Arriving in Evora, Portugal

Moving from California to Portugal was, obviously, not so easy.

First of all, since my status in the United States was a green card (permanent resident), I had to apply for a re-entry permit to leave the United States for more than half a year. It took a long time to collect the documents for the application, and it was not financially affordable either. In addition, since this permit is based on the assumption that I will return to the United States within two years, there is no option for me to do an internship in Europe after finishing graduate school. It is not the most convenient, but at this point, the only option was this permit.

Next, I needed to wrap up my life in the U.S. I moved out of the house I was renting in L.A, sold my car, and gave up all my belongings from my bicycle to furniture. I lived here for 10 years, so I accumulated most things needed for daily life, but I got rid of them by giving them away to friends or donating them to Goodwill. In the end, I minimally packed only what I needed into three suitcases: a large and a medium one for check-in, and a small one for carry-on.

I don’t have any relatives or family members in the United States. I thought of renting storage but I didn't have anything of such high value that I wanted to keep, so in the end, I thought it would be more economical to replace everything once I get back to the U.S.

The flight was from San Diego Airport, with a transfer to Newark, NJ. It was 5 hours flight from San Diego, 5 hours transfer to Newark, then 7 hours to Lisbon; a total of 17 hours. At this point, the fatigue from packing the previous days had already hit me. I wanted to have lunch at Newark Airport and ordered a slice of pizza, but the ordering and payment system was confusing, and I mistakenly brought the pizza without paying. It was purely due to a misunderstanding. It was a delicious slice and I enjoyed it, but it was too late when I realized I forgot to pay for it. If someone from that pizza store reading this blog, I am sorry that I accidentally stole your slice.

I arrived in Lisbon around 3pm. I was too tired and had a lot of luggage, so I went straight to the Airbnb I had reserved days before and took a nap. The owner was very kind and prepared dinner for me, even though it wasn't included in the payment. He said he was sure I was tired and I did not need to go out just for finding dinner. He even served me a whole plate of dessert. The owner had told me he used to live in New York, but he did not like to live there and came back to Europe. 

The next day, my classmate from the same program arrived at the same airport and I went to pick her up. We met each other for the first time. From there, we took the Rede Expresso bus to Evora. The trip was an hour and a half to the east of Lisbon. It's not that far, and we arrived while chatting. It's about a 30-minute walk from the bus stop to my new residence, but it's impossible to drag three suitcases over the cobblestones, so we used Uber. It seems that there are only two Uber drivers in Evora ever existing, and it is usually difficult to catch one, but this time we were able to catch one without any problems. The owner of the house hid the house key in the pipe in front of the house, so we were able to enter the house immediately after arriving. The next day, the owner came from Lisbon to collect the rent, and we met them for the first time.

I was worried about what would happen the entire time, from the time of preparation to traveling to Évora, but I arrived safely in the city and was absolutely fascinated by the beauty of the city. After all, it is a UNESCO world heritage site. When I thought about how I would be living here for half a year and going to graduate school, I was very excited and felt full of hope. How amazing life can be!