Temporary resident

Monday morning early I was off to the Portuguese consulate in Boston.  The person who had helped Anne first, and had then handled my application was sitting at the reception window and very apologetically let me know that the entire computer system handling visa applications and visa issuing was down in Portugal for two days because it was being upgraded.

The previous weekend I had decided to change my flight from the 4th of July to the 8th to make room for error because of how short the week was with the July 4th celebrations, but it was disconcerting to learn that the visa would not be ready for at least two days.

Of course when they told me that the consulate general was not in the office that day I immediately extrapolated from that he might also not be in the office on Wed or Friday due to American holiday festivities which ratcheted up my anxiety a few notches.

Some good news did arrive in the form of confirmation that our driving records from the RMV were ready for pickup at the mail handling facility so my plan was to go into the city to see the Secretary of State on the Tuesday.

I decided to take an Uber to avoid the stress of having to find the building and having to find parking nearby.  In Boston you can easily pay $30 for parking for several hours so the Uber fee seemed like a reasonable compromise.

The building is right behind the imposing State House with its gold dome that faces over the one corner of the Boston Commons.  I had read up on the process to get the driving records "apostilled" and had filled in the online form and had made a check out to the state department as described in the online instructions. 

In reality, the entire experience was pretty pleasant compared to what I'd imagined given the warnings about how many forms you could bring and how you might have to leave them there if they didn't get processed by 4pm.

The room was fairly chaotic because it turns out there are a lot of people looking for apostilled documents for many countries.  The desk clerks were rotating to the counter calling out country names for people to pick up already processed documents, sending people off to the cashier to pay if they didn't have a check or a money order (two forms of payment that the web-site said were the only ones accepted), and calling on people in a line to step forward one at a time to hand over documents.

Columbia, Guatemala, Bolivia and a few European countries were called before I got to say "for Portugal" to the desk clerk who called me forward.

She took my check and pointed to the wall behind me and said "wait there" after pushing my carefully filled in form back at me (not needed), and then she vanished to her desk in a small office.  About 10 min later she handed me my folder with the completed documents.

One the way back I decided to take the Boston T which was fortunate because I was able to spot a sign on one of the street-side entrances with a questionable interpretation

and also stop at some places that filled me with nostalgia.

The State House of course, followed by a walk through the common to the State Street subway station and on to the Blue Line train which took me past our old home station, Orient Heights where I'd caught the bus to our first rental in Winthrop.

Our friend Gene had said that she was planning to take an evening ferry ride into Boston with a friend of hers and I should join them if I wanted to - we ended up having burritos for supper on a somewhat chilly, windy deck but with views of the airport,

Gene in the foreground getting ready to photograph the plane as well!

 the water tower in Winthrop

and a massive luxury yacht on the wharf.

I had lunch arranged with a colleague on Wednesday but had a phone call as I was getting ready to leave.  America has so many scams and ridiculous marketing calls that few people, myself included, answer their mobile phones when unknown numbers call them, but some instinct made me take the call.  It was the Portuguese consulate letting me know that my visa was ready to be picked up.

I raced into town and parked across from the consulate building and managed to make the pickup and get to my lunch meeting in time, feeling very much relieved that I'd now secured everything that I needed to return to Portugal where I can stay permanently (subject to one more appointment to get my residence card).

After lunch I went to Gillette stadium for what was probably my last opportunity to photograph the New England Revolution soccer team.  A privilege that I'd been enjoying since 2005 when a fellow camera club member had invited me to stand in for him while he was working at a National Park in the North West.

The evening was quite eventful because the media pass I was given was accidentally for a sportswriter and not a photographer so it did not give me field access.  I had to get the help of the person in charge of media liaison and then the head of stadium security to hand-write a pass for me and then tell all of the security personnel that my media pass was not fake.  Both of them were pretty busy in the lead-up to the game and I felt obliged to apologize for being so "high maintenance".  

At the end of the game as I was walking around to set up a spot to photograph the fireworks planned for after the game at least two security people looked and my pass and said brightly : "oh we were told about you!" 

As we've discovered before, traveling with gear that is not packed in a familiar container led to me realizing the next day that one of my really expensive camera lenses was missing!  I remembered having had it at the stadium for shooting the fireworks but could not remember seeing it when I got home.  That and the fact that the car I was borrowing ended up with a nail in one of the tires almost ruined my enjoyment of the 4th of July celebrations, especially the fireworks which I'd been looking forward to photographing. 

Another camera club friend had invited me to his brother-in-law's 4th of July barbecue. When I told him about the flat tire he offered to bring his battery-operated pump the next morning to get the car into a state where I could drive it to have it repaired.   I went out later on to take a look at the car after sending a few emails to the media liaison person and two of my sports photography friends asking whether the lens had turned up.  I reached under a seat and found the lens had rolled in there.  It is a black lens but it would probably have been revealed if I'd been a little less panicked and had used a flashlight during my two previous attempts to find it.

In the meantime, Anne had gone to England for a week to see our daughters (and their families) and Nick, and she flew back on the 4th to our empty house.  I took a screenshot of the security camera recording of her at the front door and called her to say welcome home despite not being able to be there to welcome her.

I arranged to see Matt on the weekend.  We met at this awesome restaurant at around the midpoint between Boston and New Haven.  It has lots of signed photographs of famous authors and has bookshelves lined with books on all the walls.  You can take 3 books from select shelves if you have a meal there.  The only problem is how long it might take to select the three since most people there are stopping for a bite on their travels.  In the end I found one book which I thought (in vain as it happens) that I might read on the way back to Portugal.   After lunch we took a walk around a nearby lake.

With all the admin tasks and the trip to see Matt, I didn't get to see many of the people I would have liked to see this time around.  This was possibly the last trip to the USA for a while.  My errands mostly involved taking care of things to prepare to move my primary residence to Portugal.  My tax residency will move to Portugal as well which means that next year (and forever more) we will have to file taxes both in America and Portugal as ex-patriot Americans.

My last trip over the Nahant causeway was an opportunity to take one more photograph of that view with the evening sky and a plane coming in to land at Logan airport.  This last trip was tinged with sadness but I was very happy to be on my way back to Anne and my new home.

I discovered on my flight back from Boston that, probably because I had reserved an aisle seat early on, no one had taken the two seats next to me.  I thought this was fantastic but discovered that with the combination of my body clock (it was early evening when we took off) and the 5 and half hour flight duration I would have scant chance of sleeping even though I did lie down across the 3 seats for 30 min or so to try my luck.

I proudly informed the customs officer that I had a temporary residence visa in Portuguese after which I opened the passport to the page because he had no idea what I had said.  "Bit by bit" our Portuguese teacher says but this was not one of those bits, it was pure incomprehension.

But it was a big relief to know, once he stamped the page opposite the visa, that I was not going to have to leave Portugal every 3 months anymore.

I arrived in Faro at around mid-morning and insisted on staying awake all day which meant that Anne had to tolerate my zombie mode until 9:30 that night.

So on to the next adventure - settling in and exploring!