This text is a bit outdated, but when I wrote it I was not in the mood either to reread it nor to post anything. But here it is anyway!
I am twenty-two years old, have lived in four countries (I count as 'live' somewhere when it involves staying in one place with a sort of routine, not just travels), I have friends and family in roughly twenty countries. It's easy, the more you travel, the more you want to travel, and the easier it gets considering the people you meet along...
I have lived ten months in Kansas, I am dreaming of seeing the west coast of the US and to visit a good friend in Canada. I have lived in total one year and a half in Sweden, both north and south, I am dreaming of seeing the norwegian fjords, the islandic lagoons. I have been in Brazil for three months, halfway of the trip designed, with in my mind the rest of South America waiting for me. I am dreaming of doing a big road trip in eastern Europe, to visit great friends in Italy and Slovenia, to travel to India, Laos, Cambodge. I am looking forward to jump on my best friend in Madrid and to go back to Portugal.
But more than anything, I have lived in France. About twenty years if I count right. I know of some places there, where I have family, but I know Sweden much better and maybe even Brazil.
Since my sixteen I have this strange syndrome, this urge to move. I can't stay put. I have in my mind so many places to see. And always this same time issue.
A bit more than a week ago my country, my parisian neighbors have been attacked, when I was traveling through north-eastern Brazil, slowly getting to witness it's chronicle violence and poverty although the surroundings are so beautiful. This night, slowly getting news about the situation between the brasilian tv and my sister on facebook, talking with my friends one by one, reading frenetically all the posts that were appearing on facebook, each one reassuring me with a new name associated, with puffy eyes under my perfect eye-liner and shaking in that pretty dress I had just put on to go out with a friend. This night, I think I will never forget it. Because I was the only french in the surroundings, because I could see my friend looking at me without knowing what to say or to do. Because I could see the looks of her parents powerless in front of my sadness watching the news.
This night changed a part of my conception of life. I suddenly really want to be in France, for the first time since my sixteen! I want to visit my country, to discover its beauties that I don't suspect. I don't want to run against the clock anymore just to visit the places I am dreaming of, no, I want to enjoy them, for real. In my mind it all changed. The three months trip that was supposed to take me from the south of Argentina to Colombia will now be resumed in starting from the north of Chili, without a ticking clock, going day after day, to cross Bolivia and Peru without having to hurry before joining my dad in Martinique. I threw away all the sheets where every minute of my trip was already written. All I know is that I will be starting from the Easter Island in March and that I will be flying back to Paris from Martinique at some point in June.
I came back home yesterday, in Rio. This city now so familiar where I know the streets, the places where I shouldn't go, the pretty places. This is my home right now and it feels good. But I do want to return to France. To eat goat cheese with cherry jam with my sisters in the Basque Country. To take walks in the parisians streets with my mom and brother. To visit my brother in Nantes, city that I still don't know. To eat speatzle in Alsace with the rest of the family.
"No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow." - Lin Yutang, chinese writer.
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