Episode 50: What We Miss After Living Abroad for 3 Years -- Mostly We Miss Certain Food

SPEAKER_02 0:04

Welcome to As the Dinoson's Turn, where we chronicle the adventures of the Dinoson family. A seemingly ordinary family from Iowa who decided, hey, we only live once. So let's move to Portugal. And now your hosts, Jason and Tracy Dynason.

SPEAKER_03 0:20

Welcome to another As the Dinoson's Turn. We're recording this from our Dinoson Media Office in Guimaraish.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

Welcome. I have to say that I love working in the office. It's nice to get out of the house and then also to have this space. It just feels like a huge accomplishment. We probably haven't used it as much uh during wintertime because there is no heat. Um summertime should be tricky too because there's no air conditioning. So I mean we'll live and learn. That's okay. Yeah, but it's a great space, and we're right down to the city center. And my favorite thing is going on little walks and then also knowing you're working here, and when I'm teaching, I just come over and say, Hey, how are you? Yeah. Great.

SPEAKER_03 1:04

We've been here about six months. We still have more to do. There's still boxes. You know how it is with that stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

But it's IKEA packaging.

SPEAKER_03 1:12

It's a working space, it's a real working space. And I think it's good to just get out of the house sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 1:19

Well, especially, you know, this is your way to get out and work elsewhere. I mean, those of you who work from home know that not having a space to go to sometimes, like you need to break up that routine, you know, and having a different space actually can be very helpful.

SPEAKER_03 1:36

So well, we had a list, I don't have it in front of me though, of what we want to talk about.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

Well, I think that one of the things we had really talked about over the past few weeks is what are the things that we we miss about living in the US? I mean, we we are willing to say that moving abroad does not solve all your problems, it gives you different problems and things change, and there are things that we miss. Um, not as many things as I anticipated missing. Uh, the world has changed since I lived in Spain in the early long time ago, where you'd have to go to the internet cafe and then make your phone calls from there, and nobody had Wi-Fi. So life is very different than that. So I don't know what are the things you miss?

SPEAKER_03 2:23

I think on the big thing, like the big picture things, it's like being in a place where I don't know anybody, and it's not quite as simple for me. I think it would be different if you spoke the language fluently, but like it's hard for me to just like go get a haircut or things like that. Whereas in the US it would be like just go do. Um on a less important note, it's things like Casey's breakfast pizza.

SPEAKER_00 2:58

I still make it for dinner sometimes.

SPEAKER_03 3:00

True, we found a way to make our own breakfast pizza, but still not as good. The breakfast pizza, some of the food stuff.

SPEAKER_00 3:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:10

Um, I know that you you and the kids have talked about the big drinks from QT.

SPEAKER_00 3:15

Oh my god, I miss the QT drink.

SPEAKER_03 3:17

I don't necessarily miss that. It's more just like food selection, like even jalapenos can be hard to come by sometimes, or green onions and some of those things that you take for granted at the in the United States that high vehicle have.

SPEAKER_00 3:34

Well, and what I love, it's because everything here is just so seasonal, and that I think that's the way we should be living. Um, but you don't realize that everything is so seasonal until you're like, wait a minute, what do you mean I don't have this? And you're like, it dawns on you. Oh, yeah, that's out of season. So like nobody's got it. And so I I I think that's right. I find fresh jalapenos is nigh impossible. Um, you can get them at like some of the summer markets, like in in the bigger cities, but where we live, it's it's not easy. So I'm gonna try and grow my own some this year because we go through a jar of jalapenos a week. I mean, I could I could I think we're keeping the jalapenos in stock in our town. We're keeping them in business. They just keep stocking them and we just buy them all. So I agree. I miss pieces of food. Like I miss being able to go. What I miss is I miss a dollar large McDonald's Diet Dr. Pepper. I miss that. I miss Diet Dr. Pepper. I do miss Diet Coke. Coke Zero's fine, you know, and I do miss I I miss the the giant drink sometimes. But really, I miss sonic ice. If anybody who loves sonic, sonic ice, and uh, you know, that's a a big thing. Um, but just the fact that I have ice is good enough for me because I didn't expect to ever have ice when we moved here. I was waiting for that to just go because when I lived in Spain, that was the experience. Getting ice was, you know, just didn't happen. Um I agree. I miss I miss some of the things that you know, like you can just go and get them all the time. Things are, you know, very seasonal and also out. So you just have to accept that things are out. Um I mean, the fact that we bought six or seven bags of little tater tots this year lets you know that when they released, we just filled up and then we kept going back until they were all gone. So uh I think we'll eat our last bag of tater tot tonight. You won't get that until later. But I agree there are some foods and things I miss. Um, the day-to-day life, I I feel pretty confident in navigating now. Um, my Portuguese is still Portugal, um, but it's much better thanks to teaching and dealing with students and then using Portuguese with people every single day, like the office staff and all of that. That helps a lot. But I really miss my colleagues. You know, I miss my colleagues, I miss the college that I worked at, and I miss the ambiance, I miss teaching my students those things that are highly intellectual. I miss the debate and the problem solving and all of those things. So we were having this conversation. I'm like, I miss the intellectual activity of it all. Um trying to find that in different places. And, you know, um, feeling like I was making a difference in students' lives every single day. I miss those things. I don't miss on the flip side budget requirements or not getting raises or like all of the other things, like the the healthcare costs increasing and all of those other things that go with it, worrying if we're gonna hit enrollment or not. Um, but man, do I miss my my college and my community? Um, and that's that's hard. Um, I think that we find it more here. I find pieces of it, but it's still not not what I would hope for yet, you know. Um, but that's also because I I don't like I'm not teaching at a university um in large part because that is such a um precarious thing, even here, um, that it's kind of touch and go. Teaching at an institute or a study center is definitely more stable. Um so I think that's that's what I've kind of learned. I miss my Subaru and regular parking lots instead of parking garages.

SPEAKER_03 7:41

It's true.

SPEAKER_00 7:41

The parking garages here are I don't know who designed them, but we should film, we should film some of the parking garages that we frequent regularly because even the nice big ones that have been constructed lately still you're like, why is there a random pole right in the middle of the driving aisle? Like, who thought that that and that like really you're gonna put a parking space on the other side of the pole in the middle of the driving aisle? Like, I yeah, it's a whole thing.

SPEAKER_03 8:11

I think driving in general, maybe it's a very Iowa thing to say. I was thinking about that on our drive over here today, that it's like maybe in New York City, I don't know. Yeah, but I think we've driven in Chicago and Minneapolis and St. Louis, and it's busy. It's sometimes people can be kind of angry and honking their horns and stuff, but in Portugal, it's like people are just parked wherever, they drive wherever, they drive down the middle of the road. Um there's sometimes old people just walking in the middle of the street.

SPEAKER_00 8:49

It's like there's no like and sometimes they decide they're gonna cross the street like when there's a crosswalk literally five feet from them, but that's too far for them to walk, you know. Like, and I totally get that. I I agree. I, you know, quite frankly, driving. I I love posting and seeing even Portuguese people laughing about driving and how horrible it is. This is a joke and this is a real thing. Like you go into a roundabout because stoplights are not a thing in a lot of places. Like there are some stoplights in Braga and some in Porto, mainly it's roundabouts. Like that's how you control your traffic and you're merging. I mean, you enter that thing in yellow wing and a prayer and hope that you get through it because the idea of actually using your turn signal, at least even in the last two weeks, the number of times he's hearing me screaming, not his turn signal as we're driving. I curse a lot when I drive, and I make up a whole lot of lovely songs about how horrible people are.

SPEAKER_03 9:52

I keep saying we should have bonus content that people can pay for of the camera rolling all the time. It's totally gonna get me banned because that's for sure. So you'd have to be careful where you watch it.

SPEAKER_00 10:08

But and I I make up dirty horrible songs, insulting people to kids' tunes from like PBS kids and things like that from when our kids are growing up. So it's it's an art form, I guess I should say. I like to spell from super wide. Super wide, that's right. That song gets stuck in my head so bad that I make up songs to that all the time for all different situations. And I don't know, I feel like I have to sing my day. And singing while I drive when people are being ultra stupid or like self-imposing like their own dominance on other people, it's cathartic for me. It keeps me from hurting people.

SPEAKER_03 10:51

But you notice that our list of things that we miss is pretty light-hearted. There's not a lot of like, oh, this is horrible here in Portugal compared to the US. I don't really think that there's anything like that where it's like, you know, I hate this.

SPEAKER_00 11:12

No, I I absolutely don't have any of that whatsoever. I miss the ease of being able to travel to see family. Um, that's I think the the biggest thing besides all of that other stuff. But quite frankly, I that's it. That's my whole list. A crispy, easy diet coke, family, my subaru, and people who drive that are polite and like merge. They know how to merge people, merge, use your turn signal.

unknown 11:42

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_03 11:44

I think flying is an important thing to talk about. That it's not so easy for us to just hop on a plane and fly back. It seems like maybe it would be, and maybe it would be if we lived in New York and were flying to New York City or something, but right, or we actually lived in Porto or Lisbon.

SPEAKER_00 12:02

We have to live in Lisbon and we'd have to be going to like New York or one of the big hubs. It's it is a whole ordeal, and it's not as easy as you would think. Um, definitely. And um I'd say that that's also true for us, just hopping out the people are like, oh, you live in Europe, hop on a flight and go for a weekend. Yeah, we also live our lives, and we have yet to just be like, let's just go for a weekend, because we can. That's true.

SPEAKER_03 12:26

We've been to Spain once.

SPEAKER_00 12:28

Yeah, we went, we drove and we drove. And we drove. It's like an hour and a half, it was no big deal.

SPEAKER_01 12:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

Um, we'll do more of that this summer when we have um a friend who's coming to visit, and we're trying to convince her to move here and work for us and all of these things. But I'd say that that, yeah, I mean, we look at it and we think, oh, that would be great. But then life gets in the way. So if Easter break coming up, Jason's gonna have a surgery coming up and all these other things, so that's your two-week break, and it's like, well, instead, I'm gonna do renovations on the house and we're gonna lay new flooring. Why not? You know, and so I think that that's the other piece of it that we're just focusing on different things.

SPEAKER_03 13:09

Yeah, and I think it depends on who you are and how you're here. Like, if you're retired and you've got a steady stream of income and you can go wherever you want, whenever, and it doesn't really matter about price or anything like that. Yeah, you could go to Rome this weekend and Greece the next weekend or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 13:30

We have a whole family of four.

SPEAKER_03 13:33

We have a family of four and budgets to think about and time constraints and things like that. So for us, it hasn't been, you know, move to Europe and travel wherever, whenever you want. It's not quite that, it's not as simple, I think, as sometimes Americans make it out to be.

SPEAKER_00 13:53

I would say it's it's more cost effective, obviously, if you want to do it and you already live in Europe, but it's also like how many times when you live in the United States, do you say you leave Iowa and you're like, oh, this weekend I'm just gonna fly to California because I can. It's the same kind of thing. It's true, it is you know, because we're living our lives, but living our lives mean income and kids and school schedules and all of these other things. And when you're trying to do something, everybody else is too, because of the school schedule. And so prices are higher. And you know, I mean, I was like, oh, let's go to Dublin, this will be great. I'm like, that's like it's you know 1200 euro for us to go during the time when people could actually go.

SPEAKER_03 14:34

So the $25 flights or whatever do exist, but probably not when you want to actually go or when you're able to actually go.

SPEAKER_00 14:45

And I think that once the kids are no longer in school, when you're not confined by a school calendar, that becomes different. And I'm sure that that's I think that's true for anybody in any country. Uh the school calendar and the national holidays really define what costs are. Um, and that makes a big difference. But yeah, I don't, you know, I don't miss a lot. I miss people, I miss relationships, but I don't miss a lot else. You know, convenience factors where you can go and get anything at any time, but we've really adjusted to that. Like that's like no big deal, right? You know, it's it isn't a big deal. And then it's like, well, yeah, then you're there and you're like, why would we need to be open 24-7? Let people have a life, let them, you know, it's all of that kind of bleeds in. So I don't know. I think those are those are a big list. It's not really big.

SPEAKER_03 15:39

No, that's really all I can think of.

SPEAKER_00 15:42

Crazy. I know. I you know, I've asked the kids what do they miss? And they miss people, um, they miss food, uh, they miss they miss a lot of like the same pop and that type of thing. But you know, I ask them and that's it. And and we've had the conversation. Would you move back? Like, you you know, do you want to move back? Like, is it something that you really want to do? And they're like, no, I'm good. And I think it's because they'd finally settled and feel like they're good with where they are. So, you know, it takes almost three years. But that you remember that first year was really touch and go and really hard, the first year and a half, and then we hit his dry, and then things started kind of started to settle. And so here we are, three years in, and yeah, I guess not a lot.

SPEAKER_03 16:34

Not a lot, crazy. All right, join us again next time on As the Dinaston's Turn.

SPEAKER_02 16:40

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