The first two weeks of living in a new place are the perfect mix between vacation and assimilation. We were happy to enjoy both!

He Said: 

There are dates that stand out in life as being the important ones, the numbers you remember most. They're the anniversaries and birthdays. The days your children were born. The month/year combinations that stereotype themselves as pin codes on ATM machine keypads. They're the days memorialized by digits -- 8.13.23. It's the day we stepped into Portugal as residents and nothing will ever be the same.

We were first ushered through a short line at immigration where the officer recognized our residency visas and welcomed us home. We immediately found all seven blue duffles and the one black one, and Vitor was waiting just outside the doors with his big van to carry it all to our temporary apartment in Campo de Ourique. It all went so smoothly that a trip on the 28 trolly car that night seemed fitting as a way of celebration and accomplishment, so we went to Lisbon's main square, Praça do Comércio, walked around, and then found an authentic alleyway restaurant for dinner just a few steps down the road where we started in on the amazing Portuguese seafood.

Nothing will ever be the same, especially after fresh fish. Nothing will be the same, the Tejo River breeze seems to say. That's what I kept telling myself, that nothing will be the same, but even nothing takes time, of course. Life has to happen. We're oscillating between vacation and assimilation, and the magic happens when those two things cross over, when we're sitting in one of those alleyway restaurants or looking out over the old city from a miradouro or taking the train out to the beach or listening to a live fado show. They're the moments that need to happen for any of this to work.

"Hey, Sebastian. Check-in," I say.

It's a little phrase we have to test where we're at, to provide a litmus on our experience in that particular moment.

"I can't believe we live here," he says.

They are points of clarity when we realize we don't have to go home or back to a cruise ship. That we are home. That this is our view, not one borrowed for a few days during spring break, but one we can see any time we want. And it's those moments, those check-ins, those great big exhalations, the moments of clarity when we know this is our home -- well, they make all of this so worth it. They're priceless. Better than anything else I've ever felt. To see vacation become assimilation on your son's face, on your wife's, to see them realize we're actually doing this, living this, is what living is to me.

Complete assimilation will happen in due time, of course. There will be apartment viewings, appointments to get the water turned on or to connect the Wi-Fi. We'll form friendships with some of the people we meet. We'll learn new vocabulary or discover how to find out when the next bus will come. We'll spend hour after hour after hour at IKEA picking out new furniture for an unfurnished apartment, and then we'll spend hour after hour after hour after hour putting it all together. We'll spend so much time at IKEA and reading IKEA manuals that we'll ultimately know more Swedish than Portuguese after our first few weeks, but that will be okay because Sebastian and I like the meatballs and because life's biggest challenges are almost always attached to life's biggest dreams. If locking another cam into a desk is the worst, so be it.

But I know there will be hard days down the road, times when we miss our family and friends. Points in the year when we crave a certain food or the comfort of a long, American shower. We know the homesickness will come, but that's all part of the assimilation. After all, the only way to really live in a place is to track in the mud, so to speak, and we all know the floors will get dirty from time to time.

For now, though, we live in those gaps between "I don't really feel like we live here yet" and "I can't believe we actually live here," and all is well.

She Said:

They say, “Long days, short years.” Not sure who ‘they’ are but in this case, I agree. We’ve been here about three weeks and in so many ways it feels like it went quickly. Conversely, each and every single day feels like the longest day ever! Especially those either spent at Ikea or putting Ikea furniture together. 

My last blog left off with visas in hand and only days left to go before leaving. I think I said that leaving would be the easy part compared to all the planning and work put into relocation.

I was wrong.

Dead wrong.

Leaving was the hardest part….

We moved out of our house on July 15^th and began nomadic life in the basements of some of our favorite people in the world. While this felt burdensome in so many ways, it also gave us some amazing quality time together before leaving. And they tolerated Cody (ish). We know how lucky we are.

I won’t get into the details or emotions of all the goodbyes. That’s private. But I will say that I felt incredibly humbled and quite frankly blown away by the outpouring of support and kind words received from so many people. Suffice it to say, it made it that much harder to leave my comfort zone and support system for this journey of three…and a half (sorry, Cody).

Ok, so fast forward to the part where we got all eight duffels checked in under 50 pounds and two bags each on board. Aaaaaand, we’re off. Quick layover in Dulles and we arrived in Lisbon on Sunday the 13^th of August. 

Whenever we take overnight flights, we usually take a quick Airbnb nap before heading out to explore, eat, etc. But we were so excited to have finally arrived, we skipped that step and headed to a quiosque in one of our favorite areas where we hoped to find an apartment. Well, this didn’t last long, as Sebastian almost fell asleep in his acai bowl! 

We had three days before Cody arrived and a lot to accomplish. Since we were staying in an area where we hoped to live, so many of our walks around town were reconnaissance. This proved very interesting as I didn’t realize just how hard grass was to find! We had to walk almost a mile to find a small stretch of grass that would suffice. Strike 1. Also, I already knew this neighborhood was notorious for planes flying low overhead quite frequently as it’s near the airport. But every 5 minutes one came in for a landing! No, Sebastian, I won’t just get used to it! Strike 2. On the positive side, I loved the village feel, the cool mercado with awesome food stalls and a market on Sunday, and the people were great. Big plusses. But it was very quickly becoming apparent that where we wanted to live and where we might find an apartment might not jive. So, our perimeter lines expanded and we started looking everywhere as we really needed a place of our own before school was to start. 

I had my 478th holy shit moment on our first Monday morning in Lisbon when Chad got up to start working. Sebastian looked at me and said, “Mommy, you don’t have to go to work!” with a huge smile on his face. My heart melted and I felt instant reassurance that I was on the right path. I was so thankful that while I do plan to and will eventually need to find some part-time work, we planned it so that I do not have to rush to make that happen. But, for now, this moment was not lost on me.    

So, off we went. Without Chad as our guide and navigation system, we hopped on the bus and went to the store to get Sebastian fitted for his school uniform. When I lived in NY, I took two subways and a bus each way to get to Queens and back for work. So, public transportation isn’t foreign to me. But I am rusty and quite directionally challenged so we cheated a bit thanks to Google Maps just to be sure we were going the right way!

When we arrived at the department store to purchase his uniform, I got on what I thought was a line. After waiting about 10 minutes, I looked up to see a deli number system counter and realized I was supposed to take a number. Oops. When I went back to grab a number, a woman who came after me noticed my error and switched tickets with me, essentially putting me before her. I was speechless at this stranger’s act of kindness and thanked her profusely in Portuguese. I made a mental note to remember to pay it forward. Two hours later, we got the button-down shirts, trousers, blazer, backpack, and socks and finally, my little Harry Potter look-alike was ready for school to start!

Cody’s journey and the day he arrived have been captured by both Sebastian and Cody in separate blogs so I won’t get into too much detail. I will say that I am eternally grateful for Pet Relocator (Deanna and Cassandra) for their help. Deanna was reassuring and sent me updates all along the way. I was sure Cody wasn’t happy with his situation, but at least I knew he was safe. Picking him up was a cluster and I’d also like to give a shout-out to Vitor, not only for driving us to and from, but for being a translator through all of the red tape in trying to get Cody through customs. I questioned, more than a hundred times, if bringing him all the way over here was the right thing to do. But I stopped questioning once I saw the pure joy and comfort snuggling him brought to Sebastian. I was pretty happy to see him, too, if I’m being honest.

Until I remembered he had to be walked. A lot. 

Now that one of the most expensive and stressful parts of the move had arrived, we were T- one week until school! Pedro, our realtor, called and said he might have a place not yet listed in a neighborhood we were newly interested in, that had just been redone, and was close to multiple metro lines. Did we want to come see it? Um, YES! Turns out, it was close to the very first place we stayed when we came the first time to consider moving here two years ago. Was it a sign? I’ve read The Alchemist multiple times, so yeah.   

While we tried really hard to rent something furnished, it was becoming painfully clear that wasn’t going to happen, especially with a dog. And, what we did see that was furnished was really not something I was feeling good about snuggling up on or sleeping in.

Soooo, we went for it and we FINALLY had ourselves a new Lisbon address. 

Let the Ikea games begin!

I think I might let Chad take the brunt of this topic for He Said as he may (will) have a different take. I will just say that in a span of about 1-1.5 weeks, I circled that place 3x (once by myself), put together three nightstands, eight chairs (with Seb), helped assemble 2 of 3 beds, one table, and a partridge and a pear tree. It wasn’t that bad! 

If the year(s)-long-planning, duffel packing, house renting, couch surfing, leaving on a jet plane, house hunting, Cody moving, and Ikea time wasn’t enough to make this all feel “real,” the first day of school was the kicker. All of a sudden I felt like this is where real life starts and vacation ends. I can’t say if I was crying at drop off because my one and only baby is going into 6^th grade (called 7^th year here) or if sending him off in his formal uniform to a foreign school in another country was the thing to make me lose it, but either way, I held it together until he could no longer see me and balled thereafter. Thankfully, Chad and I both dropped him off so he was there to both laugh at me and hug me. He even bought me coffee.

Sooooo, now what? 

I mean, I have like a million things on my list to accomplish in my new life as a Real Housewife of Lisbon. I have laundry to do, more furniture to put together, emails to catch up on, a dog to exercise, a residency visa to prepare for, a transportation pass to apply for, health insurance to shop for, an entire supermarket to translate, a family to cook dinner for (haha)… and approximately 6 hours each day after my to/from commute with Seb that he’s in school to get it all done. 

I think working full-time was easier!

Kidding. I got this!

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