The first week in a new place. In a new country for this matter. This irritating feeling to have lost all reference points. And, even worse, not really being able to speak the language.
The nagging realization that in a week’s time, there is no plane to go ‘home’. Because ‘home’ is something I want to, I have to build here and now. The distressing insight that all friends, all acquaintances, all the little places I used to go are a solid 8000 km away…
But then, there is also the police officer who walks over and then doesn’t stop chatting with me for almost an hour. That helped to boost the confidence in my Portuniol! There is the moment when taking a sport class and three ladies come over to say hello. And the successful finding of this building I was looking for even though the bus dropped me off at a 20 minutes distance. There is the chat with the lady from the university secretariat. The professor is still not in but now I know when he should be. And the ride home in a cab that a guy at the bus stop negotiated for me. Did cost only 0.50 reais more than the bus and was much, much faster.
Leaving life at is behind to build a new one. Never easy, but almost always worth trying.
La puce, die Welt and everything else 
Hoppla, hier steckt ja wieder Leben drin. Ich dachte schon, das Blog sei sanft entschafen. Aber ganz offensichtlich gab es da einige Entwicklungen, die nicht wirklich lückenlos hier dokumentiert wurden…
Stimmt, lückenlos dokumentiert wurde in der digitalen Welt in den letzten Monaten wenig 🙂 Dafür ist in der analogen einiges passiert. Und da jetzt auch wieder Zeit und Wille da ist, wird das Blog wieder aus dem Tiefschlaf geholt.