When we lived in Boston, summer felt like eight weekends.
Every one filled up fast with weddings, family visits, vacations, and an urgent need to enjoy the outdoors before school started and the cold returned.
Sometimes, it felt like we were cramming our whole life into those eight weekends.
This summer has been quieter.
We visited family in France, swam in the turquoise waters of the calanques, and went to a Bad Bunny concert because my brother wanted to go. (He did not have to ask twice.)
The kids insisted on a croissant and a pain au chocolat every morning, while Emeric stuffed his face with figs.
Then we came home to Portugal.
Back to wide-open weekends, last-minute beach plans, and Sunday afternoons coaching girls’ futebol.
Nothing dramatic. Just our life.
And somewhere along the way, Portugal stopped being the country we moved to.
It became home.
Which raises the question:
How long does it actually take for a new country to feel like home?
This month marks six years since we packed up our lives in Boston and moved to Portugal with a three-year-old, a ten-month-old, and no real idea how any of it would turn out.
A solid plan, obviously.
What surprised us looking back is that Emeric and I experienced the exact same move very differently.
For him, Portugal felt like home almost immediately.
For me? Not so much.
Watch the episode below.
So we sat down to talk about:
✅ What each of us was actually thinking on that one-way flight in 2020
✅ Why leaving my medical career as I knew it behind made the transition harder than I expected
✅ What finally made Portugal feel like home for me and for Emeric
✅ The things we still miss about life in the U.S., six years later
And the question underneath all of it:
What actually makes somewhere feel like home?
Because six years in, I’m not sure it has much to do with how long you’ve lived somewhere.
Now we’d love to hear from you.
For those of you who have moved, when did your new place begin to feel like home?
Was there one defining moment, or did it happen so gradually that you almost missed it?
Let us know in the comments below.
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