too much but not enough

i always intended to keep up with this blog even after my return to the u.s. here's the problem though...i just haven't felt quite as inspired. it's not that nothing happens in my day - actually, a lot happens. i'm busy all day, sometimes on campus until almost 7pm doing who knows what, then return home and still don't have a minute to sit down and just veg with a good book...what do i do all day? really, my days aren't so different than those in brazil, it's just that i'm here now and not there. so why am i not inspired? i felt like i reconnected with my inner writer in brazil, a passion forgotten since my high school years...and i loved it :) here, tech is taking my creativity again, ha ha ha ha...well, probably not, just my time, and that's valid i guess. i think the real reason i'm not inspired to write here is that, well, no matter what happens, it all fits in to how i think that things happen. i'm back in the middle of my comfort zone, and though i've been trying to push myself out of it a little here, it's more difficult than it was in brazil considering that this whole place, basically, IS my comfort zone and that the whole place there, basically, wasn't.

along the way, though, i think some of it became a part of my comfort zone, and not having some of its aspects here doesn't make me feel uncomfortable, exactly, just saudade (as they say in portuguese)...saudade is nostalgia (according to google translator), but really just the noun form of missing something. well, maybe that's nostalgia, ha ha :) i don't know, i'm so comfortable here, but at the same time i miss the surprise and the challenge every day. i miss my friends too, and it's incredible that we became as close as we did in such a short time. there are lots of things i don't miss, exactly, but lots of things that i do, and some things that i've tried to bring back here :)

tomorrow i get the opportunity to stand up and talk about my traineeship in front of a group of people that are trying to decide if they want to join aiesec. there's so much to say and so many things that don't have words, so i'm not sure what i'm going to say, exactly. at the same time, though, if i can get across to one person the impact that my experience in brazil has had on my life, then i've done my job. hopefully tomorrow, i'll go above and beyond :)

eu sempre intentava para manter este blog depois de voltar nos estados unidos. mas quando eu tento escrever, as vezes, eu não posso encontrar a inspiração...por que? não é porque nada ocurre durante meu dia - na verdade, muitas coisas acontecem. em geral, estou ocupada...fico na faculdade até 19:00 horas as vezes então chego em casa e faço mais coisas sem tempo para relaxar e leer um livro...o que eu faço dia em todo? em realidade, meus dias aquí não têm muitas diferenças com meus dias no brasil. então, por que não estou inspirada? no brasil, eu senti como eu reconectei com minha paixão para escrita, algo eu deixei nos anos do colégio. eu a adorei :) e eu acho que não estou inspirada aquí porque coisas acontecem na manera que eu espere. agora estou confortavel, e ainda que eu tento para encontrar coisas diferentes aquí com quais não estou confortavel, é mais dificil porque no brasil, tudo era assim.

mas agora, eu sinto como algums aspetos da cultura no brasil são um parte de minha zona de conforto. eu não sinto desconfortável sem eles aquí, mas eu sinto saudade para os desafios e aventuras todo dia. eu tenho muita saudade para meus amigos também, gente com quem eu ficava perto depois de só um pouco tempo. não sinto saudade para tudo lá, mas sinto para muitas coisas e tentei para trazer algumas coisas aquí de lá :)

amanha eu vou fazer uma presentação sobre meu traineeship enfrente de gente que está interesado em AIESEC. eu tenho muitas coisas para dizer e também muitas coisas que não têm palavras para describir-las. pois, eu não sei o que vou dizer, exatamente, ha ha :) mas se eu posso divulgar para uma pessoa o impacto que meu traineeship tivesse em minha vida, então eu tenho sucesso. eu espero que eu vou acima e além disso :D

something old and something new

i started grad school today...well, officially anyway. it was weird because since i'm still at tech, i already know where everything is, i'm settled in with a group of friends (well, those who haven't graduated yet, ha ha :D), i'm involved with organizations on campus, i understand just the culture of the whole place i guess, and i think i'm taking it for granted. it still feels like undergrad, and after all, why shouldn't it? my routine looks much as it has for the past 4 years except for now i drive to school instead of rolling out of bed 10 minutes before class starts and running from my fraternity house home to make it on time. yeah, this happened more than a few times, ha ha :)

at the same time, though, i feel older, more experienced, more in-control of my life. maybe it's the new apartment with its full kitchen, more personal space, etc. maybe it's that i really am older than lots of the students (besides some of the grad students, of course) and their confusion on the first day was especially written all over their faces today, maybe it's because i just returned from one of the most challenging and most amazing experiences of my life and now have a little bit of a different outlook on things, maybe it's because i feel completely comfortable with myself and my personal relationships (for the first time in my life)...who knows. i felt really brazilian a couple of times today, then i felt old, then i felt young, and then i felt hungry (of course, ha ha). but regardless, however this whole next year unfolds, it will be dynamic, challenging, inspiring, and hopefully eye-opening, since i still have nooooo idea what i want to do with my life...still.

well, i still have time at least.

p.s. - vou escrever o parte português amanha, desculpe. agora é 1:00, e é mais dificil para escrever em uma outra lingua quando é muito tarde (ou cedo, ha ha :D)...ainda eu sinto muito saudade para vocês no brasil, e não se preocupem, amanha com certeza :) beijoooos!

home.

amazing how "home" can feel foreign, yet as it always has at the same time. i think i first experienced this when i went away to college and would return home to my parents house for whatever reason...i knew that i didn't quite belong anymore, yet always would. my memories were embedded in my high school parking lot, the waffle house down the street, the park where i had gone many times to play pick-up soccer games with my friends, my bedroom which had seen hours on the phone, stolen kisses, and my angsty teenage artistic endeavors, ha ha :) everything, really. yet every time i came home, something had changed too...always new buildings, widening roads, new developments. life goes on after you leave, even if you once thought you would always be part of it and it a part of you. funny how that happens.

it felt like that (though on a bigger scale) when i arrived back in the u.s. yesterday. fayetteville looks as it always has, though there are some new buildings going up and road-widening projects going on, as usual. my family is the same, my boyfriend is the same, my friends are the same, my house is the same, my neighborhood, my car, everything...and we've all picked up where we left off. i see it all a little differently now though after living in a place so different. our roads are meandering, our houses spaced far apart, our cars large, our society a little quieter and reserved. i blend in here, everyone speaks english, and sometimes i even have to stop the portuguese words on the tip of my tongue when i speak as i did many times with english in brazil. i drove today and went to a coffee shop (not a popular thing in brazil)...things i always did, but felt so foreign for the day. i felt understood completely and completely misunderstood at the same time...so really, i almost fit in, i guess.

and all this after only 3 months! how did people i met only 3 months ago become such a big part of my life in such a short time? how did places so foreign become so familiar, and a culture so different meld with my own to create something that transcends boundaries? but transcending boundaries isn't always easy...i woke up with an upset stomach, a fever, and a raging headache today. not all adjustments come easily. :(

Que incrivel que eu possa sentir como uma nativa e uma estrangeira no mesmo tempo aqui. Eu tenho muitas lembrancas aqui, e por isso, eu acho que este lugar sempre sera um parte de minha vida. Contudo, depois de so 3 meses, eu sinto uma ligacao a Salvador mais forte que eu esperaria com um pouco tempo assim. aqui, eu sinto que pertenco mas pertenco la tambem...estranho. aqui, temos ruas meandros, temos mais espaco entre nossas casas, nossos carros sao mais grandes, e nossa sociedade e mais sossegada e fria. mas eu posso aceptar isso porque ate o verao passado, era tudo que eu saiba. agora, ainda eu posso aceptar-lo...mas agora, eu tenho algo mais...perguntas.

por que nos fazemos coisas assim? e por que no brasil, eles fazem coisas assim? e como posso sentir que eu pertenco com os dois mas nao pertenco tambem? eu sinto saudade para os amigos ainda no salvador, o mar, a cultura relaxada, a musica e comida diversas...minha vida la. mas aqui, eu adoro minha liberdade de transporte, de sabendo a lingua (muito bem, pelo menos), minha familia, meu namorado, meus amigos, meu espaco...minha vida aqui. parece que, entao, nunca vou sentir como estou completamente em casa, porque eu tenho muitas. mas se eu posso falar com as pessoas que fazem um lugar especial, sempre estarei em casa :)

my lasts

i leave tomorrow. wow.

as with any part of your life that was once fiercely embedded in a routine or driven towards a singular purpose, when you approach the end, you start having your lasts...it´s a weird feeling to think that it may be your last time going to a certain place or eating a certain food or just doing a certain thing that you´ve done every day for the past (insert amount of time here). today is my last day of work, my last day of waking up in my small, sunlit room already bright with the light of the day at 6am. today i rode the "little bus," as i call it (ha ha) to work and watched the city pass me by for the last time before i leave. i just came back from my last lunch in comércio, which was a huge group affair with almost my entire office and delicious, traditional brazilian churrasco. lots of lasts today and only more to come.

it´s hard to wrap my mind around still, but i´m getting there, i think. i said a lot of goodbyes last night over drinks, homemade pão de queijo, and a mixture of reggae, brazilian pop, and electronica music. it was hard, yes - with the goodbyes, though, i´m not going to view these as lasts. as many good friends have told me, the world is smaller than you think, and there´s definitely a difference between a last and a goodbye. yeeeesssss :)

but in the midst of these lasts, i have found a first to add to the list. since it seems that one function of this blog was to keep people at home updated on my life and adventures here (not sure if it fulfilled that or not, sorry if not), when i return, this blog (for people that are reading from atlanta anyway) loses that purpose a little bit. but in the spirit of viewing nomading as having the world as your home, i figured this blog could still fulfill that purpose, just not necessarily for the same audience as before. so that´s why, with the help of some good friends here in salvador, this blog will from now on (hopefully) have a little section in portuguese to help keep some of my friends here updated for while i´m in my other home, atlanta :) this will have to start out slowly, of course, and will have lots of mistakes, but i´m hoping that in time it will grow, improve, and serve the purpose that this blog was always meant to serve, just with a further reach.

se você está lendo este parte, primeiro, desculpe por a gramática. Como eu disse acima (em inglês), eu quero que vocês podem leer isso para manter contato comigo, como meu familia e amigos nos estados unidos e outros lugares fazeram enquanto eu era no brasil. vou tentar para escrever em português mais e mais em este blog, e eu espero que 1. vocês possam entender-lo 2. vocês me ajude com gramática, escrevendo, etc. eu quero melhorar, especialmente porque eu não posso falar com vocês todo dia agora. vocês me avisem como estou fazendo, por favor :)

também, eu quero que vocês saibam que eu tinha 3 incrivel meses no salvador, e obrigada por tudo :) todo mundo é bem-vindo na atlanta (ou qualquer lugar nos estados unidos) qualquer tempo...só me liguem! meu país é seu país :)

é dificil para imaginar que talvez muito tempo vai passar antes de ver-nos de novo! estou triste quando eu penso sobre isso, mas emocionada também que consigo ver minha famila e amigos na atlanta. muitos sentimentos conflitantes. mas obrigada por tudo de novo, e não posso esperar até nos encontramos de novo :D

mantenha contacto! beijos :)

...on being a nomad

i´ve discovered a lot over the past 3 months...well, that´s an understatement really, ha ha :) and with as much as i´ve learned, i´ve further discovered that i know basically 1/5654165456465456498786465486 (or less) of all i could possibly know about in this world. wow.

the full realization of that hits pretty hard, especially since i just spent the last 18 years of my life getting educated, and after graduating with a college degree, i´m now realizing that i know basically nothing, ha ha :) it´s liberating in a way, since you still have such a far way to go, so many things left to explore - but it´s frustrating in a way too, since you still have such a far way to go. depends how you look at i guess, like with anything else.

kinda like my time here...3 days. i can´t believe it, it´s gone by so fast! what have i been doing with myself for the past 3 months? ok, working obviously, and hanging out with amazing aiesecers and other incredible people i´ve met here. but really, what have i done? in some ways i feel like a completely different person, but i don´t know why exactly, and i couldn´t tell you what about me has changed. maybe nothing´s changed, it´s just my perception. who knows. in some ways, though, i feel more like myself than ever...not an old self, necessarily, just a self, and i´m comfortable with that, maybe moreso than ever before. sweet.

well, regardless of what may or may not have changed over the past 3 months, this fact remains...i leave in 3 days, and i think i´m now starting to get my first taste or what it truly is to be a nomad. for a nomad, the world is your home, or nowhere´s your home, depends how you look at it. when i return to the u.s. for a little while i´ll be a stranger in my own country, which is good, that´s the point. i´ll be doing all over again what i did 3 months ago...leaving my home. except this time, i´ll be leaving friends here that i may realistically never see again (which i´ve been trying not to think about) and a place that even when (yes, when, i´m coming back one day :D) i return, will never quite be the same. it´s hard to think that this one piece of your life will never return, or at least not in the same way. but that´s how it is for a nomad that hangs out with nomads.

in the past year, i don´t think all of my aiesec friends have been in the same country at the same time. but that´s what aiesecers do...nomad...and somewhere along the way you have to accept that with this lifestyle, goodbye is hello and hello goodbye as much as i´m american-born and bred but can still be a stranger in my own country. a glorious paradox...frustrating, elating.

lately, i haven´t been able to stop thinking about atlanta and the people there that i´ve missed for the past 3 months, especially since i´m soooo close to seeing them. at the same time, though, i know i´m going to miss brazil and the people here too and want to live it up. so as a result, i´m crazy confused and torn all the time. it´s easy enough to say to concentrate on living it up here while i´m here, but when you´re down to 3, there´s no avoiding departure and thinking about what awaits you on the flip side. and there´s no shame if what´s waiting there for you gives you a huge smile just thinking about it :)

because after all, hello and goodbye are really one and the same. the italians, hawaiians, and everyone else that has one word that means hello and goodbye in their language had the right idea :D so really i guess in this case, my first taste of what it truly is to be a nomad, it´s all in my perception...hello or goodbye?

i´m indecisive...maybe i´ll just settle for ciao.

nothing like nature to bring you back to reality

so this past weekend (my last full weekend in brazil, eek!), i decided to go out with a bang, so to speak. david (the canadian trainee) and i ventured out to chapada diamantina, a huuuuuge national park situated west of salvador about 7 hrs by bus but still in bahia (bahia´s a big state, ha ha). it´d be waaay too hard to describe to you the natural beauty that i saw/challenged/discovered this weekend, but i wanted to share some stuff that i thought about this morning during an invigorating, challenging, and amazingly beautiful 14 km hike :)

so this hike, i knew, would be challenging. i also knew that it should take about 2.5 hrs to go 7 km, but since we had to catch a 1 pm bus back to salvador, i expected that we´d be booking it too...this was all correct. what i didn´t expect was 1. the extent of the beauty and grandeur of the waterfall that awaited us at the end and 2. the fact that half of this 7 km (1 way) hike would consist entirely of rock-hopping. now, i love rock hopping, though it does scare the hell out of me. but after going halfway and then seeing this, there was no way i could turn back...plus, i wanted to see the waterfall, ha ha :) the guide and david, who are both over 6 ft tall, took on the challenge as if it was nothing, leaping over large openings, stretching between long distances, and climbing up steep, tall rocks. me? well, i did what i could with some help :) i actually didn´t do too bad, and as i got the hang of hopping from rock to rock, each time depending a little less on my hands to steady myself, i began to think about why i´m so scared of rock-hopping in the first place yet love it so much.

and i think it comes down to this...i don´t trust myself.

i´ve never had the best balance in the world, as evidenced by my numerous scars with causes ranging from rollerblading accidents to tripping over my own feet...ah, what can you do? maybe these falls have made me more cautious? maybe my fear of getting hurt with the memory of how it feels have made me shy away from activities that could possibly bring me to it again? i don´t know. whatever the reason, though, it´s there, and had i let it get the best of me, i could´ve missed one of the most amazing waterfalls i´ve ever seen in my life...and really, rock-hopping is a bit like life then, isn´t it?

once i got momentum going, everything was easier. i gained confidence, and with my speed felt more agile and was able to use my movement in my favor when it came to scaling up some steeper rocks or balancing in precarious places. i had to see the rocks as merely a part of something bigger, just a piece on my journey to the waterfall, and then i could leap (almost, ha ha) efforlessly between rocks, my feet seeming to find where they belonged and my hands only helping when necessary. here´s the thing though, one slip and my mind reverted back to seeing only each rock as itself and analyzing the best way to get to this one rock, to balance on this rock, and to find the best way to attack the next. and then you know what? i´d start slipping even more, out of fear i think more than anything else.

so basically, you have to see the big picture...getting caught up in the little things makes you worry too much about things that in the long run, might not matter at all, or that might have only mattered for a second. don´t be afraid to trust yourself and your instincts, you do have them for a reason, and no matter how much you study or put your faith in what you read, sometimes you can only really know something from not knowing it...just feeling it :)

and let me tell you, by the time we reached that waterfall, all i could feel was pride, awe, fatigue, accomplishment, elation, and eventually, the icy refreshment of the red-tinged water beneath the falls as i jumped in, completely ready to take on that waterfall firsthand :D

here are some pictures from the weekend...more will be posted on facebook soon. enjoy!

p.s. - these pictures don´t do this place justice...