Portuguese Words of Love

With all the rain we’d had that week, I’d lost the internet and was down to a feeble 2G – not optimal for a digital nomad.

Within a few days, a MEO technician came by to install a new “rooter,” as the Portuguese call it.

While he was working on the inside of the house, I could hear my farmer neighbors Maria Alice and Jose Francisco arguing, as they sometimes do while working side by side in the small field on the other side of the stone wall that borders my garden.

I saw the technician was also listening to them.

“What are they saying?” I asked. My Portuguese was not good enough to understand them.

He paused a moment to listen.

“Words of love,” he replied, laughing. Which, of course, was not at all what it sounded like!

He then explained the wife was accusing the husband of always picking the easy chores to do, leaving the hard ones for her. We laughed some more.

A few minutes later, the technician was in the garden, on a ladder working on the receiving dish on the outside of the house. We could hear Maria Alice and Jose Francisco at each again, fussing over something.

“What are they talking about now?” I asked my friendly technician.

He paused another moment to listen.

“Shakespeare,” he said, smiling down at me.

I love the Portuguese sense of humor. ☺️