Young Puppy Energy

It's the second year of marriage that'll get you.

Central Portugal

I recently heard a longtime American expat say that new expats bring that “young puppy energy.”

I laughed and I cringed. I’ve young-puppied so hard. Sometimes I still do.

But who in their mid-life doesn’t want young puppy energy?? Moving abroad for the first time is draining, yes, but also energizing; everything is exciting and fresh. I can adapt! I am not stuck! It’s a beautiful capability of humans, this ability to embrace big new experiences later in life.

I think there’s something else under the surface of young puppy energy, as well. Many people who move to another country sink much of what they have - resources, future, mental and emotional and physical energy - into this big move abroad. 

We explain our decision ad nauseam to friends and family who think it sounds…wow! cool!...? are you sure?? We bring every ounce of conviction we have to this decision because, on some level, it feels like we can’t afford to be wrong.

Enter: young puppy energy. Regardless of the fact that many Americans who move to Portugal end up leaving, I deeply feel why we’re all invested in loving this new life. 

That energy doesn’t protect us forever, though. Truly wherever you live, there you are. I bring my personality, my biases, and my Americanness with me. No matter how much I remind myself to be flexible and patient and to enjoy the “relaxed” pace here, I can’t change 40+ years of myself simply because I want to. It takes time and practice, and my progress is slow. Two steps forward, one step back, or sometimes the opposite.

Have you heard it said that it’s the second year of marriage that’s the hardest? 

I am finding that to be true of living in another country. The second year is a new level. The bureaucracy is no longer something we just amusedly roll our eyes about. The overburdened healthcare system is no longer a distant fact (the private system is great, but emergencies and serious illnesses are immediately funnelled into the public system). The delays and dead ends of trying to get normal-life things done sometimes feel like too much.

Yes, we’ve acclimated to a lot of things. We’ve learned to slow down, we doubtless take more deep breaths. We are not surprised by the delays and dead ends. And we do our best to maintain a sense of humor about these things.

But we don’t always do a great job of accepting them.

When it takes eighteen emails, calls, and text messages to try to get a commitment from the builder who was supposed to install our split units (heat + A/C) weeks ago,* we no longer let out a tolerant American sigh and say, “well, that’s Portugal” like we might’ve done a year ago. We feel irritated, tired, and hot.

At the same time, Portugal feels more familiar, more friendly. The people are kind and welcoming. We understand enough about the culture that navigating it doesn’t take the same level of energy that it used to. While people are flocking here from many countries, it is shocking when we have a pristine beach all to ourselves (more on this in a sec). It’s actually difficult to find a mediocre bottle of wine; nearly all wine available here is Portuguese and it’s nearly all fantastic. The towns and cities are so much fun to explore; there is character and history around every corner.

At this stage, it’s difficult to put words to the experience of assimilating to another culture. It’s impossible to describe what feels so rewarding about being here - and what feels so deeply frustrating. Maybe we’re too close to see it clearly.

Here’s my best attempt to describe the dichotomy of our life as it is now.

We moved from Northern Portugal to the Central Coast about two months ago.

We rented a house here (not an apartment. A HOUSE!! IN EUROPE!!). The house has a good energy rating, is less than 15 years old, and offers enough space for us to live and work without being in each other’s business. We can play piano or guitar without disturbing the neighbors, which is huge - my piano was directly above a butcher shop in our previous apartment.

Finding this house was a huge accomplishment, even if we had to stretch our budget for it (the housing market here is impossible).

But it turns out that this house, previously a vacation rental, was hiding a ton of problems:

• We have at least three colors of mold growing on a main living room wall that, it turns out, is completely rotted. 

The top of The Wall, zoomed in, right before the mold really started to bloom

• Two showers were leaking and had to be repaired before use (we were alerted to this on the morning of our move). 

• Another wall was damp and spongy due to one of the shower leaks. 

• One bedroom is unusable because of an overpowering mildew smell from a wood closet. We keep it shut at all times (goodbye, my office-to-be).

• Water actually dripped through the light fixture over our dining room table during one rainy evening. 

We rented this house during the dry season, and most of the issues we’ve had (I’ve only shared a partial list here) surfaced after several weeks of rain. The house looked great in September.

While our landlady is gradually addressing the mold and leaks, every single thing takes roughly six times as long and three times as many visits as we would expect in the U.S.

We are incredibly lucky to have a house. It’s close to the coast. It has space and privacy. It has a C efficiency rating.

Also, been it’s a shit show and an enormous energy drain. And there is no legal option to leave for at least the first year of our two-year lease.

In addition to the house frustrations, we feel isolated. The nearest sizeable town is almost 30” away, the nearest grocery store is 20” away. These distances don’t feel the same to me as they did in the U.S. We feel so much further from people and the energy of town or city life, and I think it’s partly because it’s still a fairly new culture. I was nervous about renting a home this far from a town for this reason, but because of the tight housing market, it was by far our best option.

We are going to have to be very intentional about making friends…which we haven’t had the time or energy to begin doing yet. I feel the distance on a daily basis; the nature we’re surrounded by is lovely but also lonely.

Here’s what makes this a complex, nuanced picture and not a pity party:

Kite surfing on the lagoon.

We’re a 5-minute walk from this lagoon. The village across the lagoon twinkles at night. We can see the stars. We can walk along a foot path around the inner end of the lagoon, or we can go the other way and be at the ocean in 30 minutes. We can sit down at a cute cafe there and order a glass of wine and a bowl of tiny clams that came from the lagoon (steamed with olive oil, garlic, lemon, and parsley, in case you’re a food-details-please person like I am).

Ocean: turquoise

We can drive 7 minutes down the road and choose between several beaches that are straight out of a movie. The beaches are wide and soft, extensive enough for long walks, and the cliffs that border them are many shades of terracotta. It’s winter, so we often have the beach to ourselves. The temperature during the day is in the low 60s, so we can walk comfortably in hoodies or sit on a picnic blanket. It’s beautiful and peaceful.

Ocean: grey

(All of these scenes will change dramatically in the summertime, and “peaceful” will not be an adjective that describes our geographical area from July through early September. But for now, idyllic.)

Inside this walled castle-town…

We live 20 minutes from a charming little walled town in a castle at the top of a hill. There are multiple towns within a 30 minute drive for exploring and finding cafes, bakeries, farmer’s markets, and pizza places.

…lives this pizza.

When we get bored here at some point, we can catch a bus and be in Lisbon in an hour.

I have no idea how to describe life here.

It’s both better and worse than I’d pictured. It’s nothing I’ve ever experienced before. I’m fully hooked on living in Europe; I can’t imagine not being here to witness this part of the world and experience all of the sensory stimulation here. But also, there are days when I want to give up and crawl in a cave. I can’t complain, and I am loudly complaining. 

As our friend Steve put it, “Portugal gonna Portugal.” Today we’re here for it. Where else could we possibly be?

---

*thanking our lucky stars that we finally got our split units installed this week…we have heat and A/C! We have air circulating through the dampness! We have HOPE!