Home Sweet Home

Photo I took from Grizzly Peak last year!
My favorite view of the Bay.

I can’t believe that my time here in Brazil is coming to an end, nor can I believe that it has been 10 months already. Although I learned a lot here, had wonderful experiences, learned Portuguese, opened my mind to yet another culture and way of living, met amazing people, and made good friends...I’m ready to go home.

When I was young I always wanted to get away.  I felt confined in some way like I was being put in a cage not able to actually be who I am or see what I want to see or do what I want to do or who I want to do it with.  I viewed the “outer” world as this magical place that must be better than the one I come from.  A magical place filled with opportunity, and mystery and passion and excitement.  And for many years that proved to be so.  It seemed as though home, although filled with love and nourishment, was dull, uneventful and well, sorry to say it, boring. 

As young as 11 I wrote in my dairy that I wanted to travel the world.  With eleven years old, not knowing hardly anything about geography I listed a surprising number of cities and countries I wanted to visit.

At 16 I flew alone to Toulouse France to visit a family friend studying abroad, and we traveled together through France to Paris and then on to Budapest. That was my first time leaving the country, and I loved everything about it. I remember thinking that I was right, that the rest of the world had so much more to offer than boring old California, and I couldn’t understand how anyone could want to stay in one place.

And as years went on, the more I traveled the more I wanted to travel.  Every place I could cross of my list inspired 10 more places I wanted to visit.  The more I saw the less I wanted to be home.  The truth is it wasn’t “home” I was running away from it was familiarity, familiarity of any kind. Home to me represented something I already knew, something I had already explored, something absolutely useless to my list of things to do and places to go, and a place, I thought, had no room for growth. 

I wanted, no I NEEDED to see more, and so I did. 

Over the last 7 years since that French adventure, I have had a good share of good and bad, healthy and dangerous, and wonderful and tragic experiences.

And I love that. I love all of it. The good and the bad, the best and the worst. And I want to keep seeing the world, I want to keep experiencing it all.  The more I see the more I realize I haven’t seen anything.  I want to live in another country again and speak another language, and I think I will…but, for right now, this very moment, I want familiarity.   

No matter how many places you go or how hard you look you will never and can never find another home.  So I suppose this post is to you, mom and dad and brother and good friends that come as close to family as they get: I miss you all and can’t wait to spend the holidays with you. 

I will miss you Brazil, but I think, just this once, I miss home more.