Starting to Say Goodbye

Funny how you can get nostalgic about a place before you've even left. With less than three weeks before I fly home, I've already entered into that territory. In no time I'll have graduated and I'll be looking for a fulfilling, challenging and inspiring job (if anyone has any leads, by all means let me know!). I'll have adapted back to the rhythm and flux of Austin, to daily life with my boyfriend, to breakfast tacos and Barton Springs and delicious potlucks with my friends, to driving a car again. And my time here will start to feel like something that happened in a sepia-tinted dream.

Soon I'll be that girl. The one who instead of saying, "This one time at band camp..." will be saying, "This one time in Porto Alegre..." to anyone who will listen. Of course, I've still got a lot between me and my 6 PM flight on May 18. A LOT. Some of which I should be attending to this very moment instead of writing a blog entry. But hey, this is how I always operate, putting off the important stuff. I'm in this time period that my mother described as, "...such a whirlwind and a wanting to stay longer, yet feeling the rich fullness of the time." It's this moment where I want to grab onto everything and make it last, but where I'm also ready for home.

I've been talking to some of the coordinators of the youth groups I've been working with, saying that I hope, hope, hope to find a job working with adolescents back in Texas (fingers crossed!). And then if that's the case, oh the possibilities. With a glint in our eyes we imagine embarking on projects of cross cultural exchange where the kids here can learn about the kids there and vice versa...like wouldn't it be so cool for kids to share pictures with each other about their lives, lived 5,000 miles away from each other?

The connections I've made won't be cut just because I leave the country...it's just the nostalgia I have for the little moments, all the walking around this city, all the waiting at bus stops, all the cafezinhos, daily greetings with doormen, finally knowing exactly where the coconut juice is located in the supermarket, always feeling pressured by the huge clock in front of the hospital, that time a little old lady asked me to help her across the street, how soft the skin of her hand felt against mine. It's a nostalgia for a place and time that can't be revisited because each time I return (and I do want to come back) will be a different experience. The deep colors of the graffiti that I took pictures of will have faded. Likely there will be new graffiti in its place.

And so it goes. 
[Thank you Kurt Vonnegut for that oft-repeated phrase in Slaughterhouse Five which struck me as profound when I first read it at age 13 and has stuck with me ever since].