Choveu & Anticipatory Repudiation

This morning it was raining a ton (choveu muito), but luckily it stopped in time for me to walk to work. I was running couple minutes late, and I had no time for breakfast, so I went into a pasteleria on my way and got a pastel de nata, which is basically like a croissant shaped into a cup and then filled with custard. Delicious. It was good that i stopped for breakfast because I had no lunch as I was too nervous to ask if/when I could go. Also, I only had to ask one person for directions on my way to work, which, if you are aware of my sense of direction, you should find this impressive. It was weird wearing a suit for something real. Also my new dress shoes are really comfortable, but they didn't mix well with Lisbon's super slippery cobblestone sidewalks, so I had to walk pretty slowly at times.

I met my boss and he soon thereafter took me to a meeting on the other side of Lisbon. The LDS church is a big client of PLMJ, the firm I work at, so the meeting was actually about a property that the church is trying to purchase from the state to build a meetinghouse. The hiccup that is happening is that the state was contracted to sell the parcel to another company, but that company wasn't making payments, etc., so the state pulled out of that contract to contract with the church. Now the original company is threatening to sue, etc., because of *anticipatory repudiation*, which I learned about in my contracts class. It's at least the Portuguese equivalent of the concept.

After the meeting, my boss took me back to the office and introduced me to everyone in the public works area of the law firm, of which he is a part. There were about a dozen lawyers. Apparently Portuguese lawyers don't start work until 10, because that is my new start time, and that is when everyone was finally there. Luckily my boss says I can leave at 5 or 6 pm because he and the other attorneys stay much later. I didn't come to Portugal just to spend all daylight hours in an office.

My boss gave me the contract between the church and the government regarding the sale of land parcel to read over. Then another person at the firm gave me a contract which I will help translate once I have computer access. The last couple of hours were a bit boring because they had run out of things for me to do that didn't involve the computer, so I mostly just re-read things and tried to look busy.

Mostly all day I wondered why I chose for my first practical legal experience to be in a foreign language. Portugal Portuguese is so much harder to understand than Brazilian Portuguese. However, on my way home this evening, a Portuguese lady asked me for directions, so I was proud of myself for fitting in reasonably well.

This evening I picked up my transportation  card. It lets me use the metro, buses, and funiculars (or as they call them here, electricos; or as normal people call them, trolleys). I practiced taking the metro and the electrico, and it went pretty well. Also I went to the store to try and buy some things to eat. I only found water, bugles, and an avocado. I'm pretty sure the only other foods included 4 aisles of fish, mostly cod, 2 aisles of sausage, and 1 aisle of weird looking donuts. Also they had eggs not in a refrigerator. Eggs were not refrigerated in France either, but these eggs weren't even close to the refrigerator. It seems weird.

Here is a stock photo image of an electrico. I haven't ventured out with my camera yet. Maybe tomorrow.