This was where I felt my first pangs of something like homesickness. Except that it wasn’t for the US.

* If you’re landing here for the first time, this is the 6th of several posts describing my first visit to Portugal to decide whether I’d want to move here.
If you want to read this section in order, start here: Chegada a Lisboa para explorar
And here’s the beginning of the whole story: Onde esta história começou

Before I visited Portugal, I expected to fall in love with the Algarve, the southern coast. Looking at just the areas near beaches, that’s the hottest part of the country. Sure, you get hotter temperatures in some inland areas in the summer, but those areas also get colder in the winter and lack beaches!

I chose Tavira as a destination because a neighbor in Atlanta had spent time there and just loved it.

The train ride went smoothly, with no strike! We transferred to a regional train in Faro. Mocha handled it better this time and hopped onto the train on her own.

But, then, in what seems like a bad omen for the week, getting from the train station to the airbnb was way more difficult than it needed to be. The host sent coordinates that were supposed to take me to the rear entrance instead of the front door, because that side was closer to the train station.

Except he sent the wrong coordinates.

And I was tired and hungry and needed to pee, and now I’m lost! Wah!

I eventually made it to the house, and it was fine.

And then I went out looking for dinner, and wound up just… wishing I could go somewhere else.

The vibe was overwhelmingly “tourist trap”.

Now, I know that some people love that vibe. Tourists flock to places that have that vibe and that vibe develops because businesses provide the experience that tourists want. And if that’s the vibe you love, then I’m happy for you to enjoy it.

But that feels like sensory overwhelm and the walls closing in on me all at once.

I don’t like when waiters start talking to me to convince me to eat there because I looked like I might be pausing to read their menu.

I don’t like crowded spaces.

I didn’t go to Portugal to be surrounded by Americans and Brits.

And that’s when I started feeling something similar to homesickness, except that I wanted to go back to Setúbal.

So that was a big sign for me!

One of the reasons I planned this trip for a whole 8 weeks was because I think that’s the longest I’ve ever spent outside of the US before this.

In high school, I spent a summer as an exchange student in Naha, Okinawa. That was 30 years ago, so I don’t remember for sure, but I think that was only a 6 week program. I do remember that culture shock started kicking in around 4 weeks into the program.

And then, in grad school, I enrolled in an in-country language training program in Indonesia. Before becoming a librarian, my plan was to become a cultural anthropologist, studying the indigenous religious practices of the Iban, a small ethnic group in northwestern Borneo. So I spent the summer of 2006 in Madison, Wisconsin at the Southeast Asian Studies Summer Institute (SEASSI), and then enrolled in COTIM – Consortium for the Teaching of Indonesian and Malay – in the summer of 2008. That was in Salatiga, in Central Java, Indonesia.

The COTIM program was structured with 4 weeks of intensive language classes, one week for independent projects, and then 4 more weeks of classes. I planned to travel to Pontianak to meet some people that my PhD advisor was providing an introduction to.

A week or two into the program, my PhD advisor died. It wasn’t a surprise – he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer the previous fall. But he had become like a second father figure, and it hit me harder than I expected it to.

I made it through the first 4 weeks, and then went home instead of going to do my project.

So I have no idea how I would have adjusted under normal conditions, but I know I went home at around the same time that I started feeling the culture shock in my previous stay outside of the US.

I arrived in Tavira right around the 6 week mark – so I was doing better than I ever had before!

After the first day or two, I did start exploring further afield and found some beautiful spots.

The old castle is still close to the center of town, not so far out, but I guess we went at not-peak times!

There wasn’t much going on, other than some fishing boats docking, on the other side of the river from the main touristy area. I let Mocha run a little bit over there, and caught some great sunset views.

And a little way up river, we found a nice park to walk in, and some trails where Mo could run off leash more freely. But, they had this feature that I’ve never seen anywhere else!

This shows up on google as Parque Rodoviário – it’s several intersecting “roadways” with at least one roundabout, with each lane about as wide as a standard bike lane!

This was a rare empty shot, because I don’t think it’s cool to take photos of other people’s kids. But most of the times that I walked by, it was full of kids on bikes, roller skates, and I think even some skate boards, all just looping around, following the rules of the road 😂

I did also really enjoy the bright flowers climbing all over the houses.

But, I didn’t fall in love with Tavira.