Monday, June 22, 2015

O voo

I'm sitting on a plane, which is unbelievably late going to Minneapolis, crying my eyes out and stressed out of my mind. 

At 6:19 pm on June 14th, I had to do the hardest thing I've ever done by saying goodbye to the life I created in Brazil. If I thought getting the balls to go was going to be pushing my limits, having to leave it behind without certainty of ever seeing or enjoying all the fantastic people and things Brazil had given me almost killed me. I was blessed in getting sent to a country where people like to love, and they know how to show it. My families and friends commemorated the end of this chapter of my life alongside me, whether it be making me laugh on my last night or holding me for as long as needed at the airport. I'd like to thank every single person who was there for me at all this year, but especially the last few days. It meant everything to me.

What is so painful about saying goodbye is tricky. I think it's mainly because two factors: that this is your exchange, that only you have, and that you can never go back and relive it completely. In other words, even if your friends or family visited you In your host country, they don't really know how you're feeling, how special and difficult and astounding your year was. Even the other exchange students there are having there own sorts of experience, considering they all came from backgrounds that the others don't know.That sense of being solitary is both lonely and fantastic. No one knows exactly how your year was from home, and they can't relate to you when you tell them about your friends from home and the shenanigans you got up to, or how you got sick and had to experience a free clinic, or how alive you felt when you got lost in the city and had to find your way home. Frankly, I think most people really don't care which hurts almost as bad. Its like you have this precious thing, like a child that people look at and you talk lovingly of and they aren't really interested. It's painful for us exchange students. But secondly, and I think even more painful, is that no matter how many times you go back to your country, it won't be the same as how you had it. You're no longer an exchange student, with the other students running around and trying not to get in trouble. Your Brazilian friends and family all had continued on with their own lives, some moving out or even marrying and having kids.  So, you can't ever go back to that special thing you created once you walk through that airport gate. 
Honestly, the only thing keeping me from jumping out of this plane and swimming my way back to Belo Horizonte is something that happened in the Atlanta airport. I was walking around for my first time in my country, completely overwhelmed. I didn't know how to socially conduct myself, what language to speak or how to use American money anymore. It was as if I'd never been here and I didn't like what I was seeing. I felt alone and depressed that I don't even know my own home anymore. I started to cry sitting in my gate, eating a Dunkin Donut and FaceTime-ing my host mom since I already craved Portuguese. A woman came up to me and put her hand on my shoulder and said 'welcome home sweetie, you seem to be having a hard time'. I told her I was coming back from Brazil and left a lot of good things behind, and she told me ' but there are good things waiting for you here, too'. And she's absolutely right. My exchange is officially over, I will never be going back. But this is a new chapter beginning, an exciting one that will be filled with so many cool experiences. And this time, I'm older, wiser, and happier. I'm so blessed to be a citizen of this beautiful country with such smart people and so much to give me, and I'm so blessed to have been a citizen of Brazil, which left me a better and more loving person. I can't wait to see what happens in the future, and I am so grateful for what I am leaving in the past.

So cheers to you Brazil, you are the best thing that could've ever happened to me and I wouldn't have changed a single thing. I won't forget what you gave me, and I only hope I left a little goodness there in return. 

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