So....i am trained as a specialized nurse/EMT...in the states.
I speak a little Portuguese, but obviously the lingo and instruments we use have similar names. But it's not automatic.
I have to translate in my head what's needed.
If i were to accept this job in Portugal....would that make me higher market value?.
In the hospital they will all eventually know I'm fluent in English.
I lived in Portugal for a year and I'd say it's a relatively dull and conservative place compared to its neighbor Spain. Funnily enough I actually lived with a foreign nurse that worked in a Portuguese hospital. She was Spanish and her boyfriend was also a nurse from Spain, but he was living in a different Portuguese city.
Most young women that you see outside are with their mothers, somehow they always go around together. There is nightlife and so on in the cities but people tend to socialize in small groups of people they already know and they're not very open minded or interested in meeting new people. The universities have groups called "Cofradias" where they all dress up in old-fashioned black clothes and do absolutely everything together as a group. So you can't just walk over and join in. I suppose one advantage you'd have if you took that job is that you'd have lots of mostly female colleagues, many of which would also be foreigners.
In any case most people are very reserved and rarely make conversation with strangers and people care a LOT about status and formality. To give an example, I worked with an English man who I knew as "John". When the secretary addressed him, she called him "Mister Engineer Smith" and didn't address him directly, i.e. "Would Mister Engineer Smith like to have a coffee?" Take into account that the Portuguese accent is very different to Brazilian Portuguese and quite hard for foreigners to understand.
In short, I think Portugal's generally a place where being a foreigner makes you an outsider and that makes getting laid significantly harder, not easier. You're not one of them, you're not one of their peers, you're just there temporarily and as a nurse you don't have particularly high status because you're not a doctor, an engineer or a lawyer. Unless you're going to Coimbra or Porto (university towns), I'd give it a miss. Or go just for the experience, but don't expect too much and try to meet other foreigners.
