8 days left. Jan. 25th 2019

I'm planning the rest of my days left in Vancouver on the airplane from Taipei back to Vancouver. I got 8 days left. I plan to spend 3 days focusing on reading, 2 days helping mum to reorganize her clinic and 3 days to recap on my work, so that I can start working as soon as I get back to Brazil.

Thinking about the fact that I need to go back to Brazil and leaving very soon somehow makes my heart sink.

I have been living as a foreigner in multiple countries since a young age, however, I have never experienced this emotion of not wanting to return so strongly. Not that there is a particular reason to which I can point to. It's just a feeling.

When I was 9 or 10, my parents decided to send me to a summer camp in Australia. That was the first time that me living abroad alone in a host family. My English was so poor that I did not understand most of what my host family were saying. Therefore, I just nodded on whatever they said to me. I would call by mum every night and each time, I would cry the moment I heard her voice.

I could not remember when I started to appreciate the chilly winter of the North side of the Earth but I remembered telling my mum that I would like to do such thing again after I returned.

When I was 12. I was in California doing another summer camp. I have to admit. I did still cry a bit on the first night that I arrived. However, the second day, when I was sitting at the back seat going to school in the morning, I already started to fall in love with the summer breeze and soft sunshine in the morning of California.

That was the year, I told my parents: I want to study in the states. And I returned the next year, as a full-time international student.

I moved abroad by myself when I was 14. I still remembered my first day in Seattle, the chilly summer morning and the cozy smell in the air. I surprised my peers, two other Chinese international students, by starting speaking English right after I landed, like I have been using English for a long time.

I never understood why some international students missed home so much, why it was such a torture for them to stay, I never understood what were their problems like I do not understand what's my problem now.

Maybe I am just scared.

Scared that I am finally getting out of school and scared about if I could really make it on my own.

Scared that I am just not as good as what my boss expected or not what my friends told me I am.

Scared that maybe those doubtful voices like my father's would be right.

Maybe it has nothing to do with Brazil.

Or maybe, I could be just I really don't want to leave.

I landed in Vancouver and I went to check my mailbox. The post card from my roommate in Brazil lay as a surprise inside.

She asked in the postcard: "Don't you [also] think that Sao Paulo is a concrete jungle?"

Do I also think SP is a concrete jungle.

...

Do I, think, SP is a concrete jungle.

Do I...

-- July 24th, 2019. @Home, Vancouver