Making the Best of it… Settling In… Finally

We've been here nearly a year... No regrets... None!

So WOW... Here we are... It's been a while. My last post was in February. Yikes!

I have started so many drafts of this post over the past few months only to have them devolve into a political diatribe. Diatribes that even elicit eye rolls from me. While it is undeniable that politics are a huge driver for why we are now living in Portugal, it is not my intent to fill endless pages with my political slants and viewpoints beyond what I already have in my prior posts. So, as I write this post, I am going to make a concerted effort to shift the subject.

Pride Flags are a bit of a rarity here in Portugal. This one definitely caught my eye as I was walking through Cedofeita.

However.... Give me just a moment first... [If you don’t want to read my short political rant, click to skip it.] As middle aged members of the LGBTQ+ community, the chaos going on across the Atlantic absolutely impacts (my husband) Yoav and me on many different levels. Admittedly, they are frequently indirect for the most part, but they are still like "death by a thousand cuts", and they are becoming more and more impactful, cutting deeper and deeper, with each passing chaotic day¹.

Last month was Pride Month. A month which has been important to us since we were coming of age back in the 1980s. Yet, here I have been, asking myself "Why are we STILL FIGHTING this battle of people not being okay with pride month and who we are?" Oh... Right.... Despite progress, we LGBTQ+ folks are still a very despised and hated group of people. And now the backlash is getting louder than it has been in decades.

While my community has been facing dozens upon dozens of pieces of legislation trying to limit our rights, or even take them away completely, large corporations have suddenly pulled back or stopped sponsoring Pride events and various community organizations. This after companies like Anheuser-Busch have supported the community for decades, literally decades. Suddenly we are a liability and shareholders are more important than standing up for us.

Just recently, the Southern Baptist Convention endorsed a resolution that would seek to overturn the legalization of our marriage. It was just ten years ago last week that the US supreme court granted us this right nationwide. But, looking at how much of the far right’s agenda has come to fruition over the past ten plus years, I do not doubt they will likely succeed.

I am not going to lie.... Having your right to exist called into question in 2025 is truly exhausting to say the least.

So, with this I ask... How is it possible that I not be somewhat political? We packed up our very comfortable life in the US and came to Portugal to find a place of solace. A place where our right to exist is not just an interpretation of the laws (which can be changed on a whim), but written into the constitution².

Our view of the Atlantic (almost seven kilometers away) is not visible every day (thanks to fog and clouds), but when it is clear, the vastness of the Atlantic really stands out.

Okay.... Hopefully, you haven't given up on me yet....

Let's just say that with all the above going on.... We are making the best of things here in Porto. We are both enormously grateful for our new life here and we are earnestly trying to stay focused on our future here. The end of this month will mark our first full year in Porto!

Honestly, the year has flown by much faster than I could have anticipated. After our container arrived in January, and we began to unpack our lives and settle into our apartment, it made sense to us that actively working on settling into our new life took priority.

Settling in has included actively working at pulling away from American media (with a few exceptions). I do still pay attention, how can I not? But I am listening to fewer political podcasts, even completely unsubscribing from a few. I am not reading nearly as much American news as I was. I have been actively learning about European news sources (still a work in progress) and we recently subscribed to Expresso, a Portuguese news source which we have been told is fairly reliable³.

Settling in is unpacking boxes I packed up back in 2017 when we moved from NYC to Philly. I am glad to say that ninety percent of the boxes have been unpacked. In fact, there was one very important item I packed up in June of last year which had gone missing. I have not written about it because I was sure it was here, just not yet discovered. Sure enough, last week in a box marked 'Recent papers - Not urgent', I unboxed my Mac Mini computer which I use in my studio. I had intentionally packed it unmarked in a box so as to not draw attention to it. Trouble was, I did not make a note of which box I packed it in. I just trusted that it would show up one day, and it did.

Our boy Bixby (he is ten years old, but still our boy) finds solace lying out on the balcony taking in the view.

Settling in has been very much about making our apartment here in Porto our home. Most people move into a place, put a few things away, and go about their lives. Nothing wrong with that... My husband would be in that group. For me, moving in is more about installing myself into the space. Having lived in many apartments under 40 square meters (about 450 sq ft), I have had to quite literally figure out where everything fits. Although our current apartment is quite a bit larger, the same applies. There is no linen storage, so I had to figure it out. Typically, after living in a space for a year, my home looks as though I have lived there for ten or twenty years.

Settling in has also been painting the walls of our living room, filling the walls with our art, and hanging a beloved vintage chandelier over our dining table. There are other rooms to be done, but our living room feels more like home than either of us has had for several years⁴. For the curious, I promise to do a post about how the living room has turned out soon (as in later this month).

Walking up Rua do Bonfim on our way home from dinner last week presented the perfect moment to capture this shot.

There are still unresolved things we need to get done to feel even more settled in.

Yoav is still looking for teaching opportunities (He left his job teaching code at a coding boot camp last year for the move).

I still need to deal with getting my driving license exchanged. I still have a year and some months to get this accomplished, but I hope to get on it sooner than later. I have spent the majority of my adult life without a car, so I don't have an urgent need to drive. I would just like to know that I could if I needed to.

We are both woefully behind on our learning the Portuguese language. Yoav is a bit further along than I am because he learned French many years back. We try to use basics in our everyday activities, but are absolutely limited. We are working on starting a class this fall which focuses on not just language, but Portuguese culture and history. It is a slower pace, getting us only to A-1 over ten months. But that works better for us.

The River Douro as seen from a recent daily walk.

The last part for me about settling in is that on my six to seven kilometer daily walks⁵, I am learning the nooks and crannies of my neighborhood quite well. Along with adjacent neighborhoods, I am learning quite a bit about local life, about local small businesses, and experiencing some interesting architecture. I see the same folks out and about, and while I will always be an immigrant here, it does feel good to build a connection with my neighborhood.

It also feels good to feel safety and acceptance in my daily life. I can walk down the streets without fear of being mugged or held up at gunpoint. Yes, people do get mugged here (not so much at gunpoint), but statistically (and I’m all about statistics) it’s just not likely to happen. Along with that safety is a general feeling of acceptance from the community. I have no doubt there are a few folks around here that aren't thrilled about my being here, but I have yet to have a truly negative experience with the locals. I have for the most part found them nothing but deeply welcoming.

As I promised above, I will work on a post about how the living room has turned out and get it posted soon. I am also working on a post of observations... Some good, some not so good, and other random things about living here. And I have a milestone birthday coming up, so expect a post about that.

Parting Shot:

Late night at a neighborhood barbershop. I walk by here during the day and the barber (who must be in his 70s) is always cutting the hair of a client in their 60s. They have probably been doing this for 40 years.

One last thing…. I want to send out a huge THANK YOU to my subscribers. I am humbled to have well over 500 subscribers following along. Every time I get a subscriber, I get an email, and they always put a smile on my face. 😀

1. Let me say that my writing about my experience as a member of the LGBTQ+ community by no means is intended to diminish the insane bullshit that is being forced upon so many other minorities in the US. I am a citizen of the US which does grant me some rights, but I do not trust that those rights will not be reduced or eliminated as long as this regime continues to gain power.

2. We are fully aware of ongoing political shenanigans here in Portugal by Chega, the conservative party formed only a few years ago. While they warrant some concern, we feel quite strongly that our rights are still safe here.

3. I will say that with Expresso and several other Portuguese news sources, we are limited to using Google Translate to read them. We are well aware that there are nuances we are missing. Hopefully, when we begin our language lessons in a few months, we can improve our understanding.

4. We lived in our Philly house for six years and because it was a 175 year old fixer-upper, we never got to the point where we fully completed a room. So, much about the house remained in limbo due to multiple life events which kept us from getting where we wanted to be. I was within weeks of completing our living room three years ago last month when suddenly, we felt it was time to start planning our move to Portugal. That's when all work on the house basically stopped.

5. I have written about this before, but I have been doing dedicated daily walks, seven days a week, for over five years. As it turns out, today (Tuesday, 1, July) marks 1,900 walks in the past 1,900 days. For the month of June, I averaged 7.43 kilometers per day. This all came about during my recovery from cancer surgery at the end of 2019. The doctor encouraged me to get out and walk. I started walking around the block while still using a cane, several days a week, but by April of 2020 as COVID overtook regular daily life, I committed to myself that I could do a walk every day.... Then one thing led to another and once I hit 30 days, then 60 days, then six months.... Now I cannot conceive of a day without my walk.