I tend to shy away from personal posts on my travel blogs, but anniversaries always make me sentimental!  This week we celebrate three years since our family decided to uproot and move to Portugal.

It was not the uprooting in the traditional sense, as we had already traveled full-time with our five kids for a number of years.  However, it was an adventure in a new way: to try and make a home abroad.  Traveling has already given us a taste of new cultures and a sense that we would certainly be outsiders, but trying to settle into a new place permanently is a whole new ballgame.

The Culture Gap

I distinctly remember a lunch we had with some friends before the big move. At that lunch, I asked an American man who had moved to South Africa what it was really like.  What is the nitty-gritty of being an expat?  He said something that struck me.. He said, “The longer I stayed there, the more foreign I felt.”  He eventually moved back to the USA, his South African wife and kids in tow, after decades there.  What an interesting perspective!

I can say that I resonate with this.  Three years feels like a significant time for an international experience, but I feel just as foreign as I did the day we landed.  Maybe even more so.  Now that I can spot a Portuguese person without speaking to them, I can spot foreigners like myself from a mile away.  Like the Portuguese, I stare at them, with their blonde hair and foreign clothes (like me), and wonder to myself, “What is their story?  Why are they here?”

We’ve been dealing with these stares for the past three years and have come to accept them.  It helps now that we can speak Portuguese (which 6 out of the 7 of us could not when we moved here).  Locals warm quickly when we crack a joke in Portuguese or our littles say something in a perfect Portuguese accent.  However, I’ve settled into the idea that we will forever be foreigners.  

On some level, this is disappointing.  In my mind, it was going to be different.  I didn’t expect to look or speak like a native, but I did expect to fit in more!  I am not sure this is possible.  Even in our homeland, we might refer to an expat family as the “Indian family down the street” or something similar, and, in many ways, that perspective will likely not change with time.  We will always be the “big American family” with loads of kids and funny traditions.  I don’t think this would change even if we stayed here for 20 years.

We get lumped into the American bucket, and there we stay.  I’ve shifted my perspective a bit over the last year and decided to embrace this instead!  I own my “Americanness” with our loud family, our Mexican food cravings, and our house decorations in a land that doesn’t decorate at all. 

On our first Halloween in our home, we decorated the entire outside, and I think we may have caused some minor car accidents.  People were shocked, and we were solidified as the “crazy American house,” big time.  However, I love Halloween!  I wouldn’t change that part about me.  Instead, I own it now and try to make it fun.

We love inviting others over to enjoy our culture, but these encounters don’t necessarily lead to deeper relationships.  The cultural difference is real.  Some people (even us, on the other side) soon recognize the gap is just too large!  Our Portuguese friends tend to speak some English, if not totally fluently, and this helps to overcome the massive gap between us.

We also gravitate when we can to native English speakers, including Brits.  Our cultures may be different, but the gradient is not as large.  However, at least in the circles we run in, expat families near us are few and far between.  I cherish my mom’s lunches in which English speakers from several nations gather, and we can enjoy some time together.  One of my good friends is Portuguese but grew up in Canada (maybe my kids will be in reverse??), so she thinks in a more Western regard and understands our confusion sometimes about Portuguese traditions.

The Kids’ Perspective

Our kids enjoy the life we’ve built in Portugal, but they would happily move back to the US anytime we wanted.  They appreciate the benefits of living here but don’t have the maturity to want these things over the friends and convenience of the USA.

It has become even more magical because we now vacation in the US!  Friendships are forged outside of the school setting, family time is plentiful, and we eat all the fun foods and do the fun things.  The US had taken on a golden sheen free from responsibility and difficulty.  Despite telling them that life would come with its own challenges, they lack the perspective to understand this.  None of them can remember what life was like there, as they were all very young (or really didn’t live there much at all).

While fluent in Portuguese to different levels, they always default to English when they can, except our youngest.  She alone plays quietly by herself in Portuguese and may be the only one who feels more comfortable in Portugal.  This will depend on how long we stay, but I think a few more years here will bring us to that point.

Our oldest, having gone to prom this year in the US with an American friend, is now deeply wanting to experience the US culture.  She has started requesting a senior year experience in the US, and we are contemplating how to make this happen.  We may try to go for a few months for her and return, but I know this will be difficult.  Even a few months will cement the kids into a life in the US and make it very difficult to leave again.  It would also propel us into homeschooling if we tried to leave the US again.

As for their futures, we continue to keep their minds open to living wherever is best for them, but we encourage them to consider college in the USA.  Starting their careers in the US will gain them much stronger positions in the world market.  Eventually, they also might be able to work remotely and follow an international experience.  

I hope they are able to hold onto some of the learnings, cultural benefits, and language skills long term that we are continuing to gain.  I constantly pray for more expats to befriend as it makes the experience here richer and more fulfilling.  Life constantly changes; with the right friends, we may not want to leave until the tax situation eventually drives us away.

What We’ve Learned Living In Portugal

Getting out of your comfort zone always brings learning and growth, and I’ll be forever grateful for the learnings we’ve gained through living abroad.

Not only have we been able to gather and assimilate cultural benefits that we want to take away, but we’ve had to go through something very humbling in the process.  We love the relaxed culture, especially with kids, that allows us room for grace when we are late or having difficulty getting our stuff together.  We love the focus on relationships over stuff.  We love safety and not worrying about school shootings.  We love the European attitudes towards holidays and time to rejuvenate that the US lacks.  They aren’t joking when they go on holiday for a month!  They totally disconnect from normal responsibilities and come back better for it.

All of us have had to eat our fair share of humble pie in our interactions with others.  We’ve stumbled around with the language, made many cultural mistakes in ignorance, and had to feel like we just don’t know what we are doing.  It took months before we could drive somewhere without GPS!  We’ve set up our network of support from scratch, learned to value time with US visitors, and realized how blessed we are to be able to earn an income from the US. 

The kids especially have navigated incredibly difficult cultural waters, including some bullying, for which I am so proud of them.  I hope they walk away with much greater empathy for others in a similar situation. I know I certainly will. 

It continues to fascinate me how deep-seated our roots really are as humans.  I watch many Portuguese who have moved abroad for work come home to visit, and they truly feel at home.  They would happily move back, and they deeply miss their culture.   I think this may be stronger outside the US.  As an American, I don’t feel I have such deep-seated cultural roots as some of the other countries we see.  Besides having fun holidays and eating delicious, unhealthy food, it can be hard to define US culture.

And yet, we, too, enjoy “going home”.  Living somewhere you feel you belong can be deeply satisfying.  Understanding cultural norms makes life flow easier, and you meet less resistance along the way.  Of course, the flip side is to get too stuck in the box and think in only one way.  Or be unwelcoming to other cultures or differences.

At the end of the day, I know life is basically the same everywhere.  Families are most important; work is a chore to be enjoyed but endured, and simple pleasures (like a meal out with friends or a birthday party) are what we look forward to.  No life is perfect, and no place is perfect.  We face different challenges here than we would in the US, but we face challenges all the same. 

For now, we will continue to enjoy the sea views and gentle breezes, the fresh fish and pasteis de nata, and our favorite parts of Portugal. We don’t know how much longer we might have, but we plan to enjoy however many days that is!

Xoxo,

Leslie