184 - One year of living in Portugal (pros and cons!)

It’s been exactly one year since we made Portugal our new home and we have LOTS to share about the last 365 days!

Show Notes

In this episode, we’re going to chat about the pros and cons of living in Portugal, the biggest differences to the U.S., as well as a handful of lessons learned.

We’re also going to talk through a few categories, like our home and neighborhood, making friends, the food, the pace of life, all the admin crap when you move to a new country, as well as the healthcare system and more! This is a BIG OLE ep and we’re trying to give you our honest thoughts and feelings.

Whether you want to move to a new country or not, we hope this episode inspires you to add some adventure into your life and jump at an opportunity to take a risk and grow as a person!

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What is Growing Steady | Intentional Creative Business Podcast?

We’re Jason and Caroline Zook, a husband and wife team running two businesses together and trying to live out our version of a good life in the process. In this business podcast, we share with you our lessons learned about how to run a calm, sustainable business—one that is predictable, profitable AND peaceful. Join us every Thursday if you’re an online creator who wants to reach your goals without sacrificing your well-being in the process.

[00:00:00] Caroline: Welcome to What Is It All For? A podcast designed to help you grow your online business and pursue a spacious, satisfying life at the same time. We're your hosts, Jason and Caroline Zook, and we run Wandering Aimfully, an unboring business coaching program. Every week, we bring you advice and conversations to return you to your most intentional self and to help you examine every aspect of your life and business by asking, What Is It All For? Thanks for listening. And now let's get into the show.

[00:00:28] Jason: And I'm here, too. Pow. Pow, pow. Hello. Welcome to the podcast. That's how I kind of feel like our brains are going to be throughout this episode.

[00:00:42] Caroline: Oh, yeah.

[00:00:42] Jason: Because there so much we want to share. Also, amazing timing of this episode when you were doing the prep for this.

[00:00:52] Caroline: As this episode is being published today on November 9.

[00:00:56] Jason: Yeah.

[00:00:57] Caroline: I looked back at my photos when we arrived in Portugal.

[00:01:01] Jason: This is the day we arrived.

[00:01:02] Caroline: It was November 9, 2022. So as of today that you're listening to this, we have been living in Portugal for exactly one year. Jason loves...

[00:01:11] Jason: Clean moment. We call it a clean butt moment in our house because just like to have a clean butt.

[00:01:17] Caroline: A tidy calendar.

[00:01:18] Jason: Yeah, this feels very nice to have that clean one year in Portugal. Very truthful. We're also not recording that far away from Norman night, so it's pretty close, but excited to share a lot of different things with you all. So this is going to be more of a life episode here, a little bit less on the business side, although we could probably talk a little bit of business things in here of just like, how our work...

[00:01:39] Caroline: It's not in the notes, bro.

[00:01:40] Jason: No, I know, but we love straying from the notes. So we're going to talk to you about kind of the house and neighborhood where we live, admin stuff, what's it like to move to a new country, the healthcare system, learning the language, making friends because that's very hard as adults, food, shopping, the biggest differences we've found from the US, and then our overall pros and cons.

[00:02:03] Caroline: For us, personally.

[00:02:04] Jason: Yeah. Along with what maybe made this more difficult, what made it less difficult, and then our favorite parts to round things out, and what we're looking forward to in the future, living here.

[00:02:12] Caroline: So if you find any of that interesting, keep listening. And...

[00:02:16] Jason: If you don't, I highly recommend 60 songs that define the 90s. Great podcast. Or How Did This Get Made. Another one of my favorite podcasts. So you can just click off of this one.

[00:02:25] Caroline: We haven't listened to 60 songs in a while. We should.

[00:02:27] Jason: You haven't.

[00:02:28] Caroline: When you've been listening to those without me?

[00:02:30] Jason: While I'm cooking, while I'm walking.

[00:02:32] Caroline: No, you always listen to How Did This Get Made when you're cooking. That's a lie.

Well,

[00:02:34] Jason: I do listen to that a lot.

[00:02:35] Caroline: Exactly.

[00:02:35] Jason: Yeah. But sometimes I pepper it in.

[00:02:37] Caroline: I feel like you've been podcast cheating on me.

[00:02:39] Jason: This is the thing. This is the thing that happens in couples.

[00:02:43] Caroline: When it comes to podcasting, we have an open relationship.

[00:02:46] Jason: We really do, yeah.

[00:02:47] Caroline: You can do that.

[00:02:47] Jason: Netflix shows? Maybe a little bit tighter on the relationship.

[00:02:50] Caroline: Strict monogamy with the Netflix.

[00:02:53] Jason: Hey, can I watch one of these episodes? How dare you even ask me? Yeah. Do not cheat and watch an episode. Okay, so I want to share a whole episode of here of what the move has been like.

[00:03:02] Caroline: Yes.

[00:03:03] Jason: For those of you that maybe are just clicking into this or, like, a friend sent it to you.

[00:03:06] Caroline: For the first time.

[00:03:06] Jason: Just a quick background on us.

[00:03:08] Caroline: Oh, great.

[00:03:08] Jason: We met in Florida. You grew up there. You were born there. I kind of lived all over the US, but I've been there, was there from 2000. I went to college there. We lived there until 2015. We got together in 2010. We decided to move and uproot our lives to California, basically on, like a whim. We moved to California. We lived in the San Diego area from multiple different places around San Diego, and then we moved here to Portugal after traveling in Europe for a year in 2022. We lived here in Portugal for a full year. And now we consider this our full time home, and we plan on being here indefinitely.

[00:03:44] Caroline: That was a pretty good recap.

[00:03:45] Jason: I think I did a pretty good job.

[00:03:46] Caroline: Absolutely.

[00:03:47] Jason: There might even be people who have listened to our podcast for a while. Like, I didn't even know some of those things.

[00:03:50] Caroline: I know. Yeah. I think that is important context, because the fact that we have one sort of substantial move under our belt, big life change, I do think that was helpful in making this big decision to move countries. We had already moved States, like, across the country. I think that was a good little kind of baby step towards what we're doing now. Also, just like, spoiler alert.

[00:04:13] Jason: Go ahead.

[00:04:13] Caroline: For this entire episode, if you're wondering, like, how do you like it after living here for one year? The answer is, it's been the best year.

[00:04:19] Jason: It has been the best year of our lives.

[00:04:21] Caroline: The happiest year, which feels. We want to be truthful, it feels kind of weird sometimes to be like, I'm so happy, especially when there's terrible things happening in the world. But we're just also trying to be truthful with you, if you're wondering. It was a big. Especially for me personally, this was a big leap. This was a big leap of courage, a big leap of faith of going, I'm changing everything about my life. Jason was pretty much on board. He's more adventurous than I am. I would say I'm a pretty...

[00:04:49] Jason: I'm not, like, bungee jumping adventurous, but I'm like, life decision change adventurous.

[00:04:53] Caroline: You're definitely more life decision change adventurous. And I would say I'm not unadventurous, but I, compared to you, again, we talk about this often. You are the accelerator, I'm the brakes. And so, for sure, I was hesitant about making this life decision. And one year later, I can say to my former self, wow, I am so glad that you just took the leap and you led with courage.

[00:05:16] Jason: So you're saying I should mash the accelerator more? That's what I'm hearing. That's the feedback I'm getting.

[00:05:20] Caroline: No, what I'm saying is.

[00:05:21] Jason: Mash, mash, mash, mash, mash.

[00:05:23] Caroline: What I'm saying is we entered into this big change with an appropriate amount of brakes and an appropriate amount of accelerator.

[00:05:30] Jason: I think you're right. Also, if you want to go back a year, in our podcast episode list, there are a couple episodes when we talked about, oh, my gosh, are we moving to Portugal? And what are our thoughts, what are our feelings? And we shared kind of where you were on that scale and how that changed.

[00:05:45] Caroline: We should totally go back and listen to that.

[00:05:47] Jason: So we can go back and have our own listening party. But if you, the listener, are like, oh, I don't really know a lot about this Portugal decision, what did it feel like at the beginning? Go back a year in our podcast, and you can actually hear us talk about what we were feeling then.

[00:06:00] Caroline: And I also feel like you could be listening to this podcast and know that you'll never move. But I still think listening to people who have made a big change in their lives might be helpful and valuable because you might be considering a big career change, a big shift in your business, a decision as it relates to relationships, like all of these big moments in our life where we feel like these two distinct paths are in front of us. Do I do A or do I do B? I think we're all confronted with those at times.

[00:06:29] Jason: Do you accelerate or do you break? Oh, how does that feel? You're less excited about that? Do I do A, accelerate? Or do I do B? I knew you didn't get there as quickly as I did.

[00:06:38] Caroline: I didn't get there. You just have to let me back in.

[00:06:40] Jason: But it felt good once you realized.

[00:06:41] Caroline: I do love that.

[00:06:41] Jason: I know you do. The other thing that I was going to mention here, should we start a podcast reacts? Like where we react to our own previous podcast?

[00:06:49] Caroline: I think that's new levels of narcissism.

[00:06:53] Jason: I also wanted to mention. So you kind of felt like it was a big leap of faith. You were scared to take a leap, but you were glad you made it. I felt like moving to Portugal and just Europe in general, really confirmed all the hopes and dreams that I had of just a simpler, calmer, slower pace of life. And I think that for anybody who lives in the US, and the majority of people listen to this podcast live in the US, although US, although we do have a good portion of people who don't, I think many of you maybe know that things are fast paced, stressful. There's a lot going on, but it's what you're used to. And now that we're out of that for two years, I can just tell you from stepping out of that, I don't look at it as a bad thing. I just look as like I personally wanted a slower, calmer pace of life.

[00:07:36] Caroline: Right.

[00:07:36] Jason: And this has absolutely done that for me. And it has broken a lot of my tendencies of, like, I got to get to this place early, we got to be efficient. I got to do these things. That was very ingrained in me for 40 years of living in the US, and now I've moved to Portugal and things are just slower. And people close their businesses in the middle of the day because they just want to take a break or they have a family thing they want to do. And yet in the US, I remembered that would really piss me off, basically. Truthfully, it would make me angry. And now I'm like, good for them. I'm glad they're taking off. This is why we moved here. Just have a slower pace of life.

[00:08:03] Caroline: Yeah, it definitely shifts your perspective immensely. And we'll talk about some of the differences, just that we've noticed between our cultures, the United States culture and the Portuguese culture later on in the episode. Yeah. And we're not those people who are going to bash the US. We grew up there. There's so many positive things about it. However, stepping out of it, you do see it from a different lens where you go, oh, I didn't even realize that stress was in the air until I kind of freed myself of it and vice versa. That is not to say that there aren't things in the Portuguese culture where it's not like stress doesn't exist here. It's not some utopia. It's like a very realistic view, but definitely less hustle and bustle.

[00:08:49] Jason: If you don't like roundabouts, you're not going to like living here.

[00:08:51] Caroline: Yeah. Okay, so let's get into our categories here, just to discuss some topics now that we've been here for a year. So starting with our place, where we live. So our house and also our neighborhood. So we rent. We did not buy a house. That was important to us. Also, I know some people who just buy a place in Portugal, like sight unseen, and just come over here.

[00:09:11] Jason: Especially with the golden visa program. That was a very attractive way that they.

[00:09:14] Caroline: I just can't ever believe buying a house without seeing it or living in the country. But anyway, so we're renting. We just really lucked out on finding a rental home in a neighborhood. So this is a neighborhood. It's not like a gated neighborhood, but it's definitely its own little sort of community. And it's a little bit tucked away, and we are walking distance from the beach. And how many homes would you say there are in this neighborhood?

[00:09:41] Jason: I think there are like 40 or 50 homes.

[00:09:43] Caroline: So let's call it 40 or 50 homes, just to give you a picture. And I will say that one of my hesitations about that in moving to a neighborhood was, I think what probably a lot of people think about that is, okay, you're moving to this new country. You want to experience all the culture of that country. You want to immerse yourself. Why are you going to go live in basically, like a little enclave of mostly expats? Because basically everyone in our community, it's majority expats, not Portuguese natives. My hesitation in moving here, even though we loved the place and we actually didn't find many other rentals at the time when we were moving. So I was like, I'm glad that I like this place. We didn't really have another choice. But my hesitation was, am I going to move to this country and feel like I'm totally shut off from the culture? And I will say that has not been the case. There are definitely parts about it that are a bubble, I'm not going to lie. But in the best way to me because the part that I didn't foresee is that we would plug into this really beautiful community, very multicultural community, and get to know a lot of our neighbors.

[00:10:54] Jason: I think the truth of the matter, too, is we all live in bubbles everywhere.

[00:10:57] Caroline: Right.

[00:10:57] Jason: So it's like, even back in the US, we still lived in our own bubble. We still saw the same, people did the same. You create a bubble everywhere because it's what's comfortable for life. And I think here, when you're looking to move to a different country or even a different state or whatever, you're thinking, like, oh, well, I want to change from where I was and what I was doing, but it's like, yeah, but having a bubble is kind of good for a lot of reasons, because it makes things a lot easier when you're moving here.

[00:11:21] Caroline: It's like this little village, do you know what I mean? To equate it to eras past. I can imagine you get some of the same social dynamics as living in a small village because you know your neighbors, you are doing activities together. You form these social bonds together. And that part has been so gratifying to me. Maybe those of you listening are like, yeah, that's exactly like. We live in a neighborhood that is totally normal. For Jason and I, especially moving from Florida like, we really didn't have any friends in our neighborhood in Florida. Then we moved to California. We had, like, an immediate circle, but certainly not our neighbors. We always kind of felt like these transplants, especially because we were moving every one to two years, even in the San Diego area, we were moving to different places around there, so we never really got to know our neighbors, and there wasn't a natural place to do that. I think especially when you don't have kids, when you're just sort of single and you're not making an effort to go to community events and things like that, these were also the most active years of our business, so we were very much staying at home, working on the business, and just kind of keeping to ourselves. And something happens when I think you move countries, you are in so much more of a. I need to have social connections mindset that you put yourself out more.

[00:12:37] Jason: Yeah, for sure. I mean, our neighbor that we've only met a couple of times, we went to dinner with once, I think maybe twice. I went over and let their cat out when they were traveling.

[00:12:45] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:12:46] Jason: I baked bread for one of our other neighbors. One of our neighbors brought you a gift from their travels.

[00:12:51] Caroline: From Peru. He's like, I was in Peru, and I saw this and I thought of you.

[00:12:54] Jason: Yeah. Almost every week we've been going over to someone else's house in the neighborhood and kind of have, like, a host and dinner, and we play games. We never have lived in a place that has done those things.

[00:13:05] Caroline: And I think little things like, it's that community feel of like, it takes a village where I know you have a surgery coming up. And I was thinking to myself, like, okay, I can't believe we live in a place where people would so happily be like, do you need groceries?

[00:13:18] Jason: We also probably have five people in this neighborhood that we could ask to help.

[00:13:22] Caroline: Yeah.

[00:13:23] Jason: If we moved here and didn't live in a community like this, we would have really no one to help that we would feel that close to. Maybe there'd be someone that we've run into. But I think the other thing that I was going to mention when you're talking about kind of living in a village is and feeling like you're maybe not living in the culture or the country that we move to. Our home is in this community, and the people that we've met are in this community. But four minutes down the road where the grocery stores are and where our restaurants and then a pharmacia that is in the local Portuguese town.

[00:13:51] Caroline: Exactly.

[00:13:52] Jason: Everyone speaks Portuguese, and we are the foreigners. And so it's like we have to go there for everything. So we do get immersed in it, and we do learn the local businesses and the people, and we become friendly with those people. Even if you live in one of these little smaller communities that are planned and different, and they're not the old architecture that's been here for hundreds of years, you're still getting into the community, which I love because you get the modernity of a home and, like, a place that's thought through and there's communal spaces. And then you drive into town and it's like, oh, now I'm going into this town that's been here for a long time.

[00:14:24] Caroline: That's what I was going to say is, yes, you have the benefits of living in a bubble, but you're not so isolated that you're never interacting with people, Portuguese, native people in the community. And I think that's also a benefit. So we're comparing our lifestyle here to basically suburban America, which is different than living in cities where you do have a little bit more walkable and maybe, you know, the local shop owners and things like that. But if you live in, like, a suburban area of the United States, you're taking your car everywhere, you're shopping at big box stores. You don't really form relationships with small shop owners. So I think I had that mindset when I was thinking about living in a community as like, oh, I'll never have any reason to interact with anyone outside of the community. And that couldn't be further from the truth, that's what I love about living in a small town, is exactly what you described. You don't go drive to a big box store. You just go into town and you go to the pharmacy, you go to the shop for glasses. Everything is very shop small.

[00:15:23] Jason: Yeah, that's the only option, actually.

[00:15:25] Caroline: Exactly. And I will say another. The last thing on this point for moving to a neighborhood that was so nice was the day that we moved in, November 9 of last year. Our Internet was already set up, our water was already on, our electricity was working. And so when you moved to the country, and we didn't speak a lick of Portuguese from the beginning, having all of that sort of turnkey setup, I will say, was very nice and went a long way to reducing the anxiety.

[00:15:55] Jason: Yeah. Not even do we not speak the language. You also don't know the companies to call to set things up.

[00:15:59] Caroline: Exactly.

[00:16:00] Jason: Like when we moved from Florida to California, I remember it being stressful getting the Internet, electricity and water, because I was like, what companies do like, which company do I call? Which one am I choosing? That's a very Florida small with town reference. But yeah, I think my pro tip here is that you don't have to live life on hard mode, especially when you're making a huge life decision. If you're moving to another country as an example, and maybe opt for something that might have some of these built in conveniences. And then if you're only going to be there for a year, like, if you're like us and you're renting, you have the ability to move somewhere else. If you've figured things out and you don't have to hit the ground with all these things piled on top of you that you have to do, just try and make it easier for yourself. And I'm so glad that we did that because again, like you said, we showed up, everything was turned on, everything was set up, everything was built into our rent, and it just made life so much easier for us, we could focus on all the other things we had to do.

[00:16:48] Caroline: Yeah. And I do want to say a caveat for this entire episode is I also recognize that a lot of these moments where we chose convenience, some of that comes with financial privilege.

[00:16:59] Jason: Right.

[00:17:00] Caroline: Because you're not going to have those options if maybe finances are tighter. And we definitely understand that. We had reached a point in our lives where our businesses were doing well. It's not like we were moving here right out of college or something like that. So we had a little bit more financial leverage to be able to use that financial leverage to choose some of the convenience. So I just want to point that out. We're very aware of. But, and of course, all those things that you just mentioned, you could do your research and you would figure it out. However.

[00:17:29] Jason: Yeah, I was going to say, if you're moving to a country and let's say you're looking to rent, and here the zillow of Portugal is called Idealista and let's say you're looking at places and you're contacting agents, those people can become your points of contact. To find those things, you don't have to move into a community where it's all set up for you. We didn't even know it was all set up for us, so I just assumed we were going to have to do it. Yet I found out once we. I was like, oh, it's already taken care of. This is amazing. What a nice thing to have.

[00:17:56] Caroline: Yes. And I think the big kind of transferable thing that you mentioned there, that is across the board is just, you can enter into this big change in life with some intentionality around allowing yourself to choose convenient and easy in certain aspects. You don't have to make it so hard on yourself when it's already going to be a big change.

[00:18:17] Jason: Exactly.

[00:18:17] Caroline: Granted, if you want that challenge, more power to you, but we were very clear from the get go that we knew it would be difficult in some ways and we just didn't want to make it more difficult than ourselves.

[00:18:25] Jason: Let's move into the next category. Admin stuff.

[00:18:28] Caroline: This is a nice segue because we did just touch on some of the admin stuff, like the water and the whatever, but I just thought this was a category because I'm not going to lie. Moving countries, it's a whole other part time job.

[00:18:39] Jason: Yeah, exactly. When we moved from Florida to California, we didn't have to get a visa. We didn't have to sign any papers that we had to translate and Google Translate. Like we have to do any of those things. It's very easy. But I will say overall, we'll talk about a couple of the things. Overall, it is a good amount of things to do, but it's also not so overwhelming that it is impossible. And I think that's the thing that I would tell anyone who's about to do this, is embrace the fact that it's going to be a lot of to dos, but also know that many people have also done this and you can learn from how they've done it, which is exactly what we did. So, like our residency cards is a perfect example. We had the D seven application, which is the short term visa that you have to get first. Then we had to go back to the US. We had to do a bunch of things for that. We had to get our Ceph appointment. Once you get the D seven visa, then we had to get our residency card picked up. So, all in all, it's a lot of different steps. There's a lot of papers you're filling out. There's a lot of things you don't know. You're looking up a lot of stuff. It took us 13 total months to get our residency cards in hand, and that's a long time and it's a lot of work. But I will say it also was not so overwhelming and stressful that entire time that it felt like, oh, I would never do this again.

[00:19:46] Caroline: No, you take it step by step. That's my biggest piece of advice. Try not to get overwhelmed. And this was another place where we said, okay, let's use a little bit of financial leverage here to buy a course from people who have done it for. And that was a good investment because it saves you the time of researching every piece of it of your own journey and just following the steps that someone else has laid out for you.

[00:20:07] Jason: Exactly. And there are services that help you get your tax number when you're first getting set up or help you set up your first bank account. If you're not here in person to do that, you can do it online. Those things, they're not that expensive in the grand scheme of things, and they are nice to be able to do when you're far away. And again, yes, that is a privilege to do that, but you can also plan for that. So if you're going to make a move like this, maybe instead of doing it six months from now, you do it twelve months from now. And for those six months gap, you save up a little bit to be able to buffer in and pay for some of these things. And you just kind of plan for that.

[00:20:36] Caroline: You plan for it for sure. Yeah. So just all the to do. So the big things were like banking, getting, setting up with banking. What do you do for health care, insurance, taxes, phone stuff? I mean, there's a lot of categories that when you are in the country that you're born in, you sort of take for granted and you just go like, oh, this is just adulting. And it's like, oh, this is next level adulting.

[00:21:00] Jason: Well, and again, we choose the difficult parts of that process, and then we choose the parts that are easier. One example is like our phone plan. I did research for a while on like, okay, switching our plans to a Portuguese plan and blah blah. And I just decided, let's just stay with our US T mobile plan that has international data. Our phones are going to be on Wi Fi most of the time anyway because we're home most of the time. And then we're just going to get a Portuguese phone from a local Vodafone store that's just a pay as you go. So we'll have a Portuguese phone number that we can put in different things online when we need a Portuguese phone number for different things. And that has worked out fine. Now next year maybe we want to figure out a combination of combining to have a Portuguese phone plan to make it easier. But also I wrote down, is the juice going to be worth the squeeze for me to think through all that? And it's not even a money savings thing at that point because it's probably going to cost about the same in the data usage. Those things are pretty similar across the board. So it really boils down to every one of these admin decisions just going, should I just make it easier on myself and just continue to use "xc", which will still work, instead of thinking I have to change over to y, which doesn't even really matter. So yeah, it's a lot of those little decisions. And I think that what I tried to do, especially for this first year, was not tackle them all, because you don't have to tackle them all.

[00:22:15] Caroline: Exactly. And what I wanted to say too is, it's funny looking back now that we've been here for a year and you go, wow, we really have gone a long way to establish ourselves with all of these admin things, but it was because we didn't do it all at one time, so we only tackled the next thing that was necessary. So it's like the banking was the first thing because you kind of need that in order to sign your rental agreement and get your NIF and everything like that. So that was step one. And then we said, okay, let's just have some travel insurance for a couple of months in order that would cover us here and not worry so much right out of the gate about getting plugged into the healthcare system. So we did that in, I think, January or February. So we gave ourselves a couple of months, then it was like, okay, now we need to do the taxes thing, make sure we have that set. So it was just, we took it one step at a time. And I always actually, for those nerds out there. I think I've talked about it before, but I love notion. And so I just created a notion project for myself called move to Portugal. And I just had categories for all of these things. And I said, okay, january, my goal is going to be to start the process of getting health insurance. Okay. February is going to be find a Portuguese teacher. Okay. March is going to be really focused on social connections and making sure that we're trying to establish friendships. That's how I approached it, and it made it really doable.

[00:23:31] Jason: Yeah. I mean, I think a big tip here, especially when it comes to the admin stuff, is whatever organizational system works for you or tool, Notion, Airtable, Google Docs, et cetera, just try and put as much of that stuff in one place with all the links of the relevant articles and how to's and guides and services. Because I can't tell you the amount of times that we went back to that moving to Portugal notion page. And we're so grateful that we had all the links that we found. Even like two weeks prior to that moment, I was like, oh, I know, I went to a website and I can't remember what it is and I'm trying to search for it and I can't find it. I'm like, wait. The first day we saw it, we made sure to put it in this doc under the category of taxes or whatever. Awesome. I can go back to it. And I know that sounds like such a simple thing. Like, that's obvious. I'm going to do that. It is not obvious when you're moving to a new country and you're trying to juggle all of the things. So just try and build a system. If you're thinking about making a move like this that works for you, that you can just put everything in one place, you can always go back to.

[00:24:28] Caroline: We still at the top of that page have our NIF. Well, we know our NIFs by heart now.

[00:24:32] Jason: NIF is the taxpayer number.

[00:24:33] Caroline: Taxpayer number. But we also have like our address. The amount of times I go to that page just to copy and paste.

[00:24:39] Jason: Our address, I use the keyboard shortcut.

[00:24:40] Caroline: You do? I just thought of that the other day. I was like, after a year, I need to just set this up as a keyboard shortcut.

[00:24:46] Jason: I also don't even know our address. I just use the keyboard shortcut and I copy and paste.

[00:24:51] Caroline: Now I know it by heart.

[00:24:52] Jason: I probably could so many times.

[00:24:53] Caroline: Yeah, that's another random thing. Not on our notes. Addresses are formatted differently in every country.

[00:24:58] Jason: Did you know yeah. When you go from US to Europe.

[00:25:01] Caroline: It is a whole different address to our friends and family in the States. And they're like, can you send a photo of how I'm format that?

[00:25:10] Jason: I will say I have a little bit of a cheat that I knew how to write our address or at least had an idea. And it wasn't so surprising because of the welcome packages that we used to do by my future, by our future and WAIM members, probably half of our members are in Europe, so I would have to figure that out. And let me tell you, the Netherlands is very different from Portugal, which is very different from Croatia. So it's very fun.

[00:25:34] Caroline: Yeah. So the only things really left to do are we have to do this Atestado thing, which is what it basically is.

[00:25:40] Jason: I still don't know what most of these things are. You all hear this here a couple of times.

[00:25:43] Caroline: This is a document that you basically have to go to your local township, which would be like our. I think it's Larinya and Atelaya, and it's in town. And we just basically have to go in there and say, like, hey, we live here. Can you give us a document that says that we live in this neighborhood?

[00:25:57] Jason: Yeah.

[00:25:57] Caroline: And I think you need it for certain things. Okay. So that's one thing that's on my list. And then our car registration is in the mail.

[00:26:05] Jason: Yeah. For those of you who've been keeping up with the car saga, we did finally get approved for an auto loan, which we'll talk about here in a minute. We have a car. And then, thankfully, we bought the car through a pretty well known dealership here in Portugal that wasn't really necessarily by any conscious decision. It just happened that way. They handle the registration process for us, which is really nice. So that'll actually just come in the mail. So we're just waiting for that to come.

[00:26:27] Caroline: And then the last piece of the puzzle is to get us registered into the national health system, which you need your residency card to be able to do that process, which we just got. Our residency cards also.

[00:26:38] Jason: A little bit of a bummer there. We missed. There used to be an online application for this. Now we have to go in person.

[00:26:44] Caroline: It's okay. So, speaking of healthcare.

[00:26:47] Jason: Yeah, let's do it.

[00:26:47] Caroline: Let's move on to healthcare. So, just a little bit of background. Basically, here in Portugal, they have a national healthcare system that you can use for free for really anything. But it's, from what we have heard, especially good for emergencies.

[00:27:05] Jason: Everybody we've talked to has basically know we do have private insurance now, which we'll talk about in a second. But if you have an emergency, just go to the public hospitals because it is set up for that to take care of you. And some of the best doctors are in Portugal work at those hospitals in those situations.

[00:27:18] Caroline: So again, context, you have a public system which you can utilize and that's what taxes pay into and everything. Then you can also supplement with private, whereas in the United States it's all private insurance. You choose your carrier and you get your doctors or whatever. Here it's public system with the option for private as well. And that is helpful. Like we said, if you want to be able to choose your doctor, if you want to be able to go get imaging, a lot of more elective things.

[00:27:46] Jason: Yeah, I mean, that definitely helped in my knee journey that I'm on because I'm going to have my knee operated on here in a month or so. Is that because it's not an emergency situation? I would have had to just wait until I could have gotten into the public system. And I have friends in Canada and I've heard stories of them being like, yeah, I have to wait like six months because it's not an emergency. And that would be the same here. You just kind of have to get a ticket and get in line, not stand there in person for six months, obviously. But having private medical insurance, I was able to just set up an appointment at a private hospital and go and get an MRI and I'll talk more about that in a minute. But I think the thing that we really wanted to highlight here, that was an awesome thing that we found through some recommendations, was this company called Serenity, which is basically a medical concierge. And you get a registered nurse who is your point of contact, who speaks Portuguese and English. And this service is extremely affordable every single year. And it basically just gives us a point of contact who helps us find the right places to go for different medical, dental et.

[00:28:49] Caroline: Just, I wish I had had this in the States because anyone who knows choosing insurance, choosing your doctors, even to me, that way of doing things is so broken because you're searching through things online, you're like, do they take my insurance.

[00:29:04] Jason: Going to their LinkedIn? And they had a weird job 20 years ago. I don't like that.

[00:29:08] Caroline: It's like, okay, they work out of this hospital sometimes, but then other times. So you just have this person who is so much more knowledgeable than you about that system, and they can help you. So Serenity helped us. They also work with insurance brokers, so they basically interviewed us to see what our needs would be so that they can set us up with the right insurance plan that's best for us and the time period that we're at in our life. And they even went as far as to. Because during one of the questionnaires, I told them about my binocular vision dysfunction. That's not a well known eye condition here in Portugal. And the insurance came back and said, hey, we're not going to cover vision insurance because you have this thing. Not realizing it's not something that is threatening to my eye health in any way. It's just I need a special glasses prescription. And the members of, well, the owner of Serenity called the insurance company to explain to them that this is not a condition, and they wrote a letter to put it back into our insurance, which is fantastic. That's just one example of they're advocating on your behalf in a system where you're not familiar, and that is just an investment that's worth it. And so they not only do that, but then also, like Jason was saying, you have your registered nurse, and she's wonderful, and I'll talk about in a second. I had a procedure in. When was that? July. And so being able to WhatsApp our registered nurse and just basically be, hey, like, I'm having these sort of side effects. Should I be concerned? No, you shouldn't be concerned. Go get these three things from the pharmacia and you'll be good to go in a couple of days. And that just puts all of your anxieties at ease to have that touch point. So, really glad we found that company. And then, like we said, they helped us pick out health insurance, which so far has worked out well for us. We haven't had too many.

[00:30:51] Jason: No, but I had an MRI at a private hospital, and the hospital was a great experience and just very simple and easy. The people at the reception desk spoke English. At the checkout desk, didn't speak English, but it was fine because it worked out. They're just showing you a bill and you're just paying, and also your bill is incredibly small compared to the US. I mean, like, one example is with our private insurance here. I had an elective MRI, which mean I didn't have an injury that I had to. Like, a doctor basically said like, yeah, you need this. I chose to get it. It cost me €65 with our insurance. Just call it dollars, $65 to get MRI. I've had two mris, both related to injuries. So a doctor said, you need to get this. It still cost me one $1800 out of pocket with insurance each time just to get the MRI. So that difference alone is wild.

[00:31:38] Caroline: Wild.

[00:31:39] Jason: So it's those things. And then also, I think, from the healthcare system, we have not had to use any of the public health care things, so we can't really comment on those, but any of the things that have been elected through our private health insurance, going to a private hospital or going to a clinic for my knee. The places have all been great. They've been super high quality. Nothing to concern yourself about. And if anything, because Portugal is smaller, because there's less people, there just seems to be less waiting time, there seems to be less overall congestion in those environments where in the US, we're very used to your appointments at noon, but you're probably not going to get seen till 01:00.

[00:32:17] Caroline: Yeah, we've had really good experiences. Of course, like anything I'm sure we'll encounter, we've had friends, too, who have had some experiences that are less than stellar. It just depends on who you go to and things like that. But for now, it feels very comparable to the United States in a lot of ways. And that was one of my big fears, because I've struggled with some health anxiety in the past. And so coming to a different country where I don't know the system, doing an activity that already is very anxiety inducing, but everything has been so much easier and better than I thought, which is very comforting to me.

[00:32:53] Jason: And listen, we told you we went to the dentist. If you listen to our past couple episodes, they quizzed us on the fruits that we knew in Portuguese. You get that in the US? No, they don't quiz you on the fruits that you know. So a bonus is that you get to practice your language skills when you go to different places.

[00:33:06] Caroline: I will say another benefit of Serenity is when they help you choose your doctors, they know which doctors speak English. And for us, until we get comfortable enough with the language, it was important to at least have doctors. Totally fine if the nurses don't. Totally fine if the receptionists only speak Portuguese. But just to make sure that you're not miscommunicating on anything, I think it really does help to have a doctor who speaks English, and that has also been really helpful.

[00:33:35] Jason: Perfect segue into our next category, which is the language.

[00:33:39] Caroline: Oh, my gosh.

[00:33:41] Jason: If you've not heard us talk about it, we have private weekly lessons with a native Portuguese person that you found on Instagram, actually.

[00:33:48] Caroline: And I just thank my lucky stars every day that I shopped around.

[00:33:52] Jason: Yeah, you could do it at the local school. They have like a night class here. I think there's another place you could do it, but you found this person. We've been doing it on Zoom every single week, with exception to a couple of weeks we've been here. And our entire goal of this was, "A", I hate learning, so I was not looking forward to this at all. And then "B", we want to take it slow.

[00:34:15] Caroline: You hate, by the way, you do like teaching yourself things and you like learning new things. You don't like structured learning.

[00:34:21] Jason: Yeah, I really like a teacher, especially like, don't give me homework. I don't like homework. I don't need to do anymore. I'm a 40 year old, 41. But anyway, I think the things that have really helped with this is our teacher, Anna is amazing.

[00:34:33] Caroline: She's amazing.

[00:34:34] Jason: She could be just a close friend who we laugh with all the time. And sadly, we have not actually spent any time together in person. But I think that's a goal for us next year, is to do some of our lessons in person, even just at, like, restaurants or cafes or wherever, and just speak almost fully in Portuguese. We're getting to a place where we can almost do an entire lesson in Portuguese, mostly from her speaking, us, listening, and then trying to say some things back.

[00:34:59] Caroline: Yeah, we have to ask her to repeat a few things when she gets going.

[00:35:03] Jason: She just speaks slowly, which is great.

[00:35:05] Caroline: She speaks slowly for us and we usually get it, but once she starts gearing it up, because we're just yucking it up and we're just being friends, we're like, we're not Portuguese. She's like, yeah, I know.

[00:35:13] Jason: And everyone says the Portuguese language is very hard to learn. And I think any language as an adult is very hard to learn because it's just you've got those well worn mental pathways. But again, yeah, we're just taking it slowly. We have been here for a year. We've done a lesson almost every single week for a year. Thinking back to where we were a year ago, when it's just, everything is daunting. You can't read a single word on a piece of paper.

[00:35:35] Caroline: We couldn't even pronounce things.

[00:35:36] Jason: Definitely couldn't pronounce things.

[00:35:38] Caroline: Our pronunciation is up for debate now,

[00:35:39] Jason: of course,

[00:35:39] Caroline: but it's better than most.

[00:35:41] Jason: We're always going to be a foreigner speaking this language. So we think about that all the time when we're saying things like, even just simple things like Tudo bem, and it's like, how are you? Or whatever. It's like, am I saying that in a way where someone hears, like, how are you? Because I'm pronouncing the words, whereas they're saying, like, dude, bank. They're just, like, smashing it together. Yeah, we'll see how that.

[00:36:01] Caroline: For me, I know that taking our lessons every week is something that, you know, you have to do in order to get to the ultimate goal, which is you want to be able to be connected to the culture and speak more. For me, it is something that adds so much value to my life. I love learning. I've always wanted to learn a language fluently, but it's such a time investment that I would always get to a certain point. Well, first of all, I took Latin in high school, not exactly the most practical language, but then I took Italian in college. But for my major, it was, like, a really big time investment to do, like, a language major or minor. So I just stopped at two semesters. But I loved it so much. So this is, like, fulfilling, like, a life dream for me to be able to speak a second language. And honestly, once I could foresee in, like, two or two, three years where we feel like we're pretty solid with Portuguese, to layer in another language on top of that, because I've just.

[00:36:54] Jason: Whoa, whoa.

[00:36:54] Caroline: I've just been enjoying it so much.

[00:36:55] Jason: "We" is a strong term there.

[00:36:58] Caroline: No?

[00:36:58] Jason: You could layer in if you'd like.

[00:37:00] Caroline: I will.

[00:37:00] Jason: I'm just hoping that in the next year or two, I feel like I'm almost fluent, but proficient enough to have a full conversation with someone and not have to ask them to speak at half speed so that I can understand things. But, yeah, I think learning the language here, and it was something that we, from day one, said that we wanted to do. There was no, oh, we don't want to do that. We don't want to learn a different language. It was like, no, we're moving to a country. We are the foreigners here. We want to show this culture that we appreciate it, and we want to be a part of it in their way and their language, and not just always default to English and cannot overstate how much of a positive impact it makes when we try. And it's just. It's little things.

[00:37:40] Caroline: It makes a big difference.

[00:37:42] Jason: Absolutely small things, like, we went to for the first time, like the UPS store here, but it's. CTT is the company, and we had to pick up a couple of packages that didn't get delivered. And so we walked up, and you basically said in Portuguese, I don't speak Portuguese. And she was like, you speak a little again. She replied back in Portuguese. Yeah. And so it's those things. And then she spoke fluent English, so then she was like, okay, I'll just speak English because it's easier. But the smile that comes on people's faces when you show them that you're trying, it completely softens the experience to just, I'm a foreigner. I'm going to speak my language, you're going to speak yours. I expect you to speak mine. And this is our relationship. And it's like, no, you kind of soften the blow of that. And I think it has made such a better experience all around.

[00:38:25] Caroline: My favorite thing, too, when you have an interaction like that and when someone smiles and you can tell that they are open to you, kind of like, practicing a little bit is, I'll just try to say words that are applicable. So she was getting our packages, and we were able to say, like, sinku, because we knew there were five of them. And then when she went to go sign things, she was like, okay. And then we said, prasima. Prasima, like, the next one, and then the last one, we said ultimo. So it's like, the last one, and just throwing those words out there so that contextually, you're practicing them when it makes sense, and it almost feels like the person gets so excited because it's like you're a toddler saying, dada for the first time. They're like, oh, my goodness, look at you.

[00:39:05] Jason: And then when you say it wrong, they're like, sweetie, let me help you here.

[00:39:08] Caroline: And it's not in a condescending way at all. It's in this most warm and welcoming way. And we'll get to this in one of our favorite parts about living here. But I just cannot say enough how welcoming and warm the Portuguese people are as a whole. I just feel like they are always willing to help, always willing to be kind. We have not had a lot of negative run ins at all.

[00:39:35] Jason: Honestly, traveling throughout Europe, we only went to ten countries last year, but we basically saw this everywhere. And I think a lot of it just starts with, learn a couple of words, try and be patient. Try and be humble with the fact that you're not the person who lives here. This isn't your culture. And I think it just goes such a long way. And so, yeah, for us, we're going to continue to learn the language. Taking it slowly, because I hate homework, and I don't want to take it faster, and we don't have to.

[00:40:01] Caroline: I just started watching a Netflix Portuguese series without subtitles. Nice to see if I could understand what was going on.

[00:40:06] Jason: And you got about what percentage?

[00:40:08] Caroline: I'm 50% of the way through the first episode. Oh, you mean, like, my comprehension?

[00:40:12] Jason: Yeah.

[00:40:13] Caroline: Oh, 15% max.

[00:40:15] Jason: Yeah. We were watching a show together that we don't cheat on each other with Netflix wise, and we would pause after, like, two minutes, be like, how many words did you get? Be like, I know he said obedigado, so I got that one.

[00:40:26] Caroline: Got that.

[00:40:27] Jason: Through context. I can see the mission that they are on, but I don't exactly know what they're talking about, but you just try it.

[00:40:33] Caroline: I can see the mission.

[00:40:34] Jason: All right, let's get.

[00:40:34] Caroline: Its not going well. I know that.

[00:40:36] Jason: There's some drama, for sure. All right, let's get into the next category, which is friends.

[00:40:41] Caroline: Friends. Okay. So we talked a little bit about this. Our neighborhood is obviously kind of the first concentric circle of making friends here, and that has gone such a long way for us feeling like we are socially connected. Like we said, we do something with people in our neighborhood at least once a week.

[00:40:58] Jason: Yeah, I work out with a guy every single Saturday or Sunday.

[00:41:02] Caroline: Your workout bro's.

[00:41:02] Jason: In the morning and we just saw a woman this morning who was leaving the gym. And you run into people in these kind of little casual environments. And I think what you have said about this is these are very shallow friendships. That's not a bad term. Just like these are not deep, connective friendships that you're going to have with people who you align with perfectly. But they're really great. Like, you're waving to people, you're asking how they're doing. You're learning little things about them. You might see them once a week or a couple of times a week, and it just feels good to keep running into these people who you're just like, oh, it's a shared experience. We're not from here, but we live here now. We all love it here.

[00:41:36] Caroline: I forget what it was called, but I read an article about this maybe, like, a year ago about how, in a lot of ways, the pandemic was so damaging to this type of connectivity, because you take for granted those. And again, shallow is not the right word, but it's sort of like acquaintancy type. And I would say the people we ran into that you were just describing are deeper than an acquaintance. But anyway.

[00:41:58] Jason: Maybe to you?

[00:41:59] Caroline: But you have these sort of neighborly friendships, right, where you're not hanging out in such a deep way, friends for life type of way. But there's such a value that it brings to your life to be able to care about people in a way that is like, how are you doing? And can I help you with anything? And the article I was reading was talking about how during the pandemic, those went away. And actually we see the loneliness epidemic and we see how it affected people's mental health and physical health. And we take for granted some of these more. The parent you see in the pickup line or at the soccer game or the shop owner, or the same checkout person you see at the grocery store.

[00:42:39] Jason: The 84 year old man and his pumpkin.

[00:42:40] Caroline: The 84 year old farmer that we love chatting with. Those things are so important for feeling connected to your community and just as a person for that sense of connection. So I have loved that. Now, we also have made an effort to try to make friends outside of our neighborhood. And some of that is like, friends of friends. Some of that is like finding people online and reaching out and saying, hey, do you want to go grab coffee? That we've met a couple of people that way. It is a slower process, I think especially, like I was saying, because we don't have kids yet. There's not that natural thing where you're sort of in a group activity, where you're like, oh, hey. But we have kind of had this approach of, once we make a friend, if we get invited to something, come to a group dinner, come to a birthday party, we will say yes. Even though total transparency, we're both a little bit more introverted and like, parties are not our favorite things. But when you're living here and you say that you want social connection, you have to open yourself up to those things. So we'll say yes to things that we know are going to be a little bit draining in the present moment for the long term benefit of making friendships and getting connected to people.

[00:43:51] Jason: Yeah. And this kind of goes back, too, to the neighborhood category of another huge positive for picking kind of a built community that has a neighborhood feel and some communal spaces. I can always see these couple of houses that are kind of across the hill here. And I remember that are not in our neighborhood. That are not in our neighborhood. I remember seeing one of them was up for rent, and it was kind of on our list of as a possibility. And I think about how different our life would be if we lived there where I've never seen anybody come in or out of those homes. So we may have been the only people that live there. They're just empty. We wouldn't know anybody around the neighborhood because there's not really a neighborhood there. You have no reason to walk. There's nothing over there. There's no communal spaces over there. As opposed to where we live now, we're always bumping into people every single day. I'm waving to someone when I'm walking up to the gym or wherever. And I just think that that makes the experience of living here so much easier and happier. And you make that choice to be like, okay, I don't know what it's going to be like to move into a planned neighborhood, if you will, but I do know that the exponential return of not living by myself in isolation is much better here than it would have been over there.

[00:44:56] Caroline: Yeah. And I think if that had been our only option, the route that I would have gone differently was maybe I would be more of an active participant in some of those Facebook groups and things like that to see what are the local events that are happening. Are there people I can meet up with? Can I put myself out there and say, oh, hey, you're going to the arts fair. I'm going to be there, too. Do you want to meet up and grab a cafe?

[00:45:18] Jason: Yeah, exactly.

[00:45:19] Caroline: Cafe.

[00:45:20] Jason: All right, next category is food. So this was obviously a very interesting one for us because we're huge foodies. We love eating. We love the experience of food, especially in restaurants. And I think the fun thing to relate back after being here for a year is that we've never felt a shortage of delicious places to eat.

[00:45:39] Caroline: Oh, my gosh. I'm thinking of a place right now that I want to go for dinner.

[00:45:42] Jason: Nice. And I think that when you compare it, like, if we're just doing a direct comparison to, especially our lives in San Diego, there's so many more options of places to eat there as opposed to where we live now. We also live in a small town. So that's another part of it. Like, we're not really comparing apples to apples in the type of area that we lived in California, but I think everyone listening to this can agree. You basically have your favorite five date restaurants.

[00:46:05] Caroline: Right?

[00:46:06] Jason: And so once you find those, when you move to a new place.

[00:46:08] Caroline: Not five date restaurants. But five to eight restaurants. Some of those are date restaurants.

[00:46:13] Jason: Yeah. They only serve dates. It's a full date menu. And I think that that's for the majority of us. We get comfortable in the spaces. We have those here. And so I see this as, yes, there are not as many options, but we have found the five to eight options that are absolutely awesome and we love them, and we never feel a shortage of good food right by us or right near us. And I think one of the things that we did write down here is we have not really jumped into the Portuguese cuisine that much.

[00:46:44] Caroline: This goes back to the topic of not making it harder on yourself than it needs to be. I'm just going to be honest with you. My taste buds and Portuguese cuisine, traditional Portuguese cuisine, they're not natural buddies. Okay. Mainly because it's a very seafood heavy culture. It's a very fish heavy culture, and that's just not my palate. Go ahead.

[00:47:03] Jason: Remember the small, fast, casual place that we went to when we did the Ikea trip early on, and they only spoke Portuguese in that place. And remember how uncomfortable that was? And then you're trying to eat a meal and you're not even enjoying the food. And so I think the reason why we've kind of pushed off some of the local Portuguese cuisine is, like, you're going to be uncomfortable going into a place, and like, yes, I do want to try things, but also, I don't have to live life on hard mode.

[00:47:28] Caroline: Exactly. And so knowing that, I think kind of sticking to our more comfort zone when it comes to cuisine. This past year was a good bridge year for us. Again, going back to, like, you don't have to do everything so hard. You don't have to go, like, full immersion. You can if that's your style. But for us, it was more important to go slow and steady. So next year, I would really like to put it, and we'll end with this. Of what our 2024 goals are for our Portuguese immersion. But definitely now I feel ready. Now that we know some more Portuguese, I feel much more confident going into some more local spots, also doing some research and going like, okay, maybe I'm never going to be a dried cod girl. Okay. But what are some of the Portuguese dishes that I could do? We have a friend who made us. I did learn, I think this is Brazilian Portuguese dish. But the feijoada.

[00:48:17] Jason: Yeah. Which is like a stew.

[00:48:18] Caroline: Yeah. She made us a vegetarian version of feijoada and it was delicious. And so it's like, doing some research on what are the dishes that maybe are a good entry point for me.

[00:48:28] Jason: But, yeah, I also liken this to very simply

[00:48:31] Caroline: I'll have gamutoish.

[00:48:32] Jason: Shrimp. I also liken this. I like how I translate for our listeners. Like, living in the south, in Florida, barbecue is not your favorite thing.

[00:48:40] Caroline: Right?

[00:48:40] Jason: So it's like, the culture of the south and southern cuisine is barbecue, but it's not your favorite thing. So it's okay that we live in a country where it's not our favorite cuisine, the types of food that are being made here, but we will continue to try stuff. And also, like, the peri peri chicken, which is like, the very well known Portuguese chicken. I love that chicken, especially like, the grilled chicken. So I could eat that all the time. Yeah.

[00:49:00] Caroline: Is pica pau Portuguese.

[00:49:01] Jason: Pica pau is Portuguese as well. Yeah, I was just going to say just a couple of restaurants that are close by that we go to all the time. So we have, like, a Portuguese restaurant that we do go to, which is, like, a little bit more of, like, an upscale restaurant in town.

[00:49:14] Caroline: But it's like, tapas.

[00:49:16] Jason: Yeah, it's like tapas style. I think we asked this, and they do say tapas. I think they still say tapas. Is it.

[00:49:23] Caroline: It's because it's. And so when you have an "s".

[00:49:26] Jason: Okay, here we go. We're getting the Portuguese lesson.

[00:49:28] Caroline: When you have an s, most of the time in the Portuguese language, if you just have a word that ends in "s", it's going to be a "sh". However, if it's an "s" followed by a vowel.

[00:49:37] Jason: I just want to say that it's a tapas restaurant. What am I saying? Toppish.

[00:49:42] Caroline: Toppish.

[00:49:42] Jason: Okay, great. Toppish. So we have that. They have a sister restaurant that's a little bit more fast casual that we've been to, which is really fun. So that's a good one for, like, burgers and things like that. We have our local restaurant, which is a little bit more upscale on things. It is more upscale, for sure.

[00:49:56] Caroline: And I would call that international.

[00:49:57] Jason: That's international.

[00:49:57] Caroline: Kind of all different options.

[00:49:58] Jason: Range of menu.

[00:49:59] Caroline: Portuguese.

[00:49:59] Jason: And the head chef is Argentinian, so there's a lot of.

[00:50:02] Caroline: There's some Argentinian very meat, I would say. Focus.

[00:50:05] Jason: Yeah. Then we have the kind of, like, Balinese Indonesian restaurant, which is great for, like, pokeballs and things like that. There's a Mexican restaurant, which is very fun. They do burritos and tacos, and things.

[00:50:17] Caroline: And they do it really well. We have the sushi restaurant, which we ate the other night, which was incredibly good. There's another Chinese restaurant that we need to try in town, but we haven't tried that one yet. There is an Indian restaurant that we like.

[00:50:29] Jason: There is an Indian restaurant. There's the beach bar. So, like, your classic beach bar restaurant.

[00:50:33] Caroline: Classic beach bar.

[00:50:33] Jason: There's our favorite, our number one restaurant here, which is the farm restaurant.

[00:50:37] Caroline: Farm to table restaurant.

[00:50:37] Jason: Because its all Vegetarian. And that's a Portuguese farm. So that's just rattling off some places for you.

[00:50:42] Caroline: And then there's the sourdough pizza janella, which is the best pizza we've ever had.

[00:50:47] Jason: That's just rattling off like, we live in a small town that's in the middle of Portugal, essentially, that I don't think would be named for its culinary exploits. There's so many options that are here.

[00:50:58] Caroline: Exactly. And then don't even get us started on going into Lisboa or some of the bigger cities. You're going to have way more options.

[00:51:05] Jason: Great. Yeah. One other thing on food, I just made a note here. Produce spoils quickly. So quickly I'm trying to think of, like,

[00:51:16] Caroline: that's actually funny.

[00:51:17] Jason: Tomatoes. Tomatoes are a perfect example. If I buy a tomato and I bring it home, in about three to four days, that tomato starts to go, it's gone. And, like, peaches are the same way.

[00:51:27] Caroline: Peaches are gone. Pears.

[00:51:29] Jason: It is amazing because there's just, I think, less preservatives and things put into the foods.

[00:51:34] Caroline: I would hope that's why.

[00:51:35] Jason: I mean, I'm pretty sure that's why. But we did see this across all of Europe. It's not just Portugal. Anywhere we bought groceries.

[00:51:40] Caroline: It's a different way of buying groceries than the American way of, I'm going to go to the grocery store every two weeks and I'm going to buy everything.

[00:51:47] Jason: Also, it was like, every week, the person who didn't go to the grocery store.

[00:51:51] Caroline: Some people go to Costco every two weeks.

[00:51:53] Jason: Okay, sure.

[00:51:54] Caroline: And they just buy, like

[00:51:55] Jason: There could be a person who does that. So your argument will hold up a.

[00:51:57] Caroline: Good amount of people. I'm just saying it's a totally different way to go grocery shopping than in the States. Here you're going more often and you're just being very mindful of your produce.

[00:52:06] Jason: I didn't really understand that when people were like, oh, you're going to go to the grocery store, like, twice a week. Because I'm just so used to going, like, Saturday or Sunday, I would go to the grocery store and that was it for the week. And it is here. You're like, oh, yeah, I'll go get some eggs and some apples and some yogurt.

[00:52:18] Caroline: And that's also why the carts are so much smaller. Remember when we were staying in Lisbon and we went to the little organic grocery store and we would buy for the whole week and we'd be at the checkout and I could always tell people being like,

[00:52:32] Jason: Are you just buying for the two of you.

[00:52:34] Caroline: Yeah. What are you doing? And it's just a different way to buy groceries.

[00:52:37] Jason: All right, let's move into shopping. Speaking about buying things.

[00:52:40] Caroline: Yes.

[00:52:40] Jason: Okay. We have this and differences in the US, pros and cons. And then some final thoughts is where we are in the journey here.

[00:52:46] Caroline: So shopping, I think, is one of the places that is the most different across cultures here versus the US, because it's a different way to shop. You have so many less available and convenient options for shopping. And just. You don't have a store on every single corner for a big box store on every corner.

[00:53:06] Jason: You also don't have a store on every corner of the internet. We know when it comes to clothing stores and things like that. Now there are plenty of options, for sure. And a huge shout out to Maria, who does listen to this podcast, who's a WAIMer. She put together a Google Doc for us of stores that she thought we would like. Not just all the stores. She picked out stores that she thought that we would like.

[00:53:24] Caroline: And she did a fantastic job because about half of them I still are my go tos.

[00:53:28] Jason: Yeah. What's the one that you just got the sweater from that you really love?

[00:53:30] Caroline: I don't know how to pronounce it. De zigwal.

[00:53:32] Jason: De zigwal. And then one that's one of my favorites is there's a place called flavors, which is spelled with an e instead of an o. And they have international foods you can order. So I just ordered some hot sauce from there because Portugal doesn't have, like, you go into a grocery store in the US, you have 50 hot sauces to choose from. Here you have petty petey sauce. That's basically it. So I love having some of those options, but it's definitely not as many. One of the things that is, I think, very helpful is there is Amazon here.

[00:54:01] Caroline: There is Amazon here. It is very different from the United States Amazon in that there's so much less selection. And then a lot of things are weirdly priced very high.

[00:54:13] Jason: Yeah, well, yeah, because I think that they're importing it. I remember. What were you looking for? Was it like a wood wine holder? Like a wood wine rack? And it was like, €200. You're like, this should be like, €18 at max.

[00:54:25] Caroline: Yeah. I was looking for something to hold my workout towels and my little workout area, and I was like, oh, a wine rack would actually be perfect. Yeah, they wanted, like, €200 in case.

[00:54:33] Jason: You think we're bougie. We did not buy that at all.

[00:54:35] Caroline: We did not buy that.

[00:54:36] Jason: That is absolutely.

[00:54:37] Caroline: But it is helpful for certain things where you just need, like, kind of around the house things. I honestly, though, over time, I have come to really appreciate this because it kind of broke us of our Amazon habit.

[00:54:47] Jason: It really did.

[00:54:49] Caroline: You do become extremely accustomed to the convenience and the prices in the United States. And I think based on what we're all learning kind of about Amazon, it's not always the best thing that you want to be participating in.

[00:55:00] Jason: We had a friend visiting...

[00:55:01] Caroline: There is no judgment. It's just we all know it's not the best for the environment.

[00:55:04] Jason: We had a friend visiting last week who was actually like a neighbor of ours in southern California, and we had some Amazon packages show up. And I was like, yeah, I ordered these a week ago. And so everyone in the US is like, wait, what? Because next day shipping is the thing on Amazon in the US. Here you can choose next day, but it'll probably show up in four to seven days. And that's okay. And I do think you're right.

[00:55:28] Caroline: Stepping back in time.

[00:55:29] Jason: Yeah, it broke us of the habit of the immediacy of needing to get something and being like, yeah, I ordered that because I want that thing in my house and I'm going to wait for it to get here whenever it gets here.

[00:55:38] Caroline: There's also something psychological about I take longer to make buying decisions and I don't know if it's because buying things is harder. And so I'm like, if I'm going to go to the effort to order this and put in everything and wait for it to come, I want it to be worth it. And so I just buy less things, which is nice.

[00:55:55] Jason: I would say the one thing that we would admit that we miss is Target.

[00:56:01] Caroline: Yeah. Just everything in one spot and of a good quality.

[00:56:04] Jason: Of a good quality. And of like a thoughtful, designed well, kind of know looks nice aesthetically. Well, there's definitely not one store that does that here. There's the Continente, which is kind of like Target. But anybody who is a Target fan that would go in there would be like, this is not Target.

[00:56:24] Caroline: Yeah. In case you're curious and you've never been to Portugal, there are some big box stores. So you have kind of like a Best Buy equivalent, like a.

[00:56:31] Jason: What's it called?

[00:56:32] Caroline: Wharton.

[00:56:32] Jason: Wharton. Good job.

[00:56:33] Caroline: An electronics store. You have.

[00:56:35] Jason: What's the Home Depot equivalent? Oh, it's a funny Merlin Leroy.

[00:56:40] Caroline: Leroy Merlin. You have some of those, but they're way smaller than Home Depot. They're way smaller than a Best Buy.

[00:56:47] Jason: For those of you who are in the US and you imagine how large a Target or a Home Depot is.

[00:56:51] Caroline: They're small box stores.

[00:56:52] Jason: Take the size of that store and take one 8th of it. Like the section for clothing that is the size of the store for whatever that thing is. So yeah, it's definitely a difference when it comes to shopping. Again, you're not going to drive to one store that has it all. You're going to have to be like, okay, I need to go get home goods. Great, we're going to go to Oma or we're going to go to Espaso Casa. These are different places where you're only going to get those things right, but all of the things are pretty much available. It's just not the abundance that you're used to in the US.

[00:57:20] Caroline: Exactly. And this is a perfect example of, like, we talk about enough a lot in business. It's enough when it comes to shopping, it's enough when it comes to food shopping. It's enough when it comes to restaurants.

[00:57:31] Jason: Can I get a little bit of credit?

[00:57:32] Caroline: Sure.

[00:57:33] Jason: I did not buy a soundbar. I was going to buy a soundbar. I'm like a gearhead and I do like my electronics and I like my sounds and my tvs and that experience. I have always had a good soundbar. Remember that ridiculous stereo system I had in Florida when we moved? Like the giant tower speakers?

[00:57:49] Caroline: I do.

[00:57:50] Jason: And we moved here and we bought a tv because you needed a tv. But I wanted to buy a soundbar. There were not as many options, like literally a quarter or less of options that you would get in the US.

[00:58:00] Caroline: And just, that was just enough resistance to keep you not being like, well, let's just test out how it is.

[00:58:06] Jason: We've had our tv for a year. We only use the tv speakers on it. Our friend Caleb, who was here was like, you guys should just both wear AirPods and just sync them and you'll have much better sound in your ears. And I was like, oh, that is an idea we could try because we both have Airpods. Let's do that. Maybe for a really good movie. We've dealt with it. It's totally fine. It's not a big deal. And I think those are just kind of like the little habits that have been broken where you realize like, yeah, it's good enough. It's not a big deal.

[00:58:29] Caroline: Definitely.

[00:58:30] Jason: Thanks for the praise of my soundbar.

[00:58:31] Caroline: You did a great job.

[00:58:33] Jason: Wonderful.

[00:58:33] Caroline: Okay, so those are kind of like the big categories of just giving you more insight into us living here and maybe some of the differences if you are not living in Portugal or if maybe you're an American because I know a lot of our European listeners will be like, what? This is like, we're used to this.

[00:58:49] Jason: But I also think we have heard from them. They like hearing our experience of what it's like to now be living a European lifestyle. Someone else who's not lived there.

[00:58:59] Caroline: Yeah, I think it is probably fascinating. They're like, that's what we've been doing our entire life. We're like, we know, but we're from America. This is new to us and everything is so big there. That is something I hear when I talk to European people and they ask where we're from and I tell them the States. And we have that conversation. They'll say things like, we'll ask if they've ever been and they'll say no. And then they'll say, I really want to go. And they're like, is everything as big as it looks on tv? And I'm like, absolutely 100%.

[00:59:29] Jason: Also, what's very funny, I might be, I don't know this to be true. The biggest person in Lourinha, when I walk around town, every single funny older Portuguese person looks at me like I'm an alien.

[00:59:41] Caroline: That is so funny. And also for me, too, for women's clothing sizes, I have to go up a size because I just think probably the average size of a Portuguese woman is smaller. And so those are just like funny things that you don't realize. I still will remember when we first got here and I was buying new workout clothes and we went to the Decathlon and I got my normal size and I was like, was this made for a toddler? What is happening? And then I was like, oh, it's just culturally, obviously, the clothing manufacturers are going to base it based on averages. So it's actually become very easy for me because I just get the biggest size.

[01:00:17] Jason: It's fine. All right, let's go to category the biggest differences from the US. We have talked about some of these, but I think we'll just kind of do some highlights here.

[01:00:24] Caroline: Yeah, these were the big ones that stuck out to me. Less people. Yes, just less people. Do you know how many people live in Portugal?

[01:00:29] Jason: 10 million people.

[01:00:30] Caroline: 10 million people live in Portugal. I was born in a city called Jacksonville, Florida, where there are over a million people that live there.

[01:00:38] Jason: Exactly.

[01:00:38] Caroline: And so that's wild. And so what you get with that is like, I think the main place I see it is on the roads.

[01:00:44] Jason: Yeah, for sure. I mean, we also live in a town that's 6000 people. So that is an incredible difference. But yeah, what I wrote down here in the notes is for those of you who have ever seen movies with European streets, you can picture how small they are, you can picture how windy they might be. And, like, two cars passing is very difficult. That's every day of our lives. But you also get used to it, definitely, and it's totally fine. And I think that you get here, and I remember people joking with us, they're like, you're going to have to use roundabouts. And I'm like, we don't have roundabouts in the US that much. I don't know how that's going to go. I'm so grateful for roundabout love around about now. I don't love the giant one by the airport where no matter what, you're in the wrong lane. It's like a small version of the one in Rome that you always.

[01:01:23] Caroline: Yeah, that one's hard. That's the hard mode. But think about how we've talked about this before, how infrequently we sit at a traffic light compared to the United States.

[01:01:33] Jason: Oh, for sure. We can drive to a destination that's 30 minutes away and never stop.

[01:01:37] Caroline: I feel like you probably spend six months of your life in total sitting at a traffic light.

[01:01:42] Jason: Nice. I like it. And it's a probably a big exaggeration, but I like it. But, yeah, I think that's definitely a huge difference to the US. Not going to say it's necessarily good or bad, because maybe you like being around a bustling metropolis of people, and for that, maybe you would like to live in Lisbon if you move to Portugal. We're not trying to sell you on Portugal, we're just sharing. But if you like quiet and kind of like a calmer life, I mean, we have found that, again, like, have not seen traffic in Lourinha the entire time we've lived here and we've driven.

[01:02:11] Caroline: You get some traffic if you're driving into Lisbon, but that's literally it. And for me personally, who deals with some driving anxiety, it feels a lot more doable and less scary to drive when you just know there's less cars on the highway. There's so many less cars on the highway. You're not dealing with. California's like six lanes of traffic where you're going to be stopping, go and you know there's going to be accidents. We've probably seen two accidents.

[01:02:36] Jason: Yeah. Knock on wood.

[01:02:37] Caroline: And that's just what you get with less people. Right. And I think you can feel it in the air. I think you can feel when people are kind of like fighting for space and resources versus when there's enough space.

[01:02:50] Jason: I will say the Portuguese drivers can be a little bit aggressive. Like, they'll follow you closely, they'll change lanes in front of you closely. It's not a malicious thing because you'll pass them and they'll be smiling or whatever. It's a little bit different in the US, and there's a lot more road rage in the US, I would agree. But I do love driving on the highways. This is all over Europe, not just Portugal. People move over and it is just like the law is. You get out of the passing lane and you stay in the right side. If you're in a country that drives on the left side or the right side, and it is just such an efficient way to. It is a much better way to drive on the highways. And I'm not looking forward. That's one thing I don't look forward to when we go back to the US is like driving on the highways and people just like, this is my lane, this is where I'm going to drive. I used to be like that. I was that person, and I'm just like, it's a better system if we all just move over and pass when you're going to pass, but otherwise just keep going.

[01:03:36] Caroline: So that's one big difference.

[01:03:38] Jason: Okay.

[01:03:38] Caroline: Another huge difference is food.

[01:03:41] Jason: Yes.

[01:03:42] Caroline: So the biggest one is, I think, just the portion sizes. You do not realize, speaking as to Americans, you do not realize how large the American portion sizes are until you have something to compare it to. And it's not even something that you really notice when you're over here, because you just feel like every time you order something, it feels like an appropriate amount for a meal. But when we went back to the.

[01:04:09] Jason: State, it was shocking.

[01:04:10] Caroline: It was shocking.

[01:04:11] Jason: I ordered a side of bacon and I got literally twelve pieces of bacon. And I was like, this is a pound of bacon. You just gave me a pound of bacon. This is too much. This is ridiculous.

[01:04:22] Caroline: Yeah. And I think about the amount of times that we would go out to eat and I would be so stuffed and full. That doesn't really happen here.

[01:04:28] Jason: No, it's very different. I think the quality of food as well. And so it's like portion and quality. And this is all over Europe, not just Portugal. We saw this the entire year we were traveling last year. You just leave every meal not feeling as full as when you leave meals in the US.

[01:04:45] Caroline: Yeah. And that extends also to not just portion sizes, but packaging sizes. So here in Portugal, the funniest thing to me is that you almost always have like a mini size of everything.

[01:04:55] Jason: Which is like the standard size.

[01:04:56] Caroline: Which is the standard size. Yeah. So like a Coca Cola that you buy in a store, like a twelve pack of coca cola, it's the size of. It's probably four inches tall.

[01:05:06] Jason: Yeah. You've probably seen them and you've bought them as like a joke.

[01:05:08] Caroline: A joke. Yeah, it's a mini coke, but they're serving size. Or like Oreos is a perfect example. You get four sleeves of oreos in America as the standard size. Three or four, I can't remember.

[01:05:22] Jason: I think it's four.

[01:05:23] Caroline: Here they only sell the one sleeve.

[01:05:26] Jason: It's just one.

[01:05:26] Caroline: It's one sleeve and we get it sometimes and we just go, okay, this will last us for three weeks because we'll have one Oreo after dinner. And that just seems normal to us.

[01:05:36] Jason: As the snacker in our house, I am the professional snacker of our home. I love snacks, I love cheesets. I love goldfish. I love Oreos. I love all these things. I remember buying the gallon tub of goldfish and having it all the time. And I think about it now when I want some crackers and I go to the store and the laughable amount of crackers that come in a box is hilarious to me. But then I'm like, yeah, I probably should not eat that many goldfish in general.

[01:06:01] Caroline: And that is one area where I really do see some of the health challenges that the United States has, where I just feel like the options are actually setting you at a disadvantage. Right. And you don't even know that until you just go, well, of course Oreos come in four sleeves. Obviously I'm going to get. That's just the way it is. Until you see something different, you go, oh, actually, by just buying one sleeve, that is allowing me to make healthier choices where there's nothing wrong with having processed food every once in a while. We all need balance in our lives, but we know it's not the best for our health and so why not set yourself up for making healthier choices most of the time? And I just find that the way that things are set up here are more conducive to making better choices.

[01:06:47] Jason: I would say that Carlsbad, where we lived in San Diego, is like a fairly small beach town. It's not a huge beach town. How many fast food places do you think we had in Carlsbad?

[01:06:56] Caroline: Oh, dozens.

[01:06:57] Jason: 15? 20?

[01:06:59] Caroline: Yeah.

[01:07:00] Jason: How many do we have in Lourinha?

[01:07:01] Caroline: One?

[01:07:02] Jason: Burger King? They've been flame grilling. Since whatever the date says on the sign.

[01:07:05] Caroline: Burger King has the monopoly on a drive through.

[01:07:08] Jason: That's it. It is the only drive through.

[01:07:09] Caroline: The only drive through.

[01:07:10] Jason: It is the only fast food restaurant around here.

[01:07:12] Caroline: And it's never, you know, like in America, where you pass by at lunchtime, a drive through, and there's a line out the thing. There's never a line.

[01:07:18] Jason: I dropped you off yesterday for your hair appointment, and I went through that area because the town is very small, and it was 12:00 and not a single car was in the parking lot. And I was like, this is so wild. Now, granted, they do eat lunch a little bit later here, so I think

[01:07:32] Caroline: they'll be there.

That maybe you missed the rush.

[01:07:33] Jason: But, yeah, it's very funny.

[01:07:34] Caroline: That's just random differences for food. Okay, moving on to. We already kind of touched on this, so we can skip over this one. But we said just not a million options for everything. That also extends to food, like in the grocery store. I think I told you when we went back for my girls trip at the end of last year, and I was buying groceries for everyone, and I wanted to get gluten free crackers, and I was like, oh, I'll just grab the gluten free crackers that they have, because we have one option here. And I had to choose between ten brands. Gluten free crackers. I'm like, it's not even regular crackers. It's gluten free crackers. And just the decision fatigue, I think, is something that also is invisible in the States that maybe you don't realize of, like, because there's just so many options for everything. I just feel like it's hard to make decisions here. It's just like, yeah, you got one brand of gluten free crackers. Get them.

[01:08:19] Jason: I mean, this would actually be kind of in the con category for me because I'm a bigger person who has a, a, bigger body, but b, gigantic feet. I cannot buy shoes in Portugal. That's true. That's a difficult thing for me. Now, that being said, there is Nike online, so I can buy, and I have purchased shoes from Nike, but I've never been able to go into a store and try on shoes. That hasn't happened since I was, like, 16 years old. But tons of options in the US for tons of stores that have size 15, and I actually wear a size 16, but in Europe, it's like two stores. And I remember we met that guy who was tall like me, and he was like, where do you buy shoes? And I was like, oh, here are the two stores that I found that have shoes in my size. He's like, okay, yeah, that's all I have. So, yeah, most people listening this are not going to have that problem, but just sharing that it is a little bit of a thing.

[01:09:06] Caroline: Yep. The next one is just waiting times. So we already touched on deliveries. The convenience that exists in the States is not really a thing here.

[01:09:16] Jason: Next day shipping does exist in Portugal, and sometimes things do come next day, but sometimes they don't.

[01:09:23] Caroline: Most of the time they don't.

[01:09:24] Jason: You kind of have to, just like, I have gotten into the frame of mind where everything I order, I assume it's going to take a week, and if it shows up earlier than that, it's great. One time I ordered coffee from a coffee shop that very consistently delivered it in like two to three days. It took two and a half weeks. And I finally sent them an email because I thought they forgot that I ordered it. And they wrote back and they're like, oh, sorry, we've just been on vacation.

[01:09:44] Caroline: Yeah.

[01:09:44] Jason: And I'm just like, okay, great for you. Again, I want a slower pace of life for myself, so I should appreciate that when other people take it.

[01:09:50] Caroline: Exactly. Or like the kind of like Doordash equivalent here is called Glovo. And there's so many less options there because it's just like convenient, like food to your doorstep is not really a thing.

[01:10:01] Jason: Not even less options. There's one driver for our area.

[01:10:05] Caroline: That is a small town thing, though, because I remember in Lisbon there were more options. So that's like city life versus more. Not country life, but no, just like rural, but things like Jason was just saying about people being on vacation. So you'll find that with bureaucracy, you'll also find like, listen, if it's afternoon, like after just, you're not going to hear back from the person until the next week. And that's okay.

[01:10:29] Jason: And that the difference there, though, is you might have that situation, but when I was buying the car, the salesman that I was in contact with and was talking to for literally nine months at 08:00 p.m. He would write me back. So some Portuguese work late hours and will do that. So it's just a very different thing.

[01:10:46] Caroline: That particularly is just a sales role. It very much could be because I think in general, remember when we took a tour of the school and she was like, okay, I'll email you. And it was on a Thursday or a Friday, and it's like, you don't get the email until the next Monday. And that's just fine. It's just like the immediacy, I don't think, is quite as much because people recognize that people are out living, not just working. But I do find that. I don't know. I think it is an extremely hard working culture. It's just there's balance there. And also our favorite restaurant, we had a friend in town, and we really wanted to take him there. And so I called to make a reservation. They were like, yeah, we're just taking off for winter vacation for two weeks or winter break or whatever. So you get a lot of that.

[01:11:33] Jason: Yeah. I think the other big difference is this is we live in a small town, so I think in Lisbon, this would feel a little bit different is that nothing feels fast.

[01:11:41] Caroline: Right.

[01:11:41] Jason: So nothing feels like people are in a hurry. Nothing feels like you're trying to get through line as quickly as possible to get to the next person.

[01:11:47] Caroline: People do not feel in a hurry.

[01:11:48] Jason: Yeah. And I think it's also just European culture. I mean, we saw this in a lot of places, again, in big cities, I think things move faster, just naturally. But in a lot of the smaller cities that we visited last year, we saw this as well. It's just, yeah. If you're going to have dinner, that's your table for the entire night. They are not trying to get you out of the restaurant fast at all. It is just the culture that when you book that table, that's your table for the entire night. And if you want to leave 1 hour after you got there, they look at you weird. They're like, I don't understand. Why are you not staying?

[01:12:16] Caroline: I think goes back to the benefit of less people. Right. Because it's like, less people times a less consumer or capitalistic culture is going to equal. You're not trying to turn over tables so fast.

[01:12:28] Jason: Now. I will say one frustrating part of that for me, as much as I fight my efficiency brain, I do like to just get my bill and leave at a certain time. And so sometimes I'm like, can I have the check? And then seven minutes go by, and I'm like, I would still like the check. I would like to leave. That's just more of like, an all around restaurant kind of thing.

[01:12:45] Caroline: Which is just, we have found all you have to do is go up to the register and ask for the Check, and that's fine.

[01:12:50] Jason: Or you just leave and then they'll chase after you.

[01:12:52] Caroline: It's more on your schedule than theirs. Oh, what I was going to say is, I don't think we have this anywhere but the ticket system.

[01:12:59] Jason: Yeah.

[01:12:59] Caroline: This is something that I do feel like the United States could stand to bring over. So anywhere that you're going where you need to wait, basically, a place where you would go to wait in line in the United States. A post office, a doctor's office, a bank, a pharmacy, anywhere where you need to be helped by a person immediately when you walk in, there is a ticket, and you just grab a ticket, and then they call your number when it's your turn, which means you don't have the stress of, like, waiting in a line or someone budding in front of you.

[01:13:30] Jason: Which line do I get in? Am I in the right line?

[01:13:32] Caroline: Am I in the right line? No, it's just a ticket system. And I'm like, this makes so much sense.

[01:13:37] Jason: Yeah. And I think it does exist in some places in the US, but there are plenty of places where it doesn't. And I think that a very simple one like, I used to always run into was, like, the UPS start, where you're like, first of all, these businesses are not organized well. Wherever the counter is, there's, like, three of you working. I don't know who's in line. I don't know what's going on. Step in front of someone. Hey, I was in it, and you're like, okay, I just want to ship this package to my mom.

[01:13:58] Caroline: I remember actually growing up, the publix by our house. The butcher at the publix had the tickets.

[01:14:04] Jason: Yeah, the little old school paper ones.

[01:14:05] Caroline: Yeah, exactly. Well, the tickets here are paper.

[01:14:08] Jason: Most of them aren't. Most of them are the littleLED..

[01:14:10] Caroline: No, I know they're. I know they're a little electronic kiosks, but they give you a piece of paper. But I'm talking about the little roll.

[01:14:15] Jason: Down, the red one that everyone who knows knows. It's like the little, like, number 67.

[01:14:19] Caroline: When you rip it off. But it's funny because I remember that. But then maybe some grocery stores and butchers at the grocery store still do that. But remember, like, the fresh market near where we lived in Florida? They didn't have one.

[01:14:32] Jason: No, it was a free for all, and it was stressful because also, there's.

[01:14:36] Caroline: Not a natural place to line up. So you just are sort of like, yeah, it's a little bit like being at a bar. Can I have a beer?

[01:14:42] Jason: Yeah.

[01:14:42] Caroline: Get up on the ticket then. Okay. So the last thing that I think is the biggest difference from the US that I think is probably the first thing people notice when they come here is I wrote down no Disney shine. And what I mean by that is, I think in the States, you're used to perfectly manicured lawns or pressure washed houses or perfectly swept sidewalks. Everything feels more manicured on the outside. And I have just found that that's just not something that the Portuguese are particularly worried about. So it's like, yeah, you'll see things aren't pressure washed. And old rubble exists because, like Jason said, it's been here for a thousand years, or there's fencing that isn't the most attractive, or things like that, but they just don't care.

[01:15:32] Jason: Yeah. The way I think about this, too, I shifted my mindset on, oh, like, that looks unsafe is like, no, that's old. I'm used to seeing a building that's, like, crumbling down. I'm like, ooh, that's going to be an unsafe.

[01:15:44] Caroline: Because in America, where that is something that is cared about, if you see something like that, like a crumbling thing, you imagine no one has put care or thought into this, which means that maybe this area is more neglected, which means you make all these assumptions in your mind that that means it's going to be more unsafe, which may or may not be true. That's total bias. But here, it's just old.

[01:16:10] Jason: It's just old.

[01:16:10] Caroline: It's just old.

[01:16:11] Jason: Yeah, we didn't mention it, but, yeah, it's definitely. Safety is a big thing, which we'll get to in our pros and cons. But, yeah, I think it takes some getting used to. When you see the buildings aren't perfectly cleaned and manicured, and you just go, but why do they need to be? Is that business still a good business? Is that restaurant still good even though the building exterior isn't perfectly cleaned?

[01:16:34] Caroline: Exactly.

[01:16:34] Jason: It's just a big difference that you kind of have to get used to.

[01:16:36] Caroline: Definitely.

[01:16:37] Jason: All right, let's go over our biggest pros and cons. Those were all of our categories, so we can round it out here with maybe some rapid fire pros and cons.

[01:16:44] Caroline: Yeah, sure.

[01:16:45] Jason: Okay, so I'll start with just adventure. So a big pro will go pros first here. This is the exact same reason when people asked us why we moved from California or from Florida to California in 2015, it was just adventure. We wanted a new thing in life to do and to try. That's the same reason when we moved to Portugal. And it has proven to be one of the best decisions we've ever made.

[01:17:05] Caroline: Yeah, I realized pretty quickly that a life with you, I'm never going to be bored.

[01:17:09] Jason: Accelerator. Let's go.

[01:17:11] Caroline: Another huge pro for me is safety.

[01:17:14] Jason: Because this is a pro for me, by the way.

[01:17:16] Caroline: No, I know. Not as much you don't think about it, maybe as much as I do. But just the fact that shootings are not really a thing. The fact that just in general, crime, especially in our area, is virtually nonexistent, like kidnapping, serial killers, all of those kind of awful, terrible things, you just have less of it here. So that, to me, gives me a lot of peace of mind, especially as we think about having kids and sending them to school and not having to worry about something happening. Of course, you can't prevent everything in life. And that's not to say that anywhere is perfectly safe, but compared to some of the things I feel like you have to worry about in the States, it's a big difference.

[01:17:57] Jason: Big pro would be the cultural diversity. So just like we're getting immersed in a whole different culture that we've never.

[01:18:02] Caroline: And not just this culture exactly, but the culture of a lot of our neighbors are different, and we get to ask them things. And what's it like where you grew up in Belgium and where you grew up in India and where you grew up in all these different countries is both of us get so much value out of that and expanding our worldview.

[01:18:23] Jason: It's like we lived in Florida. Like, what's it like growing up in Georgia? What's it like growing up in Florida? Because you're from Florida. Okay. Yeah. So we're basically, like, all from the same place.

[01:18:30] Caroline: Yeah, I like that. Just the peacefulness. Another pro is just overall peacefulness that goes along with the space and the slower pace of life and the nature is just incredible.

[01:18:42] Jason: Yeah, we don't even have it on here. But I would say, like, the helpfulness of the people, pretty much every person.

[01:18:47] Caroline: That I have that, it's one of my favorite parts of Portugal. So I think.

[01:18:52] Jason: Okay, great. All right, so let's save that. So let's go with cost of living as our last pro to chat about. And this was not necessarily a reason why we moved here. It was not something that we were striving to do, which was to save money, but it is something that has helped. And I think one of the things to mention is that anytime you're going to move, especially to a different country, but even across the country, like we did before, there's a lot to be said for the amount of things that you're going to have to buy to make a house, a home, to get yourself set up with all those things. And one of the things I wanted to.

[01:19:23] Caroline: So you're saying even though you may be saving money, you're also going to have to spend money in the move.

[01:19:27] Jason: No matter what, whether you're moving to a country or moving to a different state.

[01:19:30] Caroline: I just want to clarify what you're saying.

[01:19:30] Jason: Thank you so much. No one knew what I was saying, so that's okay. But if you didn't listen to our selling all of our stuff episode and, like, getting ready to go and travel for a year, we made about $7,500 selling everything in our home that we had before. And I would say that it probably cost us about that amount to put things back into our new home, even though the place that we're renting came furnished. So we would have had to spend more money on the bigger furniture, beds, and couches, but we did still have to buy a tv and a lot of odds and ends desks, an outdoor sofa.

[01:20:01] Caroline: Yeah. Obviously, it's not all necessities, like, I brought a workout bike, things like that, but that is what we spent.

[01:20:05] Jason: Yeah, I think it's helpful to share. Like, if you're going to do a move like this, there are going to be initial costs that can be cost prohibitive, and you just have to think about how to make that work. And so, for us, selling all of our stuff was really helpful because it just gave us the money to buy new things.

[01:20:20] Caroline: And, of course, if you're moving your things across the country, that's a whole different expense of shipping it, et cetera.

[01:20:25] Jason: Let's go over a couple of categories where we are saving money living here, and I just thought it would be fun.

[01:20:30] Caroline: Yeah. And again, I just want to caveat it. I do not think that it's a good reason. The only reason to move here is the cost of living.

[01:20:38] Jason: Yeah, absolutely.

[01:20:39] Caroline: It kind of bothers me when people talk about it like that. I get it, and things are expensive in this world, but there's so much more that this country has to offer than just the low cost of living.

[01:20:48] Jason: So we save about 25% every month on our rent, and we have a place that's about two times bigger than what we had before and way more modern, which is incredible for utilities. We spend about 50% less every single month on our utilities. And I would say that we ran the air conditioner a fair amount this summer when it was in a hot month and never really saw the bill go up. When we would do this in California, the bill would be, like, four times.

[01:21:14] Caroline: Higher, which also, we are comparing because we track all of our finances. These percentages are based on the average from 2000 and 22,021. So I don't even know how much it's gone up in two years. But we all know with us inflation, things have gone up. So we're comparing 2023 Portugal to 2000 and 22,021 us food.

[01:21:34] Jason: So it's about 25% less in overall spend for us. We still do our prepared meals here, which is something we've done forever. And this could always be so much cheaper.

[01:21:43] Caroline: Yeah, we spend a lot on food.

[01:21:44] Jason: Yeah. You could not eat out very much. You could go to the grocery store, you would save a ton of money. You could also do that in the US. I think they're very comparable, but I do believe it's about 25% less. For healthcare. I mean, this is the absolute humongous savings. We spend 90% less just on our insurance. So we've talked about it multiple times on the podcast, but our insurance is $1,500 for the year. For both of us to be covered with basically the exact same coverage that we had in the US, that would cost us $1,500 per month. So it is a huge savings. I also mentioned the difference in just my MRI 65, call it dollars versus 1800. Or when I went to the Farmacia and bought an inhaler, and I could literally buy it over the counter for 350, that's €3.50, which was incredible. And then. Yeah, I just wanted to mention, like, buying a car here. I would say that buying a used car in Portugal is probably a little bit more expensive. That is something that we knew when we moved here. Our cost was kind of identical just because of the kind of car that we bought, but the insurance was 30% less. And a huge thing that I love that we found out that we didn't know. There's no yearly registration where you have to pay a fee every single year to, like, keep a little tag on your license plate. The car is just registered to you when you buy it, and then when you sell it, the registration transfers and you don't have to do anything.

[01:23:02] Caroline: And is the car thing because they don't manufacture cars here?

[01:23:05] Jason: Exactly. They have to import all the cars, so they have to pay that fee. Got it. Cool. So those are our pros. You want to talk about our cons?

[01:23:13] Caroline: Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest cons are just the logistics of moving countries is a lot, and you have to know that going into it, it's choosing hard, but is it worth that for what you get on the other side of it. So that's what I mean about, you have to know that what you're getting is not just for like, oh, I'm going to save a few bucks. It's like, no, I want adventure. I want a cultural experience. I'm choosing to make my life a little bit harder for all of these positives.

[01:23:40] Jason: One pro tip there that really helped us was when we were going through all the logistics and admin thing things, we just had a phrase which was donkey Kong country that we would just say to each other to be like.

[01:23:49] Caroline: Okay, this is a game.

[01:23:50] Jason: This is a game. Like, we're going to treat this like a game. I'm Diddy Kong, you're Donkey Kong. We're going to be throwing barrels. We're going to be collecting bananas.

[01:23:57] Caroline: Our level today is the d seven visa application.

[01:24:00] Jason: And we are going to go into this as a game. And every time it starts to get a little bit difficult. Hey, donkey Kong country.

[01:24:06] Caroline: We literally do this.

[01:24:08] Jason: It does not have to be the stressful. It is stressful, but it doesn't have to be at this level. Let's go collect some bananas and some balloons, and it'll be okay.

[01:24:15] Caroline: Yeah. So if you're wondering what our safe word is for when we get a little bit too stressed out, it's Donkey Kong

[01:24:19] Jason: country.

Or a little bit too sexy.

[01:24:21] Caroline: That's right. Okay. I think a con is. Yeah. The feeling of isolation that you can get sometimes

[01:24:27] Jason: As a foreigner living to another country.

[01:24:28] Caroline: You are a fish out of water. And there are times when I go to my local salon, and I mean now I use it as a learning opportunity because I just listen to the women there talking in Portuguese. And so I use it as, like, a learning opportunity. But there are times where you're like, I'd like to just chat with everybody. I'd like to be a part of this conversation. I can't yet. So you have a couple of those moments. I would say it's because of the community and because of the don't. I have far fewer of those moments than I thought I would. But it's like our first week when we were here and we went to that Ikea, and I couldn't find the restaurant on the map, and we found ourselves in this local Portuguese restaurant, and nobody spoke English. And I didn't know how to order, and I cried. I cried because that was that feeling of, oh, my gosh, I'm so out of my depth. That's probably the only time I've felt that drastically like that. But I think it's to be expected that that's going to happen. And then, of course, just. I think a con is you do have less access to your comforts. So we use vpns to watch our shows and stuff, but even that sometimes doesn't work. So you can't watch the shows that you want to watch your favorite things when you can't shop your favorite brands. Or I've had to get all new shampoo brands and makeup brands and there's some trial and error with that. And that can be frustrating sometimes because I don't want to waste money, but I have all my favorite brands that I've worked so many years of discovering back in the States and I can't have those. And it's just little stuff like that where you don't have your comforts.

[01:25:53] Jason: Yeah. I mean, as the, again, professional snacker in our home, I miss Cheez its greatly. I love also not. I don't miss them so much that I wouldn't live here. Like, I'm okay to give up my salty, savory snacks.

[01:26:05] Caroline: That just made me so excited to buy bagel chips.

[01:26:07] Jason: Bagel chips. Yeah. We are going back to the US as of this episode going up, we will be flying back that day to be in the US for three weeks and we are going to stock up on a couple of our favorite things.

[01:26:16] Caroline: We have like a US bucket list.

[01:26:18] Jason: There's a lot less on it than we thought. I thought it was going to be like a suitcase full of things.

[01:26:22] Caroline: It's really not.

[01:26:22] Jason: It's really not.

[01:26:23] Caroline: So. Okay, rapid fire here to wrap this episode up. What was more difficult about the move than we were expecting?

[01:26:29] Jason: And I think we both agree not that much. I think the process of getting our residency card was about as difficult as we thought it was going to be. It was going to take as long as we thought. You just kind of commit to that. I would say getting approved for the auto loan was definitely probably the hardest thing that I thought was going to be a lot easier.

[01:26:47] Caroline: Right.

[01:26:48] Jason: And that's because we're a foreigner. We don't have credit in this country. We only have a bank account with some money in it. That doesn't mean anything to a loan. Someone who wants to give you a loan. So I did learn a lesson about this. If you are going to move specifically to Portugal, this might apply to other countries as well. Start putting monthly deposits into your new bank account in that country of however much you can do that feels good. It will start to show that you have income coming in consistently. This helps them approve a loan quicker. The guy at the dealership told me if we would just had three months of consistent deposits, they would have approved us for a loan on the spot. It would have been fine. So those are types of things you may not think about. Maybe you don't need an auto loan. Maybe you're just going to come to a country and buy a car or just rent a car like we did for a year. That's totally fine too. But that is one thing that was way more difficult than I expected.

[01:27:36] Caroline: The last thing for me is actually the time change and connecting with friends in real time. So the time change in an async way doesn't bother me at all. In fact, it's quite nice to wake up and feel like you get like 5 hours before anyone bothers you, before anyone bothers you, which is great before emails start coming in and things like that. But for example, with my family, it's hard to get on facetime when my end of the day is their middle of the workday. Or like my girlfriends, we can't do a big Zoom call because if it's after their workday, I'm staying up till 10 to 11 and we chitchat for a while. So that's like my bedtime. So it's like little things like that, but you just do more async communication. And Marco Polo has been a good app for that, if you haven't heard of that app. But it's just basically like little videos that you record messages back and forth.

[01:28:27] Jason: Okay, let's talk about what was less difficult about the move than we were expecting.

[01:28:32] Caroline: I'd say making friends.

[01:28:33] Jason: Yeah, absolutely. Moving into this little community was really, really helpful for that. It just immediately put us in some great situations where we could meet people. And again, like a weekly hangout fills up our friend bucket pretty full. And there's other people we want to meet, obviously, and we're happy to keep going to different areas of Portugal and meeting new people, but it's really nice.

[01:28:52] Caroline: One thing I wrote here was picking up on customs and things like the ticket grabbing a ticket thing, or how parking works, or tolls, or just the little inner workings of existing in a country that you kind of take for granted. I thought that would be more confusing. We'd have to pick it up. But I think traveling for a year throughout Europe kind of helped because we were always figuring out, okay, how do the tolls work here? Or how does the parking work here? Or those things once you do it a few times, like going to the bank for the first time where we were sort of using the ticket, I was like, how does this work and what do you do? But you just figured out, like, going to the grocery store, how does the checkout work? You do it a couple of times.

[01:29:30] Jason: And then you're like, we would get asked in the grocery store. They would say something really quick in Portuguese, but it would always end in Saku, which is the bag. So I was like, oh, they're asking me if I need to buy a bag or if I have my own bag. And I was like, but I didn't understand that for the longest time. I was like, I don't know what they're asking. And I would just start piling my stuff into the thing. So that's funny.

[01:29:47] Caroline: Yeah. So that was less difficult. And then I think the healthcare was, like, a big, scary hurdle to me. And, boy, has that just gone better than I thought.

[01:29:55] Jason: And shout out to Serenity. If you move to a country, whether it's Portugal or some other country, see if you can find some type of medical concierge. And again, ours is so affordable. Like, I am just blown away by how affordable it is to use and how helpful it is to have someone you can message at any moment. This is just like, if I was going to move to a new country and it would be something I would save for immediately, just be like, how could I find someone that I will save up whatever it takes to have help? Because it is very daunting and it is a little bit scary to be like, well, I don't know what the things are like.

[01:30:24] Caroline: Your health is the most important thing you have. All right, let's end this episode with our just overall favorite things about living here after a year. And then we'll end the episode by stating what our 2024 goals are for kind of living in Portugal.

[01:30:39] Jason: Yeah, I think the warmth and welcome nature of the people here is very abundant and clear, and you just find that people want to chat. We found this in Ireland, too. You. You'll get stuck in a conversation for 15 minutes and you're like, I don't know how I got here. I don't know how we're talking about this, but it is lovely, and I'm happy to be doing.

[01:30:57] Caroline: I think this is also a thing about where we were talking about. It's more patient here, I find in the States. So the people are welcoming, plus they are patient. So I just find myself having positive interactions with strangers all the, you know, that could also be a little bit of you're looking for that because you're feeling like a fish out of water, so maybe you pay attention to it more. I bet in the States I had just as many positive interactions, but for me personally, Portugal, the people here are just so warm and welcoming.

[01:31:26] Jason: Yeah. I mean, even like, our Portuguese teacher is like, if you ever need to, if you're in a situation, just call me on WhatsApp and I will help translate. And we're like, this is amazing. What a lovely thing to offer. You wrote down here all the mundane parts of life.

[01:31:39] Caroline: I don't know if this is Portugal specific, but I just think one of the major favorite things of making a big life change like this and a leap is I'm getting to my middle thirties now, and I feel like I'm at that stage in life where you've been an adult for a while, and I see how people could very easily get an itch of like, life is feeling mundane, life is starting to feel like just a cycle of the same day over and over again. And I think by switching it up so drastically, it makes me have just this excitement for life where even the smallest things. Going to the grocery store still feels exciting, going to a bank still feels exciting because it's a challenge and it's something new. And my brain particularly really likes novelty. So I just think, yeah, that's a positive for me, I'll tell you.

[01:32:27] Jason: It's an adventure for me. Every time I go to the grocery store, are they going to have lemon poppy seed muffins? It's like a roller coaster ride every single time. And sometimes I go and the roller coaster is out of commission. They don't have them. Sometimes they do, though. And, boy, I feel like I won the lottery. The muffin lottery.

[01:32:39] Caroline: The muffin lottery.

[01:32:40] Jason: Another favorite part is definitely the kind of, like, space and nature of Portugal. As you mentioned, 10 million people live here. I mean, I think the majority of those people live in Lisbon, the Algarve, and in Porto, which is kind of like the north, the middle, and the south, the bigger areas. And so for our area that we chose here on the silver coast, it does not feel like houses are stacked on top of each other. It does not feel like, know, bumping into people all the time. And there's lots of traffic on the roads. It feels like there's a lot of open space.

[01:33:07] Caroline: And obviously, we live by the ocean, so just like, seeing the ocean is so beautiful every day, and you just see lots of farmland, you see vineyards.

[01:33:16] Jason: There's a lot of protected agricultural lands.

[01:33:18] Caroline: So much protected agricultural. Our area is actually very agricultural. So, yeah, like I said, you see farms you see vineyards, you see valleys, you see these cliffs that look like dinosaurs roamed. And they did.

[01:33:31] Jason: And they did.

[01:33:32] Caroline: You see forests. I just love the nature here, and it's one of my favorite parts.

[01:33:36] Jason: Yeah. And then I think the last thing that we had on the list here was just the safety and the peace of mind. And this, for me, when our friend was visiting here and we were kind of showing him everything, I was just. I wish I could very easily explain to you how much less overall stress about just everything I feel living here completely. I don't ever worry about anything.

[01:33:55] Caroline: I don't think that it is a coincidence that I am the least anxious I've ever been in my entire life. I know some of that is just a natural part of healing my anxiety and making intentional choices for that. And then also a year of travel, which really took me out of my comfort zone, I think helped a lot. But ending that journey by living in a place that just, these natural stressors are much lower, it just makes me so happy.

[01:34:17] Jason: Yeah. Okay. Let's talk about looking forward in 2024. What are our intentions for deepening our love of this little country?

[01:34:24] Caroline: I wrote language goals question mark because I wanted to ask you, knowing where we are in our language journey,

[01:34:30] Jason: You're trying to be an accelerator here, and I'm trying to be a break for one of the first times in our relationship.

[01:34:34] Caroline: No, I'm not.

[01:34:35] Jason: You're like, I think I should probably double up my lessons and I should do this and that. I just want to keep going week by week.

[01:34:40] Caroline: Okay.

[01:34:41] Jason: I want to not have homework. I want to watch shows in Portuguese. I want to continue to try and have conversations in Portuguese, but I am not trying to, like, you're happy with the pace? I love the pace.

[01:34:52] Caroline: Great. I just meant goal by, like you kind of said, by the end of this year, if you could

[01:34:57] Jason: Have a conversation in a cafe and order a coffee, and I feel like I could do that.

[01:35:02] Caroline: Yes, you could.

[01:35:03] Jason: And again, this is the problem, though, is like, when you can say a sentence that's maybe not like, just like Monday to Dubai, and then it stops there, but when you can say, can I have a coffee? And can I have a black coffee? And they're like, oh, you speak Portuguese? Then they go, of course. And you're like, okay, this is all I had. This is all I was prepared to bring to this.

[01:35:24] Caroline: But I wanted to ask you if that was your benchmark for the end of this year. What do you think your benchmark will be for the end of next year language wise.

[01:35:30] Jason: I think for the end of next year, my goal would be that. I think the easiest way to quantify this is we could have an entire lesson in Portuguese with Anna.

[01:35:41] Caroline: Yeah.

[01:35:42] Jason: Entire lesson.

[01:35:43] Caroline: Completely.

[01:35:44] Jason: We may have to ask her to repeat. So. Sorry, can you repeat that?

[01:35:47] Caroline: And even us talking to her as well.

[01:35:49] Jason: Exactly.

[01:35:49] Caroline: Okay.

[01:35:50] Jason: I think that's a great goal.

[01:35:51] Caroline: Is that the mental. Okay.

[01:35:53] Jason: Is that fine for your goals? Because I'm kind of just like hijacking the goals.

[01:35:56] Caroline: That's my goal, too.

[01:35:57] Jason: You can learn a whole separate language if you want, just don't bring me on board.

[01:36:00] Caroline: No, definitely. At some point I'm just going to leave you in the dust, but for now I'm happy to be equal footing.

[01:36:05] Jason: Also, I think this is a great part about a relationship, the admin tasks of our life. I think I kind of like leave you in the dust. I take care of most of those things and it's perfectly fine. You still can speak the language of admin tasks and you can absolutely help. But I take on the "inaudible".

[01:36:20] Caroline: I'm not a group leader.

[01:36:22] Jason: Exactly. I'm happy for you to be the more fluent Portuguese speaker in our relationship. And I have like 25% of what you have. I'm still able. Yeah, I can still hang, but I'm not keeping up.

[01:36:35] Caroline: No, I think that's just smart of. It's called playing to your strengths.

[01:36:38] Jason: Exactly.

[01:36:38] Caroline: I feel like in our relationship, how we work is like whoever is most passionate about that thing or most gifted in that thing, it just makes sense for them to take the lead.

[01:36:46] Jason: And also, if they don't mind doing it, I don't mind doing the majority of the admin tasks.

[01:36:50] Caroline: Yeah, exactly.

[01:36:50] Jason: Because I'm just happy to be like, great. This is like little checkboxes for my brain and I'm happy to do it.

[01:36:54] Caroline: And I like taking the lead on the language because it adds value to my life.

[01:36:57] Jason: Wonderful.

[01:36:58] Caroline: So I think a goal for me would be to also now pepper in next year. I would like to learn more Portuguese history. I would like to learn more Portuguese politics.

[01:37:07] Jason: I'm actually fine if you want to put together a Keynote of what you learn, but like fun with little animations and put it on the big screen and you could teach. I'll show up.

[01:37:16] Caroline: Like a book report.

[01:37:17] Jason: Yeah, I'll show up. But it's got to be fun, though.

[01:37:19] Caroline: I could be into that. Okay. And then be braver in trying Portuguese food.

[01:37:23] Jason: Yeah, we definitely do want to both do that.

[01:37:25] Caroline: Now we're ready.

[01:37:26] Jason: Yeah, this is, again, it's not a knock on the Portuguese cuisine again, I liken it to my analogy of barbecue in the south and the States. Sometimes it's just not going to be for you. And so, like a fish heavy cuisine or a meat heavy cuisine, a octopus, we're going to try, and we definitely want to try some of the more traditional dishes, too. But also, there is just some reality to like. We just don't like those types of food you know. It's like someone who doesn't like pasta. Like, they're going to go to Italy and be like, this isn't that great?

No, it doesn't exist. I brought it up.

[01:37:58] Caroline: It doesn't exist. And then finally, potentially traveling more within the country, like, maybe go to the Azores, maybe go to Madeira.

[01:38:08] Jason: The islands. Yeah, I think we definitely want to get up to see Porto. We want to see kind of areas in between. I would love to get back to the Duro valley, which was the wine region. Yeah. There's lots of areas in Portugal that we want to visit. And so I think next year, it's just about making the intention that that's going to be part of our year. This year was just, let's do everything on as easy mode as possible, because it is hard to live in a new country. Great. We did that. Next year we can pepper in some travel.

[01:38:33] Caroline: Yeah. Woo. Okay. We are not going to have a con business confidential this episode, because we went very long, but we hope it was interesting. I mean, we like sharing our journey. This was a big life change for us. But, man, is it just something that we are so grateful that we took the leap on, because our lives are different because of it and happier because of it. And I just feel grateful that this place exists. I feel grateful we found this neighborhood. I feel grateful that we've had as easy a transition as I think possible.

[01:39:07] Jason: Absolutely. And I think for anybody who's listening to this, whether it's Portugal or it's just some other place, moving across your country, moving to a new country, moving halfway across the world, I think that if you can make that decision in your life, you absolutely should. Nothing is permanent. You could always move back. You could always go back to your place where you grew up or whatever. But I think there is just something amazing to completely uprooting your life and going to a new place, especially where you don't know all the custom, you don't speak the language, it opens you up to a whole other world. And I think it breaks a lot of your habits that maybe you don't feel were as healthy and I think I speak for myself in this of just like I was so efficiently minded and I was so like, everything has to get done the way that I wanted to get done. And I didn't like the way that that was making me feel in all aspects of life. I'm still like that. Let's be honest.

[01:39:53] Caroline: Let's be honest.

[01:39:54] Jason: But I do feel myself in overall less stress and pressure.

[01:39:57] Caroline: I have noticed a huge change from you in that regard.

[01:40:01] Jason: Yeah.

[01:40:02] Caroline: You still are always going to have your things.

[01:40:04] Jason: Yeah, of course.

[01:40:04] Caroline: As we all do put things, the.

[01:40:06] Jason: Places they're supposed to go. You know what I'm saying?

[01:40:08] Caroline: But I find that you are so much more patient. I find that you are so much more present. I find that you are just also very verbally, you verbalize your gratitude more so than you ever have.

[01:40:24] Jason: I think I have more of know. I think that's. I think that's also just like. Not that we weren't grateful for the things that we had in southern California, but it's when you get used to them, you're less grateful for them. We have a whole bunch of new experiences to be grateful for, and I'm sure we will get used to them here and it'll be the same thing. And that's why we'll probably move in ten years, because it's just for us. We like that change and we like that rhythm of life, like getting renewed. Okay, let's wrap this sucker up. Anything else?

[01:40:48] Caroline: That's it. I just am happy I moved here with you. And I am grateful that you are the accelerator. Because probably if it was just me, maybe I would never have gotten to the place.

[01:40:58] Jason: Probably. Maybe.

[01:41:00] Caroline: You know I don't like giving you 100% of the credit.

[01:41:02] Jason: I know, but. I know, but.

[01:41:06] Caroline: I can't say it, man.

[01:41:07] Jason: I know, but let's finish her out here, okay?

[01:41:10] Caroline: Maybe.

[01:41:11] Jason: No maybe. Come on, you can do it. I know it's hard. Like it hurts.

[01:41:15] Caroline: I physically can't form my mouth around it.

[01:41:18] Jason: Boka, it's mouth. Go ahead. Go on.

[01:41:21] Caroline: If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't have moved here. I don't think. You don't think so?

[01:41:32] Jason: But I for sure that's enough. If you got all the way to the end of this, I bet you're happy that you tune in for that. Okay, that's it. Goodbye.