We are moving...

The past couple months have been filled with many emotions and change for our family. We have been given the opportunity to move to Portugal for Andy's job for 18 months. The opportunity came to us in May and after a couple weeks of discussions, over lots of wine and tears, we decided that it was the right thing to do. So needless to say we have been preparing for a VERY big life change.

Andy and I headed over to Porto to find a place to live a couple weeks ago and it was quite the adventure. I think having not ever been to Europe and only picturing what I have seen in the movies, I was more culture shocked than anything. While I knew we were going to be looking for a place that was much smaller and older than our home here, it was much more eye opening than I could prepare myself for. We had done our research on our end and sent our agent a few apartments that we thought looked decent. We were looking for a fully furnished 3-bedroom apartment, since we did not want to move all our furniture and belongings over for such a short period of time.

Needless to say after the first day of apartment searching I was in tears and thinking we had made the biggest mistake. Every place we looked at was VERY old from the apartment complex structure, to the furniture inside. The thought of spending every day with Annabelle inside the walls was very disheartening. There was no way I would sit on any of the furniture without a towel down (and I'm not exaggerating).

To make a long story short, Andy had gone into the office on Tuesday and was speaking to some colleagues, who mentioned a new development that might be an option.  So we got picked up early Wednesday morning by Miguel, a WireCo employee, who kept telling us “this is the place for you”  “you won’t find anything like this”.  I was in the back seat thinking, “you don’t know what we want” “how do you know”.  I was clearly bitter and upset at this point.  The development consisted of 21 homes and was being built by an ex-European soccer player.  The Portugal economy is very poor currently, 20% unemployment rate, so he was having a difficult time selling them.  We walked through two of the units and they were incredible!  Night and day from the other places we had seen.  They were also located in the heart of Foz, which is the area we wanted to be in.  I think the fact that they were new was super appealing, new furniture, great location and more space than we thought we would ever get.  The whole time I kept thinking “I could do this, but there’s no way it will work out.”  After walking through, Miguel spoke with the owner of the property, in Portuguese of course, so Andy and I had no idea what was being discussed, and told us that we were to come back later that day to negotiate.  At this point we had no idea what had been discussed, nor what they were going to want for the place.  We came back later that afternoon and he had his English speaking finance guy there and we sat at a table and discussed costs and agreed! My hands were under the table sweating because I thought if we don’t get this place, than I have NO idea where we are going to live.   

After finding the place it made for a higher spirited end to the trip.  We were both still terribly stressed, but relieved that we had found something we could picture our family living in.  We explored around the city our last day and tried to get a lay of the land.  The city itself seems manageable to navigate around, although the drivers are horrific. There are glimpses of excitement, but still very nervous about the move. 

Lots more to come for us.  Let the journey begin!