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To Lisbon And Back In 37 Hours
Andrew had successfully navigated his residency appointment in October, and now it was my turn. We still haven’t found a house sitter in Portugal, so I traveled solo to Lisbon and back via train while Andrew stayed home with our furry kids. My primary goals were: pack light for easy travel, find something delicious to…
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Another Journey On The Road To Residency
My journey through the bureaucracy of becoming a legal resident in Portugal has been a series of physical trips, often covering long distances and being more stressful than the actual appointments involved. Trips to San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, and Orlando have all been intense journeys. Fittingly today’s post will focus on my journey more than…
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Converting Our Visa To A Residence Permit
We chronicled the saga of obtaining our visas through the San Francisco Portuguese consulate in several previous posts. The visas which we received in June are temporary and allow us to stay in Portugal for 4 months or until our assigned appointment with Serviço de Estrangeiros e Fronteiras (SEF) which is the equivalent of immigration/border…
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Is ABC Really As Easy As 123?
Back in November of 2021 when we shifted our retirement in Portugal from neutral to “full speed ahead” we signed up for Duolingo in order to start our Portuguese language studies. We learned a lot of words, a bit about sentence structure, and some verb conjugation. Duolingo is fun and I still enjoy it daily,…
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These Things Looked Smaller In Medford!
Our stuff arrived, mostly intact! We are missing one box (a digital camera, our whiskey stone tap, Michelle’s workout journals, and most unfortunately video cassette tapes that held some important life moments). At first glance our furniture looks intact and the boxes are almost all in great shape. The piano with stained glass is in…
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Living With Less
In April we started packing up our house in Medford, Oregon. In addition to all of the “sell, donate, or ship” decisions about our property, we also started deciding what necessities we would stuff in suitcases, carry ons, and pet carriers and lug with us to Portugal. We knew the main bulk of our property…
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2 Months In Portugal
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Walking In Our Bairro (Neighborhood)
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Cats On A Hot Tile Roof
We are currently engaged in a battle of wills with cats. Our jet black fuzzy twins are young, vivacious, inquisitive, and stubborn. All of the Finazzo felines have lived a strictly indoor existence. We do this not only for their own health and safety, but also out of concern for the wildlife they would likely…
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3 Weeks In Portugal
So much has happened since we arrived on June 20th in our new country. We wanted to give an overview of how things are going, what we have struggled with, and things we have learned along the way. Andrew and I are each going to weigh in with our personal perspectives thus far. Highlights (Michelle)…