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Published: December 13th 2010
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I’m really homesick today and having to listen to ‘...simply having a wonderful Christmas time...’ whilst in the queue at the supermarket did not help very much. I have had a very mixed week, it started on a low point with food poisoning and me really wanting to talk to my Mum then improved on Wednesday when I had almost recovered and managed to catch my parents on skype for 30 minutes before meeting Léo (that is a quick chat for us). I had a very enjoyable evening with him and his friends, but it felt a little surreal. It was a birthday party for an actor that he knows, at a ‘pre-opening’ for a new bar opening at the weekend. It felt like I could have been in London as the three actors he knows well are all trendy and the bar was charging extortionate prices for tiny plates of tapas and minuscule glasses of wine, so another little pang of homesickness. The next day we had lunch with his Mum and Grandma, she had put up the Christmas tree and set out a nativity scene, another pang, and then I got questioned as to why I wasn’t spending Christmas with them, it is very difficult to turn down a Brazilian Mamma! Léo thought quickly and said that it is because Dani is arriving on 24th so I think that satisfied her. Léo’s brother then arrived with his two nephews; one a studious type, dying to practise some English with me but a little too shy and the other a boisterous daredevil, kicking a football then balancing 10 foot in the air above the stairs. A wonderful pandemonium ensued as Leo’s Mum, bundled her Mum, son, two grandsons, many bags and cuttings pretty much from a whole tree into the car for them to travel 200 miles to the family’s farm. Another pang of homesickness watching this family scene. I was going to visit Léo this weekend at Praia do Forte but he had a lot of work on so I stayed in Salvador, this was fine with me as I read, went to the beach and tried to learn how to use my new camera but it also meant that I had a lot of time on my own to think and nobody to break that chain of thought. It’s not that I feel like I am doing the wrong thing, it is just that I am missing so much from home and being two weeks away from Christmas makes it even harder. I am so very glad that Dani will be here soon and that I will get to spend time with her family. They have such a wonderful healing energy and I know that I will feel very welcome in their presence. It will just be hard that I can’t share this time with my own family and friends too. I think next week will be difficult for me too, I am considering going back to the language school to meet some more people, improve on my language and have a little structure to my day to keep me occupied. I am glad that I have this option as they are very kind and welcoming there. And what else did I do to help combat the homesickness? I bought a cupcake of course! This time I have found a proper cupcake not like the one ‘squashed at the back of the supermarket’! And I shall have a cup of green tea with the teabags Trina gave me with my travel yoga mat, my first cup of tea in 6 weeks! Oh and now I feel guilty that I should do some Yoga before eating it.
There have been a few distractions whilst I have been on my own this week, but not all so great, as the Brazilian men seem to be heating up a little bit for the summer, I left the apartment for the first time in three days on Wednesday and it was as if I was greeted by a round of applause. There were beeping of car horns, compliments shouted from cars and passers by and I was glad that they had noticed I had made the effort to get dressed and leave the house after my time convalescing. However what happened today wasn’t so nice and has left me a little unnerved. A guy drove past me at the traffic lights and stared at me, which I didn’t take much notice of as everyone stares at everybody. Then he appeared again, kerb crawling along a dual carriageway trying to speak to me and asks me to get into his car (to which I thought does he think I came down in the rain shower we had this morning), so I obviously declined and he drove off and I thought that was the end of it and continued walking to the shops. Next thing I know he is walking towards me, well he must have found a parking space so quickly and then run back along the road. So he starts to talk to me again, and I am thinking how on earth am I going to get rid of him, we get to the shops and I’m thinking that I won’t be able to lose him if we go into the centre, so I continue on to the internet cafe and say to him that I am going to send some emails and meet some friends first. He says sorry for meeting me like this but I am just so beautiful, hmmm think I have heard that one before. He asks if I am twenty years old to which I burst out laughing said no older, to which he says oh I don’t know, 25 then; so he really does think that I came down in the last rain shower. He starts to walk to the internet cafe with me and he asks me what I am doing next, well there is only one answer to that one, of course that I am meeting my boyfriend (and at that point I really wished I was!). But he still walks along with me, so we get to the internet place and luckily he decides to just ask for my email address and go. So I gave him my address (the correct one, I do have a blog to write, if he emails me it will appear in the next edition!). To add to this, a little teenage boy of about 14 came over to me on the beach yesterday and asked if his friend could be me boyfriend, if my Portuguese was good enough I would have said that I am old enough to be his Mother. Am I looking younger by the day? Oh and this last one is for Nicola, the drop-dead boring Italian guy asked me out for drinks on Monday, we did have a little bet going that this would be the case. It did cheer me up when I received his text though as I was ill in my room, feeling alone and bored, and I thought, well, at least I am not that bored!
So that is one of the not so great aspects of travelling alone, but one of the great ones is that everybody speaks to me! Maybe because I look approachable or maybe because I am on my own, I am always the one who women ask questions to. I like it but it is also very frustrating as I only half understand and then have only one word answers to offer back. Sometimes when I am getting really frustrated with my understanding of Portuguese, I just think, leave me alone and stop asking me all these questions, I just want to stand in the queue, I don’t know why that bank machine isn’t working or if you can get a clubcard at this till! But really I like it, and hopefully one day I will be able to have a full conversation.
Since writing this I went home and did some Yoga and ate my cupcake and enrolled in the language school today. I went for lunch with some friends today and we went shopping for a Christmas gift to take to a children´s charity on Thursday. I choose to buy a gift for Stephanie, 10, a Barbie doll with the prettiest outfit. I don´t miss my family and friends any less but I feel much more content and balanced again and feel grateful that I have such wonderful family and friends to miss as their love always keeps me going on my adventure.
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Marie Dams
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Chit chat
Yes I can imagine this time of year being a little sad for you, as it probably is with everyone away from their families, but you seem to have a good network of people around you, which I am so pleased about, everyone seems to be so friendly and helpful (apart from the odd perv) so I am hoping you are going to have a good Christmas, I hope you do, and I send you my best wishes. I'm glad you are thinking of going back to classes again, I was sorry that you stopped them, and it was not for learning the language so much, but more for meeting and making new friends, I'm afraid I am going to give the language a miss for the time being (bloody hell this laptop is bouncing around all over the place, I swear blind there is a little man in here trying to wind me up) I am trying to learn some South African lingo now, Chris and I are doing a word a day, I now know how to say, "where can I get some cannabis from" not really, only joking, its quite easy actually, a lot of their words seem very similar to ours. Am very surprised you met a boring Italian, usually these guys have got one thing on their minds when confronted by pretty girls, maybe you were wearing too many clothes!!!!!!!!!!! And as for having teenage boys asking you out??????? Am I correctly reading between the lines about this Leo guy, or is that just wishful thinking on my part. Anyway all seems to be well with you, am glad you are over your stomach thing, remember "Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in getting up every time we do", this is a line from Confucius, I rather like it and think it so apt, for people with courage like you.xx