sehnsucht.

i must say that in these last weeks i've had my first ever twinges of homesickness. and when i say homesickness, i mean a longing for previous and even potential locations i have/may live/d in... i drift back and remember that once i called damascus home. and paris. rolling green hills in england... berlin naturally, and then the one which triumphs over them all: new york! oh new york.... i feel our time was cut so short, and i think of the place everyday. wonderful new york times photo retrospectives don't help either.

then i jump into kayak.com and search for potential itineraries and plans for next summer: working at the edna adan maternity hospital is my current ideal. i even inquired east african safari air safari express (yes that's the name of the airline - hehe!) about the costs of flights to hargeisa. working simultaneously here on a variety of future ethiopian projects (phd + potential fistula organization... ee! exciting!) is again, not helping.

don't get me wrong, i am happy to be here in brazil: the work is getting better, i am learning loads - about innovative ways of treatment and public health, new perspectives on maternal health and maternity. of development and poverty cycles. of the reality of behaviour change, education formation and therapy. a full language even!

it's just that outside of that, there is admittedly so so little. as i explained to dear ali* this week, sorocaba could be most closely compared to rancho cucumunga, if any of you remember that blip of a place on the side of the 15 on the drive to utah. the greatest activity here is to go to the mall. which guess what i totes did on friday night. i went to the movies, and it was actually splendid.

but the point is that the work is not nearly enough to fill the hours that go by: the girls need to be on their own, make decisions and craft their lives on their own. and so the outside hours, which are occasionally filled with truly lovely lunches and conversations with my handful of friends here, are spent burying into the entire collected short stories of henry james (5 volumes at 1000 pages each), an anthology of american women's writing, and novelised versions of ethiopian medical history.

while i can by no means complain about all the reading (love.it.), in those down hours my mind keeps drifting to hopping the 1 train to film forum. to balcony dinners with toni on skalitzer straße. and then goes forward to returning to africa, where i am 100% more in my comfort zone than here in this brazilian version of inland california.

i promise this is not a complaint, and i wouldn't want to be anywhere but where i am right now. i just feel i am allowed feelings of homesickness now, at age 25, right? considering i never had them before?

and does anyone else have those restless longings for other places you've lived? places with whom your relationship was prematurely ended?

i can only dig into the here and now, and have confidence that future versions of myself will once again reinhabit manhattan. kreuzberg. maybe even paris. africa for sure. and for the moment i do have brazil before me: sorocaba may be boring**, but i can fly to rio for less than $100 roundtrip.***

and now let me go tuck in with mr. james for the rest of the evening,
here's to you all in your lugares diversos :)

beijinhos,
julianne.


*as you can see ali is also feeling homesick for places that aren't technically her "home." i feel better already.
**sorry sorocaba, i don't mean to be mean.
***yes that may happen in two weeks. aaaah sera muito legal!! will keep you posted.

disclaimer: my blogposts have turned into novels here in brazil. (or were they always?) (again, blame the fact that i moved alone to rancho cucumunga. :) to all of you who make it to the ends of my tirades, you deserve a fresh pair of havaianas and dolce de leite. i will try to accommodate pronto.