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Pumpkin Spice And Halloween In Portugal
Andrew: We LOVE Halloween. It isn’t as celebrated here as it is in the United States but the stores still put out a few costumes and if you look hard enough you can buy a pumpkin. Although I considered digging out some costumes we held off this year. That doesn’t mean we didn’t celebrate at…
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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…
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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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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…
