Dried Salted Cod and Camel Drool

Today I took the metro to work which cut down the time it took me to get there. When I arrived at 10, no one one was there still except for my one coworker, the intern (his name is Diogo), who told me that no one comes until 10:30 or 11. When the secretaries came around 10:30 they told me my password, and I now have an email account with the company and everything. If anyone wants to send me an email to my new official fancy Portuguese law firm email address, it's erica.berrett@plmj.pt. Please don't send too many though because I don't want to seem unprofessional. I didn't take a lunch break again today, but I had some nutella on a piece of bread that I brought in my bag, so I ate that when no one was looking. Maybe I'll work up the courage to take a 30-minute lunch by the end of my externship.

I spent the entire day translating a contract for the Church from English to Portuguese. There were a lot of legal concepts that Portugal just doesn't have, so that was especially hard to deal with. Also, Diogo is the one who gave me the assignment, and he said the translation the Church had given him looked like it had been done with Google Translate, but to me it just looked like Brazilian Portuguese instead of Portugal Portuguese. So I just did my best to Portugal-ify it. I forgot how different Brazilian and Portugal Portuguese are: they even spell a ton of words differently. Also one of the other attorneys came in to chat with me for a minute, and he spoke in English for part of the time, and he has a British accent when he speaks English. It's just strange to me when people who don't have English as their first language speak it in a British accent. I can't even do a good British accent. Also the IT people for the company came to show me how to use the printers. Everyone was very nice. I felt like I understood everyone's Portuguese 10% better today, but maybe they were all just speaking slowly. I think about how I talk to Joy (the lady I live with) rather slowly and try to choose simple words because English isn't her first language, and I imagine that these people at my work are doing the same thing to me, and it is a bit embarrassing that I still have a hard time understanding. I think about weird things since I was a linguistics major.

Anyway, I've told myself that I need to go on an adventure every evening for a couple hours after work so that I can see as much as possible while I'm here, so tonight I did some souvenir shopping (this usually gets put off until the last minute and is stressful) and then I went out to have a true Portuguese dinner. It seemed kind of awkward eating alone, but I figure that's semi normal in Europe. Anyway, I started with some bread and this stuff called queijo fresco, which quoting from Wikipedia is "a creamy, soft, and mild unaged white cheese" (similar to stuff they have in Spain and South America) and queijo fundido, which is like Brazilian requeijao or American cream cheese. I then had Caldo Verde which is a broth-y soup with sliced kale in it and sausage for flavoring. It had a mild flavor and was quite good.

Then I had my main dish, bacalhau a bras, or salted cod with a fried mixture of onion, match-stick cut potatoes, and egg. I know it sounds weird, but it was actually really good. I was surprised because salted cod didn't sound like it would be my favorite thing at all. It looked like this:

For dessert I had baba do camelo, which translates to "camel drool." It's kind of like a caramel merengue pudding or something. I tried making it once in the U.S., and the ingredients were mainly egg whites (which were uncooked, so if  I suddenly develop salmonella in the next couple of days, I'll know why). This Portugal version was much better than what I had made though. Much better. It looked like this:

Haha. Just kidding. But that's funny, right? camel drool? Really it looked like this:

So now I feel much more satisfied with my Portuguese cuisine experience. Bacalhau a Bras is one of the most popular preparations of cod and it's said to have originated in Bairro Alto, the neighborhood where I live, and where the restaurant I ate is located. I still need to try bacalhau a natas (cod with cream) because that's another very popular dish here.