As much as I refused to believe it, the reality was that four months had passed since I first arrived in Brazil. This meant a couple of things; I was kind of getting used to the whole having to kiss people on the cheek to greet them AND to say goodbye, my Portuguese was getting so much better and it was time for me to move families.
 |
| my first host family <3 |
I was extremely lucky with my
first family; they were and still are an amazing host family and treated me
like their daughter, even making me do some chores! (my host mum made me
collect water for the house, but I didn’t mind =]) I bonded really well with
all three of them and they made what could have been the hardest months of my
exchange a wonderful experience. So naturally when I got told that I was going
to be moving, I protested. Not because I didn’t think my new family would be
nice, but because I was so happy and content with my life in their house. ( I
also think I didn’t want to move because of the effort needed to pack my
suitcase and actually physically move but we won’t linger on that thought for
too long >.< ) But despite my best efforts, I still had to pack my
suitcases and leave my first host families house. :(
Before I moved in I knew little
about my new family. I knew that my new host dad worked and lived in Sao Paulo
City during the week and came home at weekends, I knew that my new host sister
went on an exchange to India and she knew how to speak English (thank god!) but
she also lived in Sao Paulo City during the week so she wouldn’t be around to
help translate during the week (dammit! >.<) I knew that I would have a
new host brother who was reaaaaaaally tall and I knew that my new host mum didn’t
speak English. That scared me a little, because I could just imagine us trying
to talk and it not working out because of the language barrier. (I know we
could simply use a dictionary and it would all be okay, but when I’m scared all
rational thinking goes out the window! >.<) It was even more of a worry
because I had spent the past four months speaking in port-a-glese (a mixture of
the English and Portuguese language) seeing as my host mother and my host brother
were both fluent in English. I had never really needed to speak complete Portuguese
and the idea of having to do that really freaked me out! However I decided the
grab the bull by the horns and enter this new house with a positive attitude.
My host mum drove me to my new
house in the middle of a thunderstorm. It was only five blocks away from my old
house and I could easily walk back and forth between the two whenever I wanted but
at that moment in time, my old house seemed to be on a completely different
planet to my new house. As I walked in I saw a group of new faces (that I now recognise
to be different members of my new family) all smiling, waiting and watching me.
I kind of felt like a goldfish >.< I was shown around the house and shown
my new room, which included my own separate bathroom and shower (I was very
surprised at this, I mean I don’t even have a separate bathroom and shower back
home!) and before I knew it, it was time for my old host family to leave me
with my new host family. I suddenly felt
a massive rush of sadness and I realised that this chapter of my life with
current (now old) host family had ended. No more trying to hide as my host father
woke me up at six in the morning to go to school, no more waking up to the
sound of my host mum playing the flute on the weekends, no more listening to my
host brother and father screaming at the T.V as they watched their team play football
every Sunday afternoon and most important, no more trying to speak Portuguese
and knowing that if I didn’t make any sense, I could just speak in English and
they would understand. My sadness must have registered in my face because my
host father called me over to sit next to him and we sat their hugging as my
old host mother talked to my new host mother. All too soon, my old host parents
were driving away and I was being left behind with a new family. But there was
no time to mope around and be sad, because I was going to a ball the very same
evening…
Read my blog post; “The Day I
Went To Bailie Do Havwaii” to find out what happened for the rest of the night
:)
