A colder end of August day

I went to the beach yesterday evening. I am trying to enjoy as much as I can the things I love of here. I biked to the beach in the evening. I saw a stork and many many flamingoes...I am going to miss the bike path that goes to the beach so much!
I was colder at the beach. Windy. And this morning seems to be a perfect fall day, sunny and a bit chilly. It reminds me of the season I loved most when I was living in New Haven. The beginning of the fall, when the temperature started to be a bit colder, and the air in the morning was crispy. I loved to walk around when the weather was like that and I especially enjoyed the East Rock Park in the fall. I have so many nice memories of so many different places around the world.

my stuff is moved

Vila do Conde...day four of this road-moving-trip.

I feel very uncomfortable in being in a country where I want to interact with people, I understand the language and I can't speak it. It doesn't happen too often, but when it does, I hate it. I got a book on quick sentences to learn in Portuguese to get around. It is a start. Then as soon as I will move here, learning the language will be one of the first things I will do.

Last night I had a bad crisis. And today too. I cried for some time without stop. I am not ready to move and mentally I guess I realized only now that I am seriously going to move my life to another country again. Yes, I have friends here, even a very good close friend here. Yes, there is the sea and hopefully I will find an apartment just a few streets away from it. Yes, the working environment is very stimulating. Yes, people of Portugal are generally very nice....yes, there are a lot of positive things and I can see all that. I also feel lucky in having got the grant to work here, possibly for long time, on my own project, when the economy is going worldwide so bad. I can see all the good things of this. It is not that I am ungrateful. But still. I am not ready to move. I am not ready to leave my old life behind. I am even less ready to leave the people I got attached to in these years. I know, there is skype and sms and emails. But it is not the same. Nothing can replace the real time spent together with someone I love or I am close to. Nothing can replace a real hug. In my life I found a few very good huggers. People who are able to hug me and make me feel part of something, not alone, as if I just got home. I have met one of these good huggers in Montpellier and I am sure I will miss hiding in his arms when I need. And then there are the people I shared these past three years with. They have been with me trough the break ups and the ups and downs of my life in these years and the surgery I had and the bad and good news at work. They have been with me, especially one girl. A few days ago I was very down and I spent an entire afternoon with her. We talked and then she showed me the pictures of her last trip. I felt connected and I loved it. The people I feel connected to are very precious to me.

I don't want to leave all this now. No matters what I will find here next. I am just not ready. I have many more things to live, share and experience in Montpellier before leaving. And yes, there are plane connections that are not too expensive, and it is not so far....but it will be not the same once I move, unfortunately. I wish I could live in a place I like where I could also have all the people who are important to me. I already know that this can never happen.

Today, to ease my being so agitate and sad, my mom and I went for more than a two hours walk along the beach and then this afternoon we relaxed at the beach, just reading and swimming in the ocean. It was good. I liked it....but it is weird and sad that right now I am not able to fully enjoy it. I am happy because I know that this is something I will enjoy of my life here, but I can't fully enjoy it now because I am aware of the fact that my life here will mean the end of my old life in Montpellier. And I don't like the idea too much.

moving- part three

We finally got to Vila do Conde, in Portugal.
From Burgos to get here we had to go up and down, up and down, up and down and so on for an infinite time across many mountains.....We had the same exact scenario for many hours....and unfortunately also the same music as we only bought a few cds of Zucchero and by now we listened to all of them many many times (and none of us likes radio very much)....I will need a detoxication from Zucchero after this trip.

The car was fully loaded with my things to move to Portugal. At the end I couldn't fit everything in there, but we managed to move a lot, the most important and heavier things for sure....now they are all in my friend garage, till when I will have my own apartment here.

I had a nice welcome as soon as I got here from a couple of people with whom I will work.
I also confirm my first impression that people of Portugal keep being very nice and drive very bad.
I miss Montpellier and the close people I have there....Today I passed from feeling home sick to being excited for this new life.
My mom's reaction after seeing how far is the place where I will be working from where I would like to leave make my mood dropping to the floor.....she didn't seem too happy about this change in my life....at the end the important thing is that I will be happy here...and I hope so, even if for now is difficult to leave people I grew attached too and my apartment and the things I like of Montpellier behind.

moving- part two

I am in Burgos right now.
Today it was a full, complicated day.
We drove in a pooring rain...we....my mom actually drove...she doesn't let me drive...never...
Anyway, the rain was pooring.
My mood was in full pms mood...
We stopped for lunch and we got ripped off.....The price we paid for lunch was higher than the amount we paid for one night in the hotel included breakfast for two people...
We got to Burgos and we got lost trying to find the hotel.
Immediately after I got a phone call from my bank in France telling me that for security reasons they had to block my atm card because it was among the cards that were possibly be used for frauds...fortunately I have with me another credit card, otherwise I would be without money....
Then I got a bad news about work.
Then I got my period, I went to buy some pads and I bought something gigantic, which I realized only too late that it was for people with bladder problems...

Then we finally set off my mom and I and we enjoyed Burgos, which is a very nice town with amazing monuments. We strolled along the river and it was relaxing...fortunately....but I guess not relaxing enough to stop my brain from thinking in a scattered nervous way about many things.....

Tomorrow we will head to Portugal, where I will leave my stuff.....

moving,moving,moving

I am writing this post using my mom's little laptop....very cute, but my fingers are bigger than each of the letters, so to write every single world I need about 3 minutes of writing, deleting some additional letter that shouldn't have been there, writing again, etc. etc....basically, writing a single post will take me an hour :-(

I moved. Not definitively, but I am moving most of my stuff to Portugal already. Yesterday I felt very blue about it. No more pictures on the walls of my apartment, no more board on which to mimic the surfing, no more rollerblades, or books, or many summer dresses...not many things left in my apartment in Montpellier. All these things will spend the next months closed in boxes and left in a basement of a friend of mine in Portugal.

My schedule for the next months includes the following crazy trips across countries:
- Currently, a road trip with my mom to bring my stuff to Portugal. We left Montpellier today and we will be back on the 24. First stop, the one of today, Lleida, in Spain....where we found 37 degrees of temperature to wait for us....no matter what, we went for a long long walk...I needed some movements after so many hours in the car.
- Back to Montpellier till September 25, when I will go to Luxembourg for a week.
- Back to Montpellier again.
- Sometimes during the first two weeks of October, I will spend a long week end in Italy.
- Back to Montpellier till October 15 or 17
- Take a plane to move myself and my life to Portugal.
- November in Costa Rica, with a stop in the USA for a few days.
- Back to Portugal for a few days.
- December 8 I will have to be in Montpellier. I will stay for a few days and then
- Italy for Christmas

My life is going to be a bit scattered around, as always when I move from one country to another. I will miss the few close friends I made in Montpellier. I will truly miss some of these people. And I know that I am lucky because I already have friends where I will go in Portugal. I even have one very close friend there. But every time I move from a place to another, it is always hard to leave people I feel close to behind....I hope that we will be able to keep in touch and see each other, but of course it will be not the same and it makes me very very sad.

I guess that has someone told me recently, this is my life and I should be kind of used to it...but the truth is that every time is painful for me to leave people and things of my old life to which or to whom I am attached to to start a new life somewhere else.

PS. I really have problems with Spanish food...it is so much about meat and I do not really eat meat that much.....My mom and I got crazy tonight to find something to eat.....but we managed.

PPS. Next stop of this road trip: Burgos, tomorrow.

Packing, packing, packing

Here we are.....moving again...don't know if it is for good or not....but this is the way it is....The other day a guy wondered why I am so down about leaving here and moving again, as I should be used to this by now....this is after all pretty much as it has been for me in the last 10 years.
But I am not used to this and moving didn't get easier and easier with time. It just actually got harder. I was just starting to put my roots here. I have some very good friends here (a few days ago, I just skipped one afternoon at work, to spend it all with one of these good friends of mine), I love the fact that my life here doesn't depend on a car and I car bike everywhere, I have my favorite bookstore (which is a very important life essential for me), my favorite bakery, my favorite beach place, I like the people I am working with, and even if I am not totally crazy about Montpellier, I do like it here and I did like spending the last three years here.

I am a bit blue in these days because of this moving.

And I hate, deeply hate, to see all my books in boxes. I have a very few material things in my life, exactly because I keep moving all the time, and I developed a profound attachment to these material things...my books are among these things. And I hate to have them in boxes, it makes me feel like if a part of me was in a cage.

I am also excited about starting a new life in a new country, learning a new language, spending time with some very good friends I already have there. But still...it is a change that I would have honestly avoided right now. But the job market is currently so bad, and this new job may represent a good opportunity for me that I can't be too picky. I will have to come here often, as I will keep collaborating for work with people here, and to visit some of my friends, but it will not be the same. And I will miss my apartment. I really like the cozy nest that I made for myself. It is just me and when I step in here, every time I truly feel home. I was the same when I was leaving in the USA. Leaving my apartment was very very hard, as I liked a lot and I loved living there.

I will be ok and I am sure that I will find things to love about my new place and my new life, but it is always hard to leave people I love and my current life (as it has been in the last three years) behind and start new again. For sure my life is never, ever boring, as it changes so much, all the time!

In love

Gosh! Today I had an epiphany. I love the way I smell. I may be in the process of becoming nuts, but I discovered that I truly love the smell of my skin. I think that if I wouldn't be me, I would fall in love with myself.

I think that from feeling very insecure in my past relationships and my work, now I am going exactly at the opposite end and I feel very much in love with myself. I guess that as long as I don't become self-absorbed or very arrogant, it may not be a bad thing. Especially since I struggled so much and for so long to find my self-confidence back. I just hope to not lose it again, especially if one day I will be in a relationship again.