Why have I decided to move to a small city in the southern part of Brazil?
Well, at first, when I was in USA Boston Massachusetts, (2016) I thought of something: “What am I really doing here? It feels great, it sounds great, but it’s not my home, plus it’s far from family".
Then I looked at the world map and brainstormed the best 10 cities to live in Brazil, given the fact that my mom was 68 years old and I was 28.
Bingo! We moved right after I came back from USA.
The thing is: how it turned out to be one of the best experiences I’ve ever had as well as one of the toughests.
When we got here we were well received, apart from the majority of the Italian/German community that raised and owns the town (probably the state) after the 2nd world war.
However, things didn’t quite work out as they should.
I lost most of my best friends from Belo Horizonte, I dreamt more of a healthy city whereas it offered the best cakes, sweets and candies in the country. (Diabetes intended).
Therefore, turned out that me and my mother were in closure, since we had lost most of our lives in Belo Horizonte.
Nonetheless I managed to change my major to Aerospace Engineering, which was the “main" goal along with the city’s high human development.
Everything was perfect, townsfolk, food, everything.
2 years later I found out that this place was kind of haunted. (Pay attention to the next lines).
Heard rumours about the community not accepting our stay here and asking us to go back to Minas Gerais State.
Then I asked: “why would they do that?”
I figured out that they do this with everyone whom it’s not from southern Brazil.
It wasn’t about me neither my mother, it was a kind of city parallel policy.
With the covid-19, all I had to do was stay at home, almost abandoned my course, and got overwhelmed by almost all of my personal issues.
I’ve taken several pills for schizophrenia as you can see they accompanied me during my life since I was 18. And still do. Thus, I think it’s too early to take a next step towards of why moving to another city is very hard.
I opened a YouTube channel and started saying lots of things about engineering and some of my personal intel.
It worked just fine. It boosted my will to keep going to university regardless of the distance (11 km by bus).
Afterwards I decided to lock my enrollment to take care of my mom’s diseases. Haven’t completed a cycle at University. After all moms fell on the floor and had injuries that only I could help, since we were by ourselves here.
And that leads to another discovery: German/Italian Brazilians in the south just don’t want to help you in anyway because they either have a lot of problems or a lot of money to brag for.
Nonetheless, it was an amazing experience with kind and generous south Brazilians (for real) and I hope to get back to my hometown, and get in touch with my friends again. Hopefully, to gain their trust again, it was an unconventional way out of my hometown back in 2016.
Spend some time with our family and then I start to think of my degree again…
It’s kinda lame to think that I have 33 years old and haven’t graduated yet. Instead of studying I ended up dealing with several issues. From my point of view, it was the best thing that has ever happened to me. Why? Because I got to pay attention to my mother after years of studying. For the first time I was being myself and caring for her and becoming a better person overall.
Thankfully everything turned out right and I will just wait until our next trip out of south Brazil (which is not Argentina, please lol).
If you read until here, you deserve a golden medal from the Tokyo Olympics, because I wouldn’t haha.
All the best and see you next week for more info on our journey!
Peace,
André Pena
