You Moved . . . Where?

If you check out the blog post archives listed to the right of this post you will note a HUUUUGE gap between December 2016 to August 2018.  A lot of that silence is because of THE MOVE in September 2017, which required ten months' worth of prep time to accomplish. I've mentioned THE MOVE on Facebook and elsewhere but never really addressed it on my blog. So here goes!

I put those words in caps because any move is likely to wear you down. All the logistics, the hassles, the unforeseen near-disasters are totally mind blowing and exhausting.  Add in selling, tossing or donating 99% of your earthly possessions and moving across the Atlanta Ocean to a foreign country -- that's Olympic level hell right there. And we did it to ourselves with no one else to blame. LOL

We manage to scale down from a 2400 sq. ft. house to a 800 sq. ft. apartment. This carton is all we shipped to Portugal -- 100 cu. ft. of very important personal items that we wanted with us as we started over. Things like my cameras and lenses, special framed artwork, photographs, his and her clothes, and such.

Luckily this carton managed to survive a hurricane in Charleston, SC that came into the docks at high tide, and avoid the other one churning up the Atlantic Ocean as the container ship made the journey across. Only a couple things were damaged when it arrived so we called that a success. During its journey it'd visited Charleston, London, LeHavre, Rotterdam and finally Porto. Definitely well traveled goods.

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Paperwork, OMG the paperwork (official or otherwise) for obtaining the initial residency visa, followed by selling the house, "ridding out" all our stuff and then the actual move into a totally empty apartment in Porto, Portugal. Followed by a series of trips to IKEA (they're everywhere!) to buy new furniture, which of course, required lots of assembly. (Below is the spouse with our cat Dali doing her supervisor thing as he puts together lord knows what.)

Now, over a year into the move, we've settled into the rhythm that is living in a foreign country. The Portuguese are very friendly folks and quite forgiving when I butcher their lovely language. The food is fresh and healthy (though I have acquired a serious addiction to their desserts). I'm back to writing at last because the post-move exhaustion was so intense it took me nearly a year to get my head screwed on right.

All is good. Here's a few more pictures for your viewing pleasure. If you want the in-depth look at the move, check out our website www.OurLifeInPortugal.com