Finally got notice of our Visas being shipped today! I wanted to share what the last 9 months of our life have been like:
April 2025: Kristen and I decided that we would like to move and live in another country. A variety of reasons and if you’d like to know more I’d be happy to have a coffee and chat about it.
June 2025: By now we’ve decided to move to Portugal. I had put in my 2-weeks notice at AWS because they would not support a work from anywhere situation. In order to qualify for the visa we are aiming for I have to have a job that: allows me to work from anywhere, does not perform work on projects in Portugal, and makes at least 4x the minimum wage (plus an additional 30% because Kristen is coming with me as well) and that I can show for at least three months that I have been making that much. We also take a scouting trip to Portugal to see where we would like to live and decide on Porto and luck out on finding an appointment with VFS (the company that does visa application intake for Portugal) on October 21. Also, we put our house on the market and move into a rental house so we don’t need to worry bout the dog and keeping the house clean for showings.
July 2025: I start work as a contractor for CXponent. Lots of learning, new stuff that I’m doing with Contact Center, UCaaS, and AI. Additionally have started collecting data for the visa appointment. This collection goes up to a couple of days before the visa appointment and ends up with a stack of paper about an inch and a half thick for each of us.
August 2025: I drive to San Francisco with Ess for her student visa appointment to attend school in Spain.
September 2025: I fly out to Madrid with Ess. She is entering a 4-year program at a school there and I’m helping her get set up. Getting lease signed, mobile phone service, bank account, etc. I also get to test what working for US-based customers while living in Europe will be like, not bad. Late in the month VFS calls us to prep for the visa appointment. They tell us that we should expect to hear back on the visa by mid-to-late December. Our lease is up on Christmas day so this actually works our for us. We book our flight (because having a booked flight is required). Also in late September we sign a lease for an apartment in Porto (another requirement for the visa application, a 12-month lease or purchased property)
October 2025: We make our way to San Francisco for our visa appointment. Stress abounds, but Kristen keeps me calm and we get everything submitted. As part of this process they take our passports and keep them. The waiting begins.
December 2025: Work trip to Chicago, Julie flies up and we load up a van full of stuff that she wants to keep that we weren’t able to transport with us overseas. We both drive it back to her home near Albuquerque and then I fly back home. It’s becoming clear to us that our visa may not come through in the communicated time so we look for living arrangements. December 24 we move from our rent house to a temporary (1-week) AirBnB in southeast Portland, Jackson comes down to visit for Christmas and then on December 31 we move to another Airbnb, this one in Northeast Portland and is only about a mile from the house that we stay in until February 20 (we rescheduled our flight to Feb 14, thinking we might have movement on the visa by then). December 29 we finally close on our house. Sometime this month we decide to see if we can get a second passport and possibly travel on a tourist visa to live in the apartment we’ve been paying rent on since October. We apply and get the passports but are recommended against doing that by an immigration attorney.
January 2026: towards the end of the month we aren’t feeling like the visa is going to come in our revised timeline so we book another Airbnb to get us through March 14. Reschedule flight again. On January 26, the first of our money orders for the visa application fee are cashed. This is a good sign that something is finally happening. We do research to see what the timeline typically is after it gets cashed and the responses we get back vary from 3 weeks to 6 months.
February 2026: On February 6, our second money order for visa application fee is cashed. We have a meeting with an immmigration attorney to see if there is anything they can do to help accelerate the process and we are told , “San Francisco is just really slow and backlogged right now, there’s nothing I can do”. Unfortunately because of where we live, SF is the only office we are allowed to use. On February 20 we move to a new AirBnB that we rent through March 14, this one is in Southwest Portland. At the beginning of the month (or possibly the end of January) I e-mail the consulate to try and get a status. They tell me that they should be done with my application on February 20 or “thereabouts”. On Feb 18 I message them again and get a response on the 19th and told that it should be done either on the 20th or next week. On Feb 27 the Fedex tracking number shows that something has been shipped. Unfortunately it’s going to our virtual mailbox so we will have a delay in finding out. I e-mail the consulate again to see if there is any additional detail.
March 2026: On March 2 our virtual mailbox receives the fedex package and I request an overnight forward to our current AirBnb address. Because of the timing the package doesn’t go out that day so it looks like Wednesday is when we will find out what’s in it. Today I received the attached message from the consulate in response to my question last week!!!! So while the package is still in transit, we at least know that we have our visa. Flight is scheduled for March 14.
This has been quite a process and we still have more to go once we get in country, but the current hurdle has been passed! It has been such a process I don’t know if it has truly hit that we have made it through this part yet (probably won’t until it’s in hand).
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