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Cooking Up A Storm And Hanging With ACNH Homies
Attending 2 months of physical therapy was a blessing in disguise. It allowed us to plan ahead for when Andrew would have to manage caretaking for me, wrangling all 4 pets, and household management during February when I would be hobbling around on crutches. The first thing we did was stock our freezer to the…
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Put On Your Hard Hat: Spelunking In Loulé
Michelle: One of the adventures we planned with cousin Elsa was a salt mine tour in Loulé. Andrew visited the mine back in 2023 and found it so intriguing that he recommended another trip. Jorge and his friend visiting from Lithuania had both wanted to see the mine for years, so we made reservations for…
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Bye Bye B Levels
Although Andrew and I finished year 1 of Portuguese language class with good results, I felt overstimulated and my brain pleaded for a respite. Despite this, Andrew encouraged us to enroll in B levels for the subsequent year, primarily because we adore our professor and wanted to ensure that we would study with him again.…
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The Perfectly Imperfect Day
“Where is the jazz concert?” was the question that Jorge asked most frequently on the perfectly imperfect day in May. He had proposed a light dinner out and a concert in Faro and we say yes to almost any outing with him if we are free. Our time together always consist of speaking Portuguese, a…
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Wrapping Up 2023
October: We headed back for Year 2 of Portuguese language class. With any luck, at the end of the course we will have a B2 (upper-intermediate) language level, and hopefully a bit more ease with conversational Portuguese. Our favorite neighborhood kid Bianca needed help with a school project and it was Halloween themed, so definitely…
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Oh, Olhão!?!
“How did you choose Olhão?” is an all too common question we are asked by friends and other expats. We were looking back through our blog posts and realized that we never really answered that question here on FinazzoFun. I’m going to give the easy and mundane answer and then want to delve into our…
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We Made It 1 Year
June 20th marked 1 full year in Portugal and the time blasted by like a bullet train. Maybe that means we have been having plenty of fun (“day drinking” European style is next level – even our background in emergency services did not prepare us for this), or perhaps we are just oldish now and…
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We Skipped Ugly Christmas Sweaters This Year
Andrew: Brother Visit: Rob made his first trip to Olhão in early December. His arrival matched up almost perfectly with the beginning of the rainiest week of the year. The rain poured down and both Michelle and I got horrible head colds two days after he got into town but we still had plenty of…
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Our Dance Card Is Filling Up
In Medford we had a few “non-work” friends, but every year or so we’d talk about making a concerted effort to expand out to new social circles. We made amazing and hopefully lifelong friendships with coworker and work associates but those gatherings almost always circled back to endless conversations about our job. After almost 20…
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Immersion: More Like An Ocean Than A Pool
Michelle: Immersion?!? People use this word pretty frequently when the subject of our move to Portugal comes up. It is usually a short, topical conversation much like a fleeting news headline. What actually comes to mind when you use the word immersion? I consider one of my favorite kitchen gadgets an immersion blender which I…