Home

'Home is where the heart' is what they say. After doing a Google search on famous 'home' quotes my new favorite is 'Home is not where you live, but where they understand you'. Any way, I guess everyone has their own definition of home. I even find myself saying about a hotel 'let's go home' when I'm on vacation. For me 'home' has always been where the key fits best, most of the times more literally than figuratively.

I now find myself a little homeless. This is not because I don't have a house to sleep in, on the contrary, I have many houses I can sleep in. I just don't know which one of these houses or places is home.

I have returned from Brazil after five great months, for a short visit to Holland. I had to pick up my diploma and some other documents in order for me to start my new life in Brazil, which will involve me going back to university for a post-graduate course in Portuguese! O yes...I will explain more about my course in a later blog (when I actually know more about what it is I am going to do). For now I'm just here for three weeks and going back to Brazil to start the course end of March. After this I have to travel back to Europe again in April; first for CISV and then to get my student visa. This visa (also worth another blog post) will allow me access to my new home for at least a year. The plan is now to stay in Brazil at least another 1,5 year until August 2011.

So, back home (in Holland), I have some time to reflect a little on my feelings about these two countries. I was in a complete reversed culture shock, which I think is normal. The biggest experience was the feeling of being able to hear after being nearly deaf for five months. Dutch is not a beautiful language, but at least I understand everything that is said around me again! I can read books, newspapers, listen to the radio, watch the news, follow meaningless conversations in the train....The next big feeling of being home is the feeling of stress that you have 'so much to do' and 'so many people to see'. Well, if that's stress then I'd love to have a life like that..because isn't it great that there are so many people that want to see you when you get home?

Of course our government fell even though nothing is really wrong in this country and it's really cold here, so it's not all love and happiness, but it's good to know that, I guess this is home. My new adventures will take me away from this home, but funny enough are also only possible because I have this home. I sometimes wonder if the adventures will be worth missing all these great people, but I guess there is only one way to find out. And as my new favorite quote says: home is not per se where you live, it's (literally sometimes) where people understand you.

Thank you to all my friends and family for being so patient and understanding!