At nineteen I was beyond exited to travel abroad on my own for the first time. I´ve spent two months preparing myself for the trip. On the day of my departure, my mother gathered a few family members and closest friends to go to the airport. On the way to the airport I wasn’t able to join their conversation because my heart was beating too lowed with the feeling of antecipation. I remember holding the fax with the english family’s address and information that would receive me for a month and realizing my biggest fear was not being able to communicate. Since childhood I’ve been a shy person that always smiles making people assume that I was outgoing. The first two times I’ve been abroad, my brother Pedro was with me and did all the talking. I understood almost everything people said, but never answered.
On my way to the airport I remember thinking that something would happen and prevent me from going. But everything went somoothly, the plane travel to brussels, the three hour waiting at the brussels airport and the plane travel from brussels to London. At heatrow airport in London I took the undergroung to Victoria Station, and there a train to Brighton, and there a taxi to the address writen in the fax I was holding for the last twenty hours and finally arrived to my destination. It was a tipical british flat which for brazilians is a house divided in three. I knocked at the door and nobody answered. After five minute waiting I began becoming concern something was wrong. I’ve tried asking for help from the neighbours with no sucess. The family on the house to the left made a sign with their hands that I translated as “go away” when they saw me approaching their window. And a girl that later I’ve found out was a Brigthon University student told me to keep knocking. It was 9 o clock at night and very dark and I had no ideia if I should go right or left. So I sat down on my large suitcase holding my shoulder bag and cried for fifteen minutes in an attempt to have the guts to go look for help.
While crying I noticed an Indian Take Away Restaurant three houses to left. I’ve got in and stood up at the restaurant reception holding my fax and feeling the heating warm my frozen body. A woman approached and very gently asked if I was ok and the only thing I could say was: “There’s nobody at home.” She took a look at the fax and started asking questions: “Are you from Brazil?”, “Are you here alone?”, “I see you’re nineteen years old, right?”… I kept answering her by moving my head up and down and then she said: ” I see you can understand me so why don’t tell me what is wrong?” And I started telling her I came to England to study English and I was supposed to be received by the family whose information was written in the fax and how after almost twenty four houers traveling nobody was waiting for me. The more I noticed she understood me, the more I spoke. She took me to her house and explained to me that the city has stopped to wath a box match in wich one of the contestans was from Brigthon. After the match was over, she called Mrs. Maureen Carl Forbers (the one that was supposed to be waiting for me) and told wath happened. She took me home and Mrs. Forbers told me she tought I was arriving the next day, a Sunday.
This experience changed who I am because before that I wasn’t able to speak to people I didn’t know. And most of all it was imperative that it had happened at the beginging of the trip because it allowed me to enjoy my staying even more. After what happened I felt so sure I was able to take of myself and talk to people (in any language) that I extend the trip and travelled by myself around France and Italy for a month.
