Erica Magalhães and Graeme Eaves moved from the United Kingdom to Portugal during the pandemic, looking for a more peaceful life for themselves and, above all, for their daughter.
“I was born in Brazil, in Rio de Janeiro, but I moved to the UK, more precisely to London, when I decided to do my post-graduate there”, says Erica. She met Graeme and ended up staying for 12 years.
Now that they have a daughter, they decided to move here, because they believe it’s the ideal place to raise a family and live with kids. “I started looking into moving to Lisbon with my company”, she admits. The British startup she works for considers Portugal “very interesting”, given its reputation as a “renowned talent pool” in the IT sector. Personally, she found the idea appealing as it is a great spot to raise a family.
Family time
“It was important for us to keep our careers, and have free time to spend with our daughter, and Portugal gives us that”, says Graeme Eaves. Since they arrived, they have led a more outdoors lifestyle, not wasting time in commutes or in traffic.
Graeme works remotely for a British publishing house and says that he feels “more productive without the stressful commutes”. Although they moved to Portugal during the pandemic, and so they don’t know what their daily routine will be like when it is over, Graeme says that for now, and compared to London, they are living at a slower pace, which is great, especially when they think about their daughter’s future.
A learning curve
Graeme has been “learning Portuguese slowly” ever since he met Erica, but he is far from fluent. Now that he has settled in Portugal he is looking to start taking classes to master the language better, partly so that he can keep up with his daughter. “It is important for me to be able to speak the language, because my daughter is going to grow up speaking mostly Portuguese, so it will be useful for me to speak it as well”.
In the long run, Graeme sees himself staying in Portugal, especially because it is safe and, generally speaking, easier to live an outdoors lifestyle. “I’d like my children to grow up here, I think it’s a marvelous country to raise children in”, he claims.
