I actually love Christmas and have been thrilled this year to be in Lisbon for the season. The lights and decorations are absolutely stunning and there is a real sense of festivity in the air without it being overly-commercialised. It is still two weeks away, but I have already had fun buying handmade presents in the market and attending very jolly lunchtime celebrations.

One thing I hadn't bargained on was the ability to literally rock around the clock without even leaving our apartment. We have a group of little, local shops that surround our apartment, who get together every year and play non-stop Christmas songs right outside our window. Although it is lovely to listen to the first six times, by the twelfth day it is starting to wear a bit thin. I think I have heard 'All I Want For Christmas' about 24 times. They probably didn't mean it to have this affect, but it certainly encourages me to leave the apartment on a fairly regular basis and take to the streets, where I am more likely to engage in shopping activities!

Earlier this week, I had a wonderful Christmas experience on the bus. I was sitting with three elderly women in a group of four seats facing each other. Even though the women didn't know each other, they started up a conversation, which I found it difficult to contribute to due to my somewhat limited Portuguese. However, after about ten minutes, the woman next to me, turned and asked me in Portuguese when the Cais do Sodre stop was coming up. I think that she knew, but she wanted to invite me to join in the conversation. Being able to tell her gave me a warm glow, and when she got off the bus she said two words to me - "Good Christmas". I loved that even though she didn't really speak English, she was using the few words that she did know to share the season with me. I've been feeling warm and in the spirit ever since.

Merry Christmas!!

I love the Portuguese - I really do. They are a wondering people who are incredible welcoming, warm and patient with all of us expats. When you ask them for directions, not only will they willingly speak in English, sometimes they will even walk you to your destination. Incredible.

However, one of the slight chinks in paradise is their love of car horns. We happen to live on quite a busy street in Ajuda/Belem, where there are cars whizzing up and down at all times of the day, but sometimes they have to stop whizzing because someone has decided to abandon their vehicle in the middle of the road. I'm not talking about people who are trying to park. No, these are people who realising that there are no parking spaces, just flick on their blinkers and get out of their cars leaving them blocking half the road. The result, not very surprisingly, is that the long line of drivers who want to get down the road get impatient and start leaning on their horns until eventually the person decides to move. I have seen whole families disembark, vans unloading huge quantities of produce, people going to get prescriptions refilled even dogs being walked while the car just quietly sits there in the road looking pleased with itself. Wha........

Finding ourselves in one of these lines up, my husband and I started out embracing our tendency towards British politeness. We would just sit there quietly, hoping that someone would come out and rescue us before we were eventually discovered as frozen fossils in our car seats. My daughter tends to be horrified when I lean on the horn as she sees it as a sign of my intolerant and impatient personality, so despite my fingers itching to get hold of the horn, I would grit my teeth and sit on my hands.

However, of course, they do say 'when in Rome' and eventually we had to join the horn culture. One evening, a car was happily parked in front of our building's garage door and we realised that we might be nibbling the car carpet for dinner if we didn't find its owner. So we gave the horn a go and found that it was remarkably effective. Within about five minutes, its owner appeared and removed his car. Yeah. It was actually quite an empowering experience, so we now blend quite well into the neighbourhood when it comes to car etiquette!!

Okay, so I admit to having been a bit smug about the whole learning Portuguese thing. I decided to really throw myself into learning the language about 10 months prior to departure, and by the time I stepped off the plane, I had taken multiple online classes and worked to the end of about three online language programs. I knew how to have a good, basic conversation about life, work, family, hobbies, etc. etc. I was all set. When I read posts about people struggling with the language, I secretly thought to myself 'aren't I lucky to have spent the time working on this before I arrived?'

So I first had a sense that all might not be totally perfect in language heaven, when the flight attendant talked to me in Portuguese regarding landing preparations. I looked around myself and thought 'have I come to the right country?' This can't be Portuguese because I don't understand a single word they are saying.' Damn.

Things continued to get worse when I used my newly acquired Portuguese to ask for coffee, loaves of bread and even stores to buy plates and glasses, and people stared at me like I had asked for their first born child. I couldn't believe it. I knew I was using the right words, so what was going wrong? I then realised that an obviously British woman, speaking Portuguese with a British accent was enough to confuse anybody and that their brains instantly went into 'do not compute' mode. On top of which, I quickly discovered that most people here speak English, so the first Portuguese sentence was hardly out of my mouth before they said 'I think it would be better if we spoke in English'. Double damn.

I also discovered that my basic conversation Portuguese was definitely not enough to carry on intelligent business conversations at business networking events. I would happily say 'don't worry, I can speak Portuguese, you don't have to switch to English', only to find myself smiling and nodding without a clue what was actually being said. Triple damn.

So I'm now trying to decide whether to keep limping forwards with my efforts to increase my fluency, because after all, if no one is going to every hear it, am I talking to myself? Not feeling quite so smug these days!

When my husband and I first started to think about moving abroad, the images that floated freely through my mind were of hammocks, sandy beaches and umbrella drinks.

We were not unusual in the fact that the possibility of escape, made us imagine that our new idealistic existence would be totally stress free and we wouldn't have to worry about anything more serious than whether to go to the beach on Thursday or wait until the weekend. Gone would be the worry about paying the bills that had accidentally hidden themselves between the fridge and the counter, the tedious (and expensive) trips to service the car to prevent the brakes from failing when trying to avoid going through a red light, and the arguments with landlords regarding fridges creating swimming pools of water on the kitchen floor. Instead, we would be constantly bathed in the warmth of the sun, while we spent hours drinking red wine and laughing in restaurants with our new friends.

Of course, we completely forgot to factor into the equation that no matter where you live you are inevitably going to have to pay bills, stop bits falling off your car and bundle up in warm sweaters when the 365 days of sunshine turn into 200.

So we moved to Lisbon, Portugal and the good news is that we have loved it ever since we stepped off the plane. However, that doesn't mean there have been moments of intense frustration as we have started our journey towards 'going Portuguese'. Of course the best thing to do is to laugh about them because most of them have a pretty funny side related to being a stranger in a strange country, and not always understanding how things are done, or why people can't understand your not so perfect Portuguese spoken with a strong British accent.

So this blog is a chronicle of the funny and sometimes not so funny things that happen to all of us who take a step into the unknown and head for foreign shores. Enjoy!