Culture Question

So I've been having a lot of conversations lately about my adoption. The same thing has come up a number of times. People scratch their heads when they find out my ethnicity. I guess I should take a step back for a minute and explain why I bring it up. First, I never knew my ethnicity before. I mean, I guessed, but I didn't know for sure. My boyfriend is 25% Irish and burns in the sun, but looking at him, you'd never know. So my thinking was always "Well, I look Portuguese, come from an area that's dominantly Portuguese, but who really knows?" Now that I know I'm over 80% Portuguese, I'm proud of that. I'm not proud that I don’t know a lot about the culture, the country, or the people, but I'm finally learning about it.

What's interesting to me, is that when I tell people, I've heard the same comment from various ( and unconnected) people. They all scratch their heads because "That's a tight knit community. It's surprising that a 'traditional' Portuguese family would give away a child." My mother's family was always described as being very traditional. Now I always saw that as meaning they were very Catholic (because they are) and couldn't support the whole child out of wedlock thing. But other's see it more as we-keep-our-own kind of thing. I've also heard that Portuguese culture is very dependent on how things will look to the neighbors. Which explains the whole, we-don't-want-an-out-of-wedlock-child thing. So who knows?

I've been trying to do more research online about Portuguese culture. Seeing as NeverTooLate grew up in that environment, maybe I would understand her a little bit better if I knew more about where she comes from (and therefore where I come from in a sense). I've been hitting a bit of a brick wall though. I can't seem to find any good websites that would give me information about this culture, probably because everyone keeps telling me they are a close knit community. So if anyone out there has any suggestions, I would absolutely love to hear them. Thanks!