Yes. These two places are home to me now.
I received a call this morning from the justice´s secretary to inform me about my work leave. The possibility being able to spend lots of time in Whangarei again made me think about this.
And this is also interesting because my experience in the first semester of 2007 was the first time I lived outside Brasil and I lived in a place so different from Rio. Plus, there are things I love about Rio and things I hate about it. There are things I love about Whangarei and hate about it.
But this “city” thing is all beside the point here because what makes me think and feel HOME is the “family thing” and the emotional value of everything.
I have been living in this apartment in Leblon, Rio, since I was 10 years old. There are so many memories. There is a lot of my mother in this apartment (we still keep her cloths and personal things inside her wardrobe….). And there is my father here, and my brother. Outside this apartment, there is aunties place and aunt Nina´s place as well. To my point of view (and maybe there´s a bit of cultural aspects), in Rio Cam and I have much more family support. And there are many times I imagine how would be our day to day routine in Rio.
In Whangarei, my family is my husband, Cameron. And our little place. Our place where we set things the way we want. We have a day to day routine we built together (like my husband making cafe com leite and bringing it to me in bed every morning or going out together for supermarket shopping, there is the Library which is my favorite place in town, the second hand bookshops, Sunday cleaning, our experimental cooking, etc…). We can walk into parks and forests, we can make picnics. Soon I will meet my new friends at WINGS group and it can make a difference.
Another interesting thing is that we have more “history” in New Zealand than in Brasil (although, as I said, we have a stronger loving family in terms of emotional and material support for us – sorry! – in Brasil).
I have been learning A LOT, life has been teaching me SO MUCH since I met my husband and I feel absolutely blessed for this. Cheers, God!
Know what, I wrote about Auckland below. Auckland is very special to me because its such an amazing, exciting and beautiful place and living there with all the options avaliable is so appealing to me. But its not home (at least not yet).
Hopefully, a nice solution will come for Cam and I to be living together again SOON, because we want to have a baby. Also, hopefully, our child will be safe and happy in this crazy crazy world.
It will be so interesting to see how I am going to feel next time I arrive in Whangarei. But one thing is for sure: it has grown deep on me.
Rio and Whangarei are home to me now. And I feel myself a very lucky girl!
