Back in Sao Paulo

Sunday 06/07/08
at 5.40
Day 1

After a 11 hrs flight from Paris I had a soft landing in Sao Paulo, my home for the time coming.
"Soft" was the landing as far as it goes for the plane. I myself had quite a re-integration 'awakening' :). The 6 months in Estonia had left its marks and the contrasts stroke more vividly than about 2 years ago when I first came to Brazil.

It was still dark in the morning (at 6 am), when I arrived since it's a winter time in Brazil. Though, it ain't during summer neither that the paulistanos can enjoy the 19 hrs daylight that the nordics can enjoy.
The air smells sweet of pollution (never knew that CO2 smells sweet!!!), there's a chaos in traffic (I'm still not able to block out that noise, since it's sooo vivid, it's like as if I was in the boiling pot), and from my 24th floor window I can see kilometers of stone and glass - the skyscrapers!!
It is such a contrast to my home or even to Holland where I had a 2 day stop over before changing the continents.
All in all, day one was a bit shocking - part of it because home had got deeper and stronger under my skin within these last 6 months of waiting for the visa, and secondly, for the contrasts really being huge.
Only relief was seeing some Brazilian friends at night for a beer - Marcio, Monika, Dea, Guga, and Zoe, of course - helped a lot to ease the re-integration hurdles.


Day 2

It's a night of the day 2, and I'm content. The weird sort of shivering anxiety that I had yesterday due to the initial "shock" is almost gone. Or I have found a way to handle it. It has turned into a positive movement in me...
I spent a whole day in the company I'm going to work - and got assurance regarding the decision to stay in Brazil.
Also met up with Pioneers of Change at night - many special people I had not met for a while, and good, deep conversations. Good energy that I would need more time to write about...

Now off to sleep...my new start in Brazil will require a total lifestyle makeover :) - I'm a night person, but need to somehow turn into a morning person (that's basically cos my work starts at 8 and it'll take an hour at least to get to work...so you can only imagine :).

Boa noite queridos!!