Garulhos Airport : The End of a Blog

As I sit waiting to hop aboard an American Airlines flight home boarding at gate 24 at São Paulo’s Garulhos Airport I’m in a sentimental mood about my 11 months in Brazil. The first time I came to Brazil I came on a Temple University study abroad program for 6 weeks in Bahia. I came for a musical experience and because it was a part time program and I was planning on being a member of the elite jazz band program therefore I wouldn’t have been able to make a long-term semester long commitment. I saw lots of Salvador but it wasn’t on my own terms, the professor was an egotistical baby sitter who didn’t allow us to travel on our own during weekends and insisted that we jotted down every single word he uttered in and outside of the classroom. So sitting at the Salvador airport 3 years ago I felt I had a great experience in Brazil but that the country was so vast and I had only experienced a thimble of what the nation had to offer. I left feeling disillusioned; I ended up partying so much on the program I didn’t exactly reap all the benefits of the rich music in Bahia and I became frustrated and discontent with my major at the same time. I went back to school, studied Portuguese--at times feriociously, and others lazily. I began dating Joice, my girlfriend for two years, whom I met in Brazil and coincidentally moved to my home town to be an Au Pair babysitter. I graduated college as soon as I could, not exactly sure if I wanted to be a musician. I moved back home to Maryland, worked random jobs from Phone interviewer, temp staffer, caddy, and even to spy. I was offered a job at a bank and it was then I had to decide if I wanted to stay where I grew up working a job I wouldn’t like making money, getting myself into a 30-year mortgage always kicking myself in the back for not going back to Brazil. When my great uncle Harold passed away in September 2007, sitting shiva at my Great Aunt Helen’s house she said some powerful words along the lines of “If you want to have memories when you’re old make those memories now.” The message really rubbed off on me as I was spending the afternoon telling the guests of the shiva I didn’t know what I was doing in life. So when Joice invited me to come back with her to Brazil as she needed to renew her Visa I accepted but on the conditions that I would live there for 6 months to a year. This wasn’t exactly the response I imagine she was hoping for. I booked my tickets, padded my resume and got a job teaching English at a local school. I taught there for two months while researching and applying for jobs in Brazil. I eventually found a guaranteed job in Jundiaí, São Paulo where I would go on to make many friends but hate my employer. I left Jundiaí for Florianópolis after 3 months on a conviction that there were greener pastures out there. After a few weeks of struggling and desperately regretting for a day I adapted to Floripa and eventually florished. I debated staying there to study but I ended up deciding I needed to come back to the states. (strong job market…) I began planning a great trip around the country and my friends from High School asked if they could come along. I gladly accepted and we made the preparations to do so. I resigned from my job on good terms with my boss, despite the fact I had unknowingly made out with his girlfriend and he found out about it. I recruited an English friend from Jundaí to resume the life I had made for myself there, my friends arrived and we traveled around Brazil for 3 maravalous weeks filled with inside jokes that were told out of the sides of our mouths. It was a pleasure playing ambassador to them in this captivating, idosyncratic, puzzling, eccentric, hospitable land. They helped me see Brazil in a new light that I hadn’t seen after living here for 10 months. They noticed quirky habits, arbitrary rules, salty food, gorgeous women, delicious fruits that I wouldn’t have noticed traveling on my own. The trip was a great success traveling to nearly a dozen cities without losing anything more than a jacket and a few hundred thousand brain cells. So now I’m back at Garulhos reflecting on my trip. I feel I’ve gotten the Brazil I needed to experience out of my system. I achieved most of my goals, I lived in Brazil for a year, I learned Portuguese, I worked in Brazil, I learned guitar, I took dance lessons, I played capoeira and soccer making sincere friends along the way. I came here a Brazophile and I’m leaving an even greater one. I’ve learned to love Brazil for its foibles and hate it for its arrogance. (As of writing this I just found some sand behind my ear.) Anyways I’m grateful I could live this experience now, however I don’t really have any solid idea as to what I’m going to do when I get back. I’m returning to a United States vastly different from the one I left. We’ve got dirt cheap houses, and loads of people not living in them, we’ve got an economy in the toilet and a job market that is flushing down with it, we’ve just elected a black president and the world is proud of us again, and I also think we changed the name of the country if I’m not mistaken. (I still need to clarify this) Anyways lots of challenges await me and I’m not necessarily any more directive in terms of career than when I came 335 days ago. I’m going to miss writing this blog and I thank all of my readers for their participation. I’m going to miss Brazil and their wacky rules, wild parties and kind people. Well I guess that’s it. In 12 hours I’ll be landing in Washington D.C. chocolate city and this year will be little more than a blog, pictures and a sunburn that will completely peel in a few days. But it will be so much more than that, it will be a broken computer, a pile of stories and at least some interesting ammunition for the upcoming holiday season cocktail party banter. In closing, O Brasil, eu te amo!