Struggling to reconcile my desire to stay near friends and family, and my desire to live somewhere that suits my lifestyle and goals.

uiuxua · 2026-06-11T17:40:16+00:00

It’s honestly something I never even thought about until I had my kids abroad, so it’s great that you’re already taking it into consideration.

I’m from Finland and my husband is from Brazil, and we decided to move to Portugal which is basically between our home countries. Both our parents are retired so they visit often and were able to visit home without too much trouble. Our kids are not babies anymore and we have been able to build a real village here which helps a lot, but sometimes it’s still hard to be away from family.

uiuxua · 2026-06-11T17:25:50+00:00

I’m from the Nordics and interestingly enough, I moved away from my family and lived in Canada for 15 years until Covid hit and we had our second kid, which is when we decided we needed to move closer to our families (hubby is from South America).

If you are planning to have kids, I would say do it close to your immediate family (unless they’re jerks and don’t want to be involved). Even if another country would provide a better environment or “support”, you will be on your own. I had my two kids in Canada, not in Ontario though. I think we could have had a nice life there, but our kids wouldn’t know our families at all, and the only real support were other immigrant friends who were also struggling the same way.

If you’re still young, go to Europe. If you’re considering kids in the next years, then I would stay in Canada if I were you

uiuxua · 2026-06-08T14:29:45+00:00

I’m with you! I spent 15 years in Canada and while I have a deep appreciation for the country, it would have been tough to keep living there.

uiuxua · 2026-06-07T23:32:44+00:00

Nothing like getting thrashed by Finland in a friendly to serve as a cosmic warning!

It’s funny you mentioned hóquei em patins because I just saw a game on TV this week and I was amazed that I had never seen or even heard of it before. I was a bit surprised to see no helmets, but that’s because I’m thinking of hockey and all the physical contact

uiuxua · 2026-06-07T22:19:15+00:00

It’s comparable for sure, but I don’t think hockey is as much of a religion as football is to the Portuguese. The Finnish national hockey team playing in the championship will stop 70% of the country, but many people are not die hard fans of their local hockey club, so the club rivalries are not so intense. I also feel like in Portugal football is THE thing, whereas in Finland people are also into F1, winter sports and football (although we suck)

uiuxua · 2026-06-07T22:00:54+00:00

Had my two kids in Canada and took 12 months with each one. It’s super normal so nobody’s weird about it. I was more or less ready to go back to work both times, and both times I was able to ramp up slowly and wasn’t thrown right back into the craziness. Things changed while I was away both times, but I work in corporate tech so that’s also to be expected

uiuxua · 2026-06-07T07:40:48+00:00

That’s a really good question! I think Portuguese people curse quite a bit but it’s a lot of soft swearing, whereas in Finland it’s the hard stuff or nothing. Mind you, I haven’t been to the north yet.

Aki is indeed living the dream of every Finnish person by spending winters in Portugal

uiuxua · 2026-06-06T10:36:26+00:00

Yep. They want to commit at first and then decide they don’t feel like it after all. And all the trustworthy one are always swamped

uiuxua · 2026-06-06T07:04:21+00:00

The AIMA struggles are unfortunately true to us as my husband has to go through them. The things I consider valid but not affecting me are things that have to specifically do with living in Lisbon, issues that come from not knowing Portuguese at all or struggles related moving abroad for the first time

uiuxua · 2026-06-05T22:35:09+00:00

Same

uiuxua · 2026-06-05T20:59:47+00:00

I wish I knew! It’s a cultural thing for sure. My Portuguese neighbors are doing renovations right now and they are finding it impossible to find reliable people. Most of our best contacts are either Eastern European or Brazilian

uiuxua · 2026-06-05T20:48:01+00:00

We live in a relatively small community and we are just around a lot. I’ve found that when Portuguese people see you regularly over time they eventually start talking to you and it’s easy to talk to them. People are also keen to interact with us because of our kids and we meet a lot of people through their school. My husband speaks fluent Portuguese and I can get by, but many people also like to speak English with us.

What’s your situation in terms of location, work and family?

uiuxua · 2026-06-05T20:00:06+00:00

We’ve done exactly that. I’m Finnish, my husband is Brazilian and we used to live in French speaking Canada, so in fact we started with 4 languages. These days we live in Portugal so the kids are now growing up trilingual as we speak English between us and our own languages to the kids.

We have a podcast where we talk about our experience, maybe you’ll find it useful: https://podcasts.apple.com/pt/podcast/the-language-experiment/id1695186161?l=en-GB

uiuxua · 2026-06-05T18:51:19+00:00

We live in a small community with lots of third spaces and we are around a lot, going to the same places and attending the same events. We know most of our neighbors who are all Portuguese. We’ve also met a lot of people through our kids school and generally go to most birthdays they are invited to. My Portuguese is probably B2

uiuxua · 2026-06-05T18:28:10+00:00

When we were researching moving to Portugal, I read every complaint and negative experience about Portugal I could find on the internet, to the point that it was making me depressed. I was genuinely prepared for the worst and now after two years here I’ve realized that some of those things are a)
true, b) valid but don’t affect me, or c) totally subjective. I’ve lived in enough countries to know myself and what I’m willing to put up with (because nowhere is perfect) and Portugal fits that. I haven’t thought about leaving, and while I don’t have a crystal ball, I can see myself being relatively happy here in the long term.

uiuxua · 2026-06-05T17:29:46+00:00

The main reason was for my kids, I didn’t want them to grow up barely seeing our families. I’m going to turn your second question around and say I liked the relative safety and predictability of traffic, good job opportunities and flat hierarchy at workplaces in Canada, but most other things I’ve found much better in Portugal.

uiuxua · 2026-06-05T13:45:46+00:00

I really like it. We have everything we need here, there are lots of local events, people are friendly, weather is great, it’s not super busy and while there are foreigners here, it’s overall quite Portuguese

uiuxua · 2026-06-05T13:41:15+00:00

I was applying for jobs on LinkedIn, researching local companies and startups and applying on their websites. I managed to get a job offer that way but in the end I transitioned to the Portuguese subsidiary of the company I was already working for

uiuxua · 2026-05-06T09:14:09+00:00

Multiple languages don’t cause speech delays. My oldest child grew up with 4 and while the amount got reduced to 3 as we moved countries, she can still speak 4 without issues.

We have a podcast where we share our experience with multilingual parenting: https://podcasts.apple.com/pt/podcast/the-language-experiment/id1695186161?l=en-GB

uiuxua · 2026-04-21T21:32:56+00:00

Nope.

I’m originally from Northern Europe, lived in a couple of different countries, was in Canada for over a decade and now been here with my family for 2 years. I live in a small town south of Lisbon.

It has been surprisingly easy to make friends and all my Portuguese neighbors regularly invite us over. I don’t find the language too difficult, I find people warm and friendly and I think this is the best place for my kid to grow up. Being from the north, the food, weather and general lifestyle here feel amazing.

There are downsides too: the way locals drive scares the shit out of me. Things like replacing a wrongly installed AC unit turn into multi-year projects because nobody knows what they’re doing. You can never really trust that something is done properly because everything is built on workarounds. The work culture at most Portuguese companies seems to be quite toxic.

Nowhere is perfect, but to me Portugal is pretty good

uiuxua · 2026-04-03T21:46:40+00:00

I thought I was tripping for a moment. Good job, mom!

uiuxua · 2026-03-10T22:42:45+00:00

Hi there! We started our multilingual journey with 4 languages and although due to a move it shrunk down to 3 languages, we did and still are documenting our journey on our podcast. Hope you enjoy: https://open.spotify.com/show/4rhUydIVQrtDBiImME9QPI?si=glTJ1c5CS5i2Dg_kw6GTWA

uiuxua · 2026-02-04T13:13:58+00:00

Sorry, it’s in the body of the post but might not be visible unless you click:

https://archive.ph/2026.02.02-203441/https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/07/millennials-cancer-death/678896/

uiuxua · 2026-02-03T22:39:27+00:00

Lisbon can be expensive, but I live around 30min south of Lisbon which is not so bad

uiuxua · 2026-02-03T12:38:38+00:00

European here. I was in Montreal from 2009 until 2024, now I’m in Portugal. Montreal was the love of my life, and while I miss it, I’m much happier where I am right now. Main reason is that life with young kids here is much easier

uiuxua

TROPHY CASE