Like Lopes, Pires began working in a local factory soon after she arrived. She spent 11 years in a shoe factory in Central Square.

"I'm lucky because there were other women there who spoke Portuguese," Pires, who also speaks through the interpreter Lobo, says.

But Lopes--the only Portuguese-speaker in her factory job--says she yearned to be surrounded by other Portuguese speakers.

"Back then, if I was in a restaurant and heard someone speaking Portuguese, I would get so excited because language was such a problem for me," Lopes says, smiling at the memory.

At first, her children struggled as well.

"When my kids first arrived, they were very young and they were really afraid of going to school," Lopes remembers. "There were no bilingual programs for them back then."

Lopes says she remembers her children complaining, asking repeatedly when they could go back home to Portugal. Once they learned the language, she says, they began to feel at home in Cambridge.