Episode 9: Residency Cards!

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello and welcome to another episode of As the Dinosons Turn. And we had to record a special podcast here because Tracy and I have received our residency cards. And so we are officially in the Portuguese system. And here we are.

SPEAKER_00 0:15

We are. I mean, uh, we still haven't received the kids' stuff, um, but I think that this is really a good sign. So we'll send the copies to our lawyers so that they know we have them. We'll see when the boys' stuff will arrive and kind of go from there. This means that um we have temporary residency, we can travel um and leave the country and come back. That's a good thing. Um, we can also open business, all of that kind of stuff. It has our Utende number, so our number for the national health system on there, on top of our national tax ID, and so it's just our general residency card. It says temporary residency. It's very exciting. So it's hard to believe that it's really time.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Yeah, so we've covered some of this before, but we started this process in July of 2022 with opening a bank account, and that took a long time because of the war in Ukraine and and apparently Portugal is a hot spot for money laundering to Russia. And so there was a lot of especially from the US and Canada, so there was a lot of red tape to go through, and it took how long? Till October, three months almost. End of October, even. So yeah. And so that before we could even submit our application, we had to have housing lined up. And so tell the story of how you found the place that we're living in. Um, because it was another one of those as the dinosons turned things, but also how we have that episode, it hasn't dropped yet, but we've recorded it about how things turn out for us, it seems.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

Well, um, there are several. If you're looking at doing something like this, I suggest, believe it or not, you start with Facebook, um, which there are several expat Facebook groups, and um, we were looking at a couple of areas. We'd been kind of searching and looking at housing for a while on Idea Lista, um, they do Portugal and Spain, and so we were getting a feel of where would be a reasonable rent amount, knowing that we had a threshold that we were not going to go over. And that's how we kind of narrowed down region, but also what were some of the amenities and the things that were there? Um, how what was the drive like? And then when you put things into perspective, that from the top to bottom of the country, six-hour drive, you can get anywhere. So that kind of made it easy for us. Um we settled in the Braga area, and so I joined the Braga expat group, and I joined um North Portugal expats and North Portugal properties, and came across our um dear friend who is a realtor, his name is Jorge Nogueira, and he um he actually listed this property of saying, Hey, I have this. And I literally said to Jason, we were sitting on the couch, I said, Hey, what do you think? And he's like, Yeah, that looks good. And I sent and said, Hey, we'll take it. Um, how do I send you money? What's the contract look like? Let's get it done. Um, and it just kind of worked out from there. I wanted to work only with the realtors or people who were lawyers. I didn't want to go with somebody who was just kind of putting their house up for sale. Or, you know, I've seen actually just recently even some people who've arrived and realized that they were scammed and had nowhere to live. Um, and they're here with their animals and all their stuff, and there's no place there. So I wanted to make sure that this was really kind of on the up and up. So I wanted to make sure that there was a trail and this was a real person and they had a good reputation. And Georges is fantastic, and he's actually the number one real estate agent in all of northern Portugal. So it just kind of was fate.

unknown 4:02

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:03

So we had to have that lined up before we you could submit the application. So it's kind of strange because you have to have the housing before you submit the application. Yeah. And so we we had the contract on that. We submitted our application around. So what was the order? Because I remember when we were on we were going on vacation around Thanksgiving, there was something we had to send, and then we said sent the final stuff around Christmas time.

SPEAKER_00 4:31

Right. So we had to send things to VFS Global, then they didn't like some of the things that we had, so we had to send additional things when we got back from our vacation. So literally the day we were leaving um to go to Lisbon for our trip. We were flying to Lisbon and then we were gonna take the train to Porto. We had to mail something, so that's the FedEx video. We've kind of put that up and got that ready to go. Um, and that was the first round, and then that's the first gateway, I guess. So then that gateway didn't like half the things that were there, and then we had to keep sending them things and all of that kind of stuff, and then that next gateway didn't happen until Christmas time. And then it was like, okay, now we've received everything. We found that out like the the maybe the 27th, 28th of December. And we're like, okay, so now we get to wait four months, and two and a half weeks later we got our acceptance, which was insane. It just never happens that way. Thus, the scrambling move rather than leaving in June, as we thought everything would happen if it was going to happen.

SPEAKER_01 5:32

So we've talked about this before. VFS Global, when you hear that term, that's this company that's like a middleman intermediary for Portugal and a number of other countries when it comes to residency applications. So you're actually not well, we did eventually send things directly to the Portuguese embassy in the US, but you start at VFS Global, takes in all this stuff, you send it to them, and then they correspond with the embassy. Um, Portugal had changed some of their laws as we were doing all of this, and it ended up being okay for us, but uh there were a few things that were different, and I know there was some back and forth between our attorney and VFS Global because VFS Global wasn't aware of the changes.

SPEAKER_00 6:23

Yeah, our attorney had to do some law school teaching and put some things out there, so that was interesting. But I'd have to say that going through doing the VFS Global, that was definitely a gateway process. But there are lots of gateway processes in bureaucracy, and it literally goes into this nameless entity where you have no idea who's there or what might be there. And there's no one, if you're doing this as an individual, there's no one that you know that you could reach out to. So thank goodness for our lawyers. I mean, Deborah, quite frankly, she was a paralegal at that time, but now she's a lawyer in training. She is beyond brilliant and does a lot almost all of the immigration things. She is fantastic and we love her. But I have to say, this was a long time coming, and even when we got our cards, we didn't know if our residency was going to be for one year or for two years. It was just kind of like nobody knows. So when it came, I was like, oh my god, what is it? And it's for two years. So that's a that's a happy, a happy thing. Um, and now we can move on to next pieces of kind of getting settled. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:27

So we'd gone through VFS Goldman. Deborah, the attorney, had um, you know, she would email and a lot of times get no response, and she would email again and get no response. Uh, but that it all worked out okay, and the final stuff was submitted right after Christmas. And yeah, like you say, we were expecting June approval of all of this, right? May or June. And once you get approved, then you have a window of time to get here. So we're like, well, June, July for a move, that'll be perfect. We get through tax season, you can finish out the school year at the college, the boys can finish the school year. And uh so suddenly we had to move in the middle of March, which it worked out fine.

SPEAKER_00 8:21

I think it actually worked out better because if you think about it, I mean, it so even if the boys had completed sixth grade and ninth grade in the US, Jack would have had to have repeated ninth grade. There would have been no way around that. He would have had to have done ninth grade again. Tyler might have been able to do seventh grade, um, but they wouldn't have been exposed and know anything that was going on. They would have had the entire summer freaking out. Um, it would have been a lot. So I have to say, I think it worked out for the best, even in all the scrambling of the things we've had going on. Um, and every day I look out here and I think this was faded. There's no way we could have made any of this happen. Um, it just couldn't have happened. I mean, this is not a process that you can just make happen unless you can buy a million-dollar property and then you get your golden visa someplace if you're lucky. And we're just not those people. And so I think that that's a large piece of it.

SPEAKER_01 9:15

Well, and and so we got here in the middle of March. We thought the kids would finish the school year in online school. We talked about that. I think it was episode three of our podcast. We talked about school and how the online school we suddenly found out wasn't going to work, so we had to enroll the kids at Portuguese public school. But that that worked out okay too.

SPEAKER_00 9:37

Yeah, I think now the question is what's next? And so what what's next? Like we've got we've got our temporary residency cards, the boys will get theirs. I mean, first thing on my list, Civy, yeah, here we come.

SPEAKER_01 9:48

Right. We can track so before we got these cards. I mean, we've always been in the system, of course, even in March when we moved here, but you can't leave the country right until you get the cards in hand. And so we've got you and I have our cards in hand, the boys are waiting on theirs. The place that Jack went to, isn't it? Like some people have been waiting eight months there.

SPEAKER_00 10:11

So No, thankfully, not eight months, but like that that's another one. Um, but you know, I think that this is the other piece of it. I mean, Deborah, our lawyer, meets with Ceph Immigration and goes through every one of their clients every single week and says, This is where they are, or you should be getting this, or you should be getting that. And so I think that that's really helpful. They've got somebody on the inside. So I figure we'll get that soon. Otherwise, we might just leave them here and you and I go to Seville.

SPEAKER_01 10:37

Well, that would work too. They're old enough to it's a six-hour drive.

SPEAKER_00 10:40

We can do that, no problem. Um, but I think that there's a little bit of celebration that needs to go on, and then it's figuring out like getting a setup here, you know. Like we knew that this was a temporary place for landing, no matter how much we enjoy it. This is more of a vacation/slash weekend home than something that works really well for a family at this size, um, and for business that makes it really hard, you know. Um, but I think that that's the next step is to figure out okay, where, if anywhere, are we going to live? Are we gonna buy? Are we gonna rent? How that how that goes, and there's a whole lot of hurdles and things there. And then there's also the what about business now? Um, we've talked about maybe setting something up where it's like a studio, like a recording studio where people can come in and use it and you can use it for your work, or you know, more of a kind of multi-function creative space. So I think we've got some research to do to see what things might be good and and what might be some good locations.

SPEAKER_01 11:42

Yeah, we're working on trying to buy a house. That's a process in and of itself. As soon as we know more about what what's going on with that, we could probably talk about that a little more. Not that we can't talk about it now, it's just it's complicated, it's different from the US in some ways. And so um once we know more about how that's gonna shake out, we can have a podcast about that too. But we got our bank account open. That was an adventure too, getting the bank account open. Um well, getting access to it. The bank account was opened in October, right? And then when we moved here, we had to get access to the account, and that took several weeks.

SPEAKER_00 12:25

It did. And then we couldn't we couldn't buy a car until we had access to the account. So, I mean, it was just kind of like a snowball effect of everything. But once we got all of those things in place, it's gone, it's gone really well. I still enjoy the fact that I mean, yes, there are some things that are expensive. You know, like food is not as cheap as you would want it to be. It's fresh, it's got fewer preservatives and those things. But things like your water and your electric and your cell phone bill and your internet are much cheaper. They're much cheaper for us here than they were in the US. Um, so I think that there's a good kind of balance there. Um, and I think that helps. So that means that we have money that we can spend and do other things with.

SPEAKER_01 13:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:11

But yeah, I don't know. Now it's time to celebrate. Boys don't go back to school until September 15th. Everybody's taking Portuguese lessons. Jack's got an intensive two-week course coming up the first two weeks of August. Oh Lord help us. Um, so we'll see how that goes, because he's gonna have Portuguese three hours a day.

SPEAKER_01 13:33

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 13:34

Right, I know. And then we're gonna give him a break, but it looks like they'll go back around between the twelfth and the fifteenth of September. So it'll be here before you know it. How is it already the middle of July?

SPEAKER_01 13:45

It is. Time's going fast, but there's more adventures to come, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 13:49

Absolutely. Never a dull moment.

SPEAKER_01 13:51

All right, catch us again next time.