Brave or Stupid??!!

So, 4 weeks ago, we moved from Luanda to Houston!

Yes, the five of us, just did it!

We have been planning this for so long…google is for sure my best friend and F7 (spelling on word) my 2^nd best friend as English is not my mother language, its Portuguese…but if I’m being honest I also use the spelling when writing in Portuguese…

Anyway…we google about everything…best schools, best USA city to raise a family, best jobs opportunities, immigration lawyers, tax accountants…

We also talked to friends who have been in USA, and finally we decided it was time to just do it…and we choose The Woodlands in Houston.

First it was a nightmare to tell family and friends about our “crazy” decision…we had bad discussions and hear things like “are you crazy? You are 41 and Kumba (husband) is 50…with 3 kids?? Are you completely out of your mind?

But guess what? We were really crazy decided to do it…

We had our savings, and we started the life dream project plan…

First a lawyer because the only two Americans its Kumba my husband and my daughter Paloma.

Me, Kenzo and Zarah are Angolans and have Portuguese nationality which granted us the ESTA https://esta.cbp.dhs.gov/esta/

That is the Electronic System for Travel Authorization which granted us 3 months in USA.

Then we set a date…which was changed a few times!!!!

So, our main objective was good public schools for our kids.

We thought that the school year in US was starting in September like in Europe but actually it started on August 16^th.

Because all our savings were in Portugal and because my mother in law bought a house there for year and were like begging for us to go (very complicated relationship between us – love and hate style…) we plan to go first to Lisbon and the flight direct to Houston…

But we had 13 luggage suitcases and as we didn´t want to use our savings in Euros, we were trying to use our Kwanzas (Angolan currency and cannot be used anywhere but Angola!), so we decided to go 9 days to Lisbon, came back to Luanda and take the flight from Houston Express direct to Houston with 16-hour flight in Premium Economic (amazing!! Like executive class the chairs…the difference was the food service which was great by the way).

And we arrived Houston on July 21th of 2017…