A new chapter

Two years ago this month, my husband and I took a leap of faith that completely upended our lives—in the very best way imaginable.

We boarded a flight for Portugal and moved overseas.

With my husband’s retirement, we’d found ourselves at a crossroads. We could continue to live more or less in the manner and in the place we’d always lived, or we could seek out a new adventure. Writers can write anywhere, so after giving it some thought and exploring a number of options, we voted for a new place and a new adventure.

And here we are in Portugal.

My husband jokes that he’s finally experiencing the study abroad program he was never able to afford in college.

If I were Empress of the World (a position to which I aspire), I would bestow upon all of my subjects the gift of a study abroad program, or some other opportunity to experience life in a different country. I’ve done this a number of times in the past, and in each case it was transformative. Growing up, I spent considerable time in Canada, thanks to my Canadian mother; my family and I moved to England for a while when I was 11, thanks to a grant my father received to study its then-cutting-edge “open classroom” educational system; I participated in a semester-long study abroad program in college as an undergrad; and I lived for a year in Germany in my early 20s as a post-grad, thanks to a grant of my own.  

As much fun as it can be to travel as a tourist, actually living somewhere offers a completely different perspective. Traveling abroad opens your eyes—living abroad opens your heart. It gives you the time and leisure not just to sample but to steep in another country’s culture and rich traditions, to learn its language (if you’ve chosen a spot where English isn’t the native tongue, as we have), to decode its politics and navigate its bureaucracy and connect on a deeper level with its people. As a result, perspectives widen. Prejudices fade. Preconceived notions shift. The world becomes a smaller place.

So, here we are, two years in on this grand adventure, happily settled in an apartment in a lovely town in the north of Portugal.

We’re learning the language, slowly. We’re adjusting to the rhythms of local life, slowly, from the church bells that mark the passage of our days, to the rooster next door who serves as our alarm clock, to the night owl DNA apparently baked into the Portuguese (I will never adjust to dinner at 9 pm!). We’re enjoying the many festivals and their attendant fireworks (I have never seen so many fabulous firework displays in my life), and the incredibly fresh produce available at our town’s weekly open-air market, the largest in the country. And don’t get me started on the abundance of cheeses and seafood!

We’re having a grand time exploring the country’s many highways and byways, from the stunning nearby national park of Peneda-Gerês, where wild horses and cows roam the stony hills…

… to such beautiful cities as Lisbon and Porto, Guimarães and Coimbra, Aveiro and Cascais and Viana do Castelo and more. And of course there’s the glorious coastline on our doorstep. 

If you haven’t looked at a map recently, Portugal hugs the western edge of the Iberian peninsula, big spoon to much-larger Spain’s little spoon, and the coastline stretches from north to south much the way it does in California. For a country that’s roughly the size of Maine, Portugal punches far above its weight. There’s so much to see! Its terrain is highly diverse, with an arid, Mediterranean climate in the south, a mountainous middle, and cool, rainy winters here in the north that nourish a lush green landscape reminiscent of our decades living in the Pacific Northwest.

Friends and family ask us how long we plan to stay. I have no idea, I reply. Are you just a visitor, or an expat, or an immigrant? Do I have to have a label? If I must choose one, I suppose it would be “sojourner” – defined as a traveler who dwells in a place for a time. (The key word here is “dwell,” with its echoes of “linger” and “abide” and “home.”)

Portugal is home, for now.

And we’re loving it here. We miss family and friends, of course, but there are these wonderful inventions called airplanes that connect us frequently. One of our sons moved to Barcelona shortly after we landed here in Portugal – a huge blessing as he’s now just a short flight away. I have to laugh when I remember that post-grad year in Germany many moons ago, when international phone calls were so expensive I was only able to talk to my then-boyfriend, now-husband twice the entire time I was there. Imagine being forced to rely on actual, handwritten letters to communicate! How positively medieval! (Although I’m convinced humanity has lost something as we’ve moved away from physical correspondence—but that’s a topic for another conversation.) These days, the world is literally in my hand, and I can pick up my cell phone any time I want not only to call and talk to family and friends, but also to see them, thanks to FaceTime and WhatsApp and Zoom and GrandPad and all those other handy apps.

And it turns out that living abroad is catnip to everyone in our address book. We’ve never had so many visitors in our life! Which is fine with us, because there’s nothing we like better than showing off this magnificent country.

St. Augustine once noted, “The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.”

I agree wholeheartedly, although I would add that those who do not experience living abroad read only one chapter. Whether you’re just a traveler or you’re a sojourner like me doesn’t matter. What matters is that you open the book and dive in! A few pages, a chapter or two, the entire volume—the world awaits, and the experience will change your life.

It’s changing mine.