Nao falo ingles!!

Two of my favourite phrases during my first two years in Portugal (from September 2012 onwards) were "Nao falo Portugues" and "Fala Ingles?" - "I don't speak Portuguese" and "Do you speak English?" That last question I'd break out as often as I could, even if I knew how to say it but wanted to be lazy. As 2013 wore on, I tried to replace these phrases with "Eu so falo um pouco de Portugues" - "I only speak a little Portuguese."

As I'm trying to integrate Portuguese in to my life more this year, I have decided that I will banish those phrases from my interactions completely, and though I can generally get by when buying train tickets, ordering food and all those other easy things, there are some situations which are more difficult for me, especially as I lack the proper vocabulary.

Today, I needed to perform two tasks. The first was in Vodafone, adding a 500MB monthly internet allowance to my sim-plan. This isn't an essential part of living in Portugal, but it is nice to be able to talk to people from home via whatsapp or facebook when I'm out and about, and it's also handy to google things when out and about. Oh, the ridiculous and unnecessary comforts of having a smartphone at your fingertips.
The second task was to buy fish. I've decided to go easy this weekend and grill some mackerel (carapau) with some potatoes (blog post and "recipe" to follow.)

My gym is next door to the nearest shopping centre, so killing two birds with one stone, I went to the gym, then went to Vodafone. Sometimes, when I get nervous, or have no idea what I'm saying, or am in a bit of an awkward situation, I sweat. After an intense workout at the gym, a hot shower, and a quick change in to clean clothes, I popped over to Vodafone. I began with some very terrible Portuguese and picked out about 2 out of 100 words that the shop assistant replied with. We struggled through, I stuck true to not speaking any English (apart from when the assistant spoke English and I replied with "Como se-diz 'text messages' em portugues?" [How do you say text messages in Portuguese? - the answer was "mensagens"]. It only took about 5 minutes or so but felt like forever, and I slipped in what I think will be my new favourite phrase - "Eu falo portugues mal mas preciso practicar mais" [I speak Portuguese badly but I need to practise more.]

Why bother with this phrase? Two reasons; principally it makes me feel better about myself and acts as an apology and secondly, and perhaps more importantly for my practice, a lot of Portuguese people will try and switch to English when they realise you speak terrible Portuguese. It's easy when this happens to switch with them and stop practicising. To her credit, the shop assistant only translated two or three words and we got there in the end.

When I left the shop, owing to the previously mentioned reasons, my forehead was a waterfall of sweaty goodness.

Next stop was the fish counter at Jumbo (one of the supermarket chains here). This was a lot less painless (for me, but not the fish). I easily ordered two "carapaus" (mackerels) and was immediately corrected to the correct plural version (which I cannot remember, but know the pronunciation changes at the end of the word). When I realised how cheap they were, I upped my order to three and then she asked me what I thought was "are you having these for dinner?" A nice courtesy question to which my favourite "respone for all questions" was "sim" [yes]. She proceeded then to gut them and defin them and do all the things I really wouldn't have a clue about. In hindsight she asked me if I wanted to her to "arranjar" the fish - essentially sort them out, which I was very grateful for.