FINALLY HERE!!!

After many months of preparation, we are finally in Lisbon. We arrived with all over our luggage and the boys intact. The flights over were great and the boys have decided that they love flying. We arrived to find almost all of our team was there to greet us; of course with 14 bags, a guitar, carry-ons and the four of us, plus our friend C traveling with us, it would take them all to get our stuff transported.
We will be staying in another M’s apartment for a while. They are in the US and this will give us time to look for a place that will meet our needs and school needs for the boys. The apartment is great! After delivering all our stuff to the apartment, we headed down the street to eat dinner at Pizza Hut! The boys were excited and the pizza was really good. We then stopped by a small market to pick up a few things for breakfast before heading home and crashing.
Wednesday morning we were up early to go open a bank account. This is no easy task. First we had to go wait in line to receive a passport stamp verifying that we were legitamently in the country, then we had to go to another place and wait in another line to get registered for something similar to our Social Security and then we took all that documentation to the bank to open an account. It really wasn’t that bad and everyone was nice, but it is just very different from running in the bank at home.
While we were running all over town, another M was watching the boys for us. He took them to see a beach and an old fort. Ethan was very impressed and full of details (imagine that). Micah got to see both the big soccer stadiums here. I think they had a good time.
Our big adventure for the day was dinner. We decided to venture out on our own! We wanted to explore our neighborhood a little, so we just picked a street and started walking. We found a place that grilled meat and the menu was in pictures so we pointed to what we wanted and took it back to the apartment. We were very excited to find chicken, rice, fries (they always have fries) and salad. There was more food than we could eat. We felt like we had really accomplished something and it was a great boost to our moral, but something tells me every outing won’t be that easy.
Over the next few days our team has a lot of sightseeing and other adventures planned for us, beginning with a welcome dinner tonight at Chili’s! My goal is to update each day over the next few weeks so that you can see what we get to do.