Feeling foreign

When I came back from Australia to Brazil after just 16 months overseas, various people asked: Why?

The easy answer was “I intend to build my life close to my family and close friends”. Although that is partly true, there was another feeling I could never express clearly, a sensation that I would never totally understand the context and fit in another culture.

Today, as part of my preparation for a 3-week backpacking trip through Chile, Bolivia and Peru, I was reading Isabel Allende’s “My invented country”. She is Chilean but has been living in the US for many years now. At some point, I found the description I could never articulate as well:

“I understand the language, but I lack the keys. When we meet our friends, I can’t really participate of the conversations, because I don’t know much about what had happened and about the people they are referring to, I had not watched the same movies when I was young, had not danced to Elvis’ epileptic guitar, had not smoked marihuana nor had I protested against the Vietnam war. How can I not be a foreigner if I don’t feel any fascination for Clinton’s sexual scandal? […] Baseball is another mystery for me; I can’t understand so much passion towards a group of fat people expecting a ball that never comes.”