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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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Summertime Reading
Settling into the new rhythm of our lives has left plenty of time for reading! Pass on your book recommendations in the comments and read on to hear some of ours. Michelle: I have finally carved out some time to read post move and have enjoyed a variety of novels, science fiction, a memoir, and…
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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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Walking In Our Bairro (Neighborhood)
I want to try and touch on a few of the little things that catch my attention now, but probably won’t in a few months. Today as I walked round our neighborhood with Michelle I tried to take pictures of things that are very commonplace – but slightly different than the suburb we previously lived…
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Some Mediocre Books
We’ll be checking in once in awhile to talk about the books we’ve read. Please share where your bookmarks have been hiding in the comments! Andrew: I’ve kicked my reading hours way up since retiring! Today I’m NOT going to talk about the best book I’ve read this year since M just started it and…
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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)…
