Living Abroad

PORTUGUÊS

"Minds are like parachute, only work when opened". Nothing better to open your mind than experiencing the world. Living abroad is, without doubts, one of the most transformative experiences in the life of anyone. At least that's what happened to me. When you are young this experience becomes even more intense, I believe. It's a weird period where you feel old enough to think in the serious issues of life, but too young, to think in the serious issues of life. It's a moment of transition where you go out of the cocoon and start to fly with your own wings. It's a moment of insecurities, uncertainties with respect to who you really are, what you think, your vision about the world, and which place in the world you wanna take. Nothing better than an experience abroad to give you a little push. Not that you will go back with all these questions solved, but you will go back different. In my opinion, for better.

My experience was an exchange of 1 year in Oslo, Norway. Yes. The third place ( well deserved) in the rank of the most expensive cities in the world. And no, I am not Bill gates' daughter. I got there through an exchange program called Science Without Borders (#kissesDilma).

 

Paying a bill in Norway

By the way, it was by the University of Oslo that the author of the phrase above, James Dewar, physicist and chemist, received a PhD, in 1911. History aside, spending 1 year in Norway was light years from my monetary capacity and make an exchange was always a distant dream. That's why I didn't think twice as soon as the opportunity arose. A whole year far from your family and friends? yes. One year of delay in your graduation that you dream desperately with the day will end up? yes. But nothing compared with the return that an experience like that can give.

 Medieval Festival

The living abroad experience makes you shock with different cultures. Not exactly a shock in my case, since I didn't move out to Zimbabwe or Pakistan, but still you can observe particularities of each culture and start to respect them, what makes you, for sure, a more tolerant person.

 

In the beginning it's a bit difficult because you still interpret the attitude of others according with your own culture, as if that was the universal law of behaviour and good sense. As soon as I stepped my feet in Oslo, with 2 huge bags, one backpack weighing 10 kg plus a handbag (yes, because making a little research about Norway, of course I thought I would live on bread and water and wouldn't have money to buy anything, hence I'd have to take all I need from Brazil), having to go up and down with all of that, having to stop from time to time to rest, nobody, not a single soul, offered to help.

Me at the airport

Of course my first impression was not the best. Indeed, people tend to be much more helpful in Brazil, some times so helpful that someone can appear to carry your bags and never come back, just so you don't have to carry that weight anymore. I love the Brazilian hospitality. Anyway, with time I realised that the fact that Norwegians are not readily willing to help strangers on the street ( they are very kind when you ask for help, but don't expect an initiative) doesn't mean a character deficiency, or something like that. It's just a kind of posture that within their culture it's not common to take. Norway has a sense of equality that is taken to the extreme. Nobody has the right to feel more capable, smarter than the others. So an attitude like offering to carry the bags of an old lady can be faced by her as if you saw her as incapable. It doesn't matter how the other culture can seem weird in the beginning, with time you start to understand it and realise how much your own culture can be no sense to the others as well.

Another aspect about living abroad is the friends you make. Friends not, family. Yes, because the fact you are far from your family and friends makes you much more opened to build new friendships. When you find other people in the same situation that you, it's inevitable that these bonds of friendship are created. It's funny how in one day those people are complete strangers and soon you are like childhood friends. You make friends for a lifetime. People so different from you that in other circumstances would never become your friends, which would be a pity, because you realise how much you learned from them. But then months pass and that same painful phase comes again. Now you have to say good bye to that new family you got. People that were with you in that unsuccessful battle of going to the gym, that were with you in the metro while you talk about the person beside you, just because he/she can not understand a word ( sometimes they can), that helped you when you were sick and you mom wasn't there to take care of you, that were with you in the most amazing moments of your life. These people will now follow their own paths, back to their lives. But one thing is certain, nothing will be like before...