Not Quite the Winter Wonderland I Had Imagined: Holidays Abroad pt. I

So I am very aware that it was a conscious decision of mine to spend Christmas abroad here in Brazil, but the full consequences of my decisions didn’t really hit me until about six in the morning of December 26th.

The holiday blues had long taken ahold of me some weeks before. If I can recall, they surged from the muddled depths of my thoughts during a time in which many Americans would have been eating the first or second helpings of their Thanksgiving dinners. I was on the phone with my grandmother who happened to be spending the holiday in North Carolina with my uncles instead of the usual Niagara Falls.

“So when are you coming back?” she dubiously asked.

My heart stopped.

“Well, I was thinking of just coming back in July because of the ticket prices…but maybe I could come back sometime after the holidays…?”

“That’s unacceptable. You can’t miss Thanksgiving AND Christmas!”

She was right, but I wouldn’t realize this until a month later when, after a very impromptu night of clubbing on Christmas Day (during which time I thought in the back of my mind that something was terribly wrong about going to a nightclub on that of all nights), I found myself sitting on a bench pouring my heart out to a street kid in front of a neighborhood botequim in Ipanema. Not only did I surprise my friends and my interlocutor, Lucas (the criança da rua), but I surprised myself the most. I guess that saudades (in this case I’m going to translate it as homesickness) strikes you when you least expect it.

And especially when it was pretty much as perfect a Christmas that you can get when you’re thousands of miles away in another hemisphere and away from your family and closest friends! Professor Michael Ferreira, my very first Portuguese professor from Georgetown who’s spending the holidays here in Rio with his family, had the kindness to invite me to Christmas lunch/dinner/after-dinner snack at his father’s house. It was great! There were tons of Portuguese dishes, holiday glee, and mirth that only laughing children, Shrek, rabanada (French toast à la brésilienne), dry wine, and long-winded, but sagacious elderly gentlemen can bring. But in spite of all the good that surrounded that was being quite freely bestowed upon me, the fact that there was no snow, no crazy last-minute Christmas shopping antics, and that I was sweating from the sticky humidity that permeated the air all afternoon were enough just weren’t enough to calm the longing in my heart to return back to the United States.

“Is it always like this when you live abroad?” I wondered. “How can you ever get over it?” Well, I don’t really expect to figure this out any time during the next six months, but even though Christmas got me down big time, I believe that I’m all the more hopeful for the New Year because of it. When I embark upon the sea at Copacabana beach, white blossoms in tow, and all dressed in white, I hope to be casting away the lingering tristeza that has marked my holiday season, and welcoming a new wave of opportunities.