two more years

Yesterday, Judy and I went through our residency here in Portugal for 2 more years. It felt great and you can be rest assured, that if they will keep us here, it will be far more than 2 years.

With quite the backlog through immigation, we received the appointment letter last Thursday for the following Monday’s appointment.

And then came the onslaught of filling out a few forms and gathering a lot of documentation.And yes, one form was giving us trouble, technically.

And the docs. So much to gather and making sure we have the everything. Worked with our tax attorneys (Fresh Portugal) here and their migration team to help us gather stuff and answer questions.

There was a point where I could not access my Social Security portal as I needed to pay a balance. And Bianca, who was helping us, actually went to the SS offices and got our password and what we needed. Amazing!

But it still was a bit stressful, and we could only wonder if we were missing something.

With our files filled, we headed off to the local immigration office. It was very busy, but the staff there was so helpful and gracious. In fact the young lady that did the interview with both of us was so nice and gracious. It all took less than 30 minutes.

All in all, a great experience. As we left, Judy said thank you to one of the security staff working there, and she replied, You are the Americans, right?, with a big smile. And yes, with as many people who were there, I believe we were the only Americans.

Now of course we wait to hear if there is anything else needed. But we remain optimistic that we will be set for two more years here as we continue to love our life in Portugal.