Once you cut your toenails in a new country, you actually feel like you live there. When I finished there was a strange shift in my feeling – this is home. This is normal. We were kinda “frenetic” at the start – every time we wake up, we’d ask: where are we going, what are…
Category: Lisbon
Moving to Lisbon: Two Months In
Woof. It’s been a whole-ass two months already. How did that happen? I know some folks have been wondering where our heads are at now, so I wanted to give you a bit of an update. Things are much, much better. Some stuff is still dumb. The toilet seat is still broken, the ceiling still…
Moving to Lisbon: The Meta
We’ve been here a little more than a month now. Things have settled down a little, and it’s certainly more calm than the first week, but there is still a lot of friction. One of the most surprising friction points is, well, me. I’m a pretty worldly person, and I wouldn’t have considered myself particularly…
Moving to Lisbon: Week 4
Hello friends. I’ve been meaning to write this for a week or so, but life gets in the way sometimes. I’d like to start by saying it’s much better now. Not perfect at all, but no major meltdowns and the stress level is starting to become pretty manageable, which is all I could hope for…
Moving to Lisbon: The First Week
I had meant to write this when it was a bit fresher, but I honestly didn’t have it in me. Friends, this past week was hard. Harder than I thought it would be, and I’ve been though some shit. I had what I assume must have been a full on panic attack yesterday that was…
First Few Days in Lisbon
We made it! We’re tired as hell, but we’re finally in our apartment in Lisbon, with an SEF appointment tomorrow to apply for our residence cards. We’ll meet our immigration lawyer right before our appointment so hopefully all should run smoothly. The exit was a little rockier than I’d have liked, as my sister came…
Telecom and Mobile Number Porting from the US to Portugal
First things first. The 5G infrastructure in most of Portugal is great. The fiber service you can get in Lisbon is awesome. And everything, relative to us estadunidenses (Americans), is dirt cheap. So one of the first things we will do when we get there is sign up with a Portuguese cell phone provider. We’ve…
Our first “regular” day in Lisbon
This is something I keep looking forward to. Right now there’s lots of stress, lots of waiting, lots of forms to fill out, and lots of expense. It’s all….awful. So the main thing I keep trying to look forward to is: what’s our first low-stress day going to look like? I’m imagining this will be,…
Barbers vs Salons in Portugal
So, Portugal tends to be really progressive (especially for a Catholic country) – it’s one of the reasons why we’re moving there – but there was one sticking point that came up that was absolutely surprising. While it probably wouldn’t apply to most women, who in the US don’t typically go to “barbers”, I thought…