of course, I had not anticipated arriving with severe back pain and was pleasantly surprised to have gotten medicines and a referral for a CT scan so quickly. My awkwardness checking into for the CT scan is s mixture of a I Love Lucy and Seinfeld episode. But first let me tell you about how easy it is to order from Amazon.

To read the week 2 blog post, see Semana Dois.

Amazon in Portugal

If you told me a week ago, that I’d be writing a five paragraph essay on Amazon purchases in Portugal, I wouldn’t have believed you. But here I am. It is rather easy to order from Amazon; it is the receiving the order that is the tricky part.

Here is what I learned:

• Amazon does not exist in Portugal but if you want something from Amazon you order from Amazon Spain.
• You can order from Amazon Spain using your Amazon U.S. credentials. Yet in my case it triggered as suspicious activity and my account got locked. It’s fixed now.
• You won’t see Amazon trucks, deliveries are sourced out to package couriers.
• My order was split across 3 package couriers (CTT, Correos Express, and SEUR).
• Package couriers won’t leave the package (aka you need to be home)
• Communication is good-ish. CTT gives a 5 hour window and sends a text message on the day of delivery. Correos Express gives a 24 hour window, and sends an email the day before. SEUR let’s Amazon do the talking.

The first delivery was from CTT, which is a Portuguese company that manages the postal service. I saw the missed delivery, but I was at home. What gives?

Pretty quickly this started to feel a bit like an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants where SpongeBob is waiting for a bus at Bikini Bottom. He waits an extremely long time and every time he steps away for a second, the bus races by and he misses it every single time. By the way, this is the only SpongeBob episode I’ve ever seen but I have been able to reference it a lot.

They would try again on Monday, but I had an appointment at 12h15. Surely they wouldn’t deliver then. When I got out of my appointment, I saw the missed call and saw a CTT truck parked alongside the road. I walked over and I asked the delivery person if they were trying to deliver an Amazon package. Before I could finish, the guy said “for Pamela (pa-MELL-ah)?” Ok woah.

Another package, another courier. This time it is Correos Express, part of the Spain postal service. We were only about 12 hours into their delivery window when we decided to chance it and get some grocery shopping done. You know what happens next. That Bikini Bottom bus speeds by — my phone rings right when we get to the store. The driver said they would try again later. And sure enough, later that night, he had returned with my package. What a nice guy!

Now the 3rd courier, SEUR, sounds like a French company but this is out of Madrid. I had received an email from Amazon of a missed delivery the day before. Now, this was a Bikini Bottom bus I didn’t know I was waiting for because the package was due to arrive on Thanksgiving day. On Tuesday, we stayed close to the apartment and around 12h30, they called for delivery. Coming up, we also met our across the hall neighbor Nuno who lives with this girlfriend, Beatrice, and their 2 cats. Nuno also told me that CTT had been looking for me!

So as you can see, this is a lot of hit and miss, and has a bit of a small town vibe. Doing my own research, I learned that CTT has a service called “Locky” which is a package locker service. With Locky, you basically give a virtual address which you can use on Amazon. As seems to be par for course, the first delivery attempt didn’t work — my order has moved to “on hold” due to “external circumstances.” New day, new experience — Locky worked! A short walk to receive it, and accessing the Locky box was muito fácil.

Portuguese Medical System

Spoiler alert: this is a “no soup for you” experience.

If you know me, you know I’m a bit accident prone. Arriving to Tavira, my back had gone out. Last week’s clinic visit resulted in this week’s CT scan and the imaging place was only 500 meters from the apartment. I was encouraged when I received a text message reminding me to arrive 15 minutes early, bring my ID, my referral paperwork, and method of payment. This felt like how it worked in the U.S.

Making sure I had all the required items, I enter the building and go directly to the kiosk to get a ticket. The menu is entirely in Portuguese and I narrow it down pretty quickly to two choices. Deciding to pick the first one, I grab my ticket and sit in the empty waiting room.

Note, the picture above is taken off the internet, and edited slightly for dramatic effect. It is the exact place I went, and you’ll see the kiosk off to the right in the picture.

My number is called and I go up, handing the receptionist my ticket and my paperwork. She looks at my ticket and pulls a face. I look around. She is the only one behind the counter and I am still the only one in the waiting area. I quickly realize nothing is going to happen until I get the right ticket. I apologize, take the 3 steps over to the kiosk and press the other option. I start to step toward her but the air is so thick with warning, that I go back to be seated.

The waiting room is still empty, she is still the only one behind the counter, and I wait for my number to be called, again. When it is, I return to the counter and sheepishly admit that I don’t speak Portuguese (even though I highly suspected that she figured that out already). Speaks to me in English with an accent that I took as tone. I tried my best to anticipate what she needed, treating her a bit like the soup nazi. When she pushed paperwork to me, I acted like signing Portuguese medical documents was something I knew a lot about. There were checkboxes, and recognizing the word for agreement (concordo), I choose that. I slide the completed paperwork back to her with a confidence of someone going “all in” at a poker table. She seemed unimpressed. As she is scanning in the documents, I turn to look at the waiting room behind me. It now has two people in it. They look like the type who would select the correct option at the kiosk, I think to myself. I heard the receptionist say the word “ultimo” which, as I learned in my pilates class, means last one! She doesn’t say anything else to me and I linger awkwardly before joining my two other friends in the waiting area.

I made the wrong choice. As soon as I sit down she lets me know that “we are not finished.” I do the walk of shame back to the counter. Now it’s her turn to slide me a piece of paper. She points at the date and says “you come back on Dec 4th.” My heart sank, and almost as if I were trying be even more stupid to this receptionist, I said: “oh, I thought my appointment was today.” Her eyes looked like she was ready to be done with me, and then she said “Your exam IS today. This is the date you pick up your results. Now you can sit and wait.”

Happy to be away from the counter, I want to be sure I recognize my own name being called as my confidence pretty low. I listened carefully with so much focus that I had almost convinced myself that I forgot my name entirely. Soon, a man came out, a name was called, I recognized it as mine, and followed the man into a tiny room. He spoke to me in Portuguese and then thankfully in English. The room had 3 doors, the one I entered and two that said not to enter. This was a set up to my next mistake. Fortunately, I picked the correct door!

In Limbo

Utilities and Credit Card

We have a few things in limbo such as switching over electricity and activating our Portuguese credit cards — and it’s not because of lack of effort on our side. We are in a mysterious holding pattern, doing everything that has been requested promptly and then waiting awkwardly, not able to call and talk to a customer support due to language barrier.

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