This weekend will bring us to São Paulo again. Tomorrow we are taking a bus to the city center with friends to see a twelve-hour tango show and other presentations of theater, art, photography, dance, and music. I’m looking forward to heading in and seeing another part of the city besides the mall. Next weekend, I think we’ll be going to another city about three hours away called Campos do Jordão. It’s up in the mountains and we’ll go hiking or horseback riding or something else outside. Now the weather is relatively crisp and cool, it’s easier to spend more time outside, and reminds me of fall in New England. Although fall here is fifty degrees warmer than it is at home.
One of my teacher friends told me today that there are thirty-five more school days left until the end of school. This seems unreal to me. And it brought me back to my own middle schools days of counting down. I can’t seem to remember which month we began the countdown in, but I do remember feeling giddy everytime the yellow chalk number in the upper right-hand corner of the black board would decrease by one. Thirty five is still a pretty big number–still lots of days to plan for. But nonetheless, it is approaching the end of the school year and I feel a little giddiness inside.
I am mostly giddy because I have been thinking so much of going home. I miss Vermont so much and I truly want to sit down in my room or on the back porch or in the river behind my house and close my eyes and feel comfortable. I don’t have many close friends left in Vermont now, since many have moved away, and many with whom I’ve lost touch over the years; when I lived in CT or MA or RI and thought of coming home, getting in touch with my friends, or going home because of them, was a big motivation for visiting Vermont. But not now. Now I am craving sunshine on the back deck, and Sunday morning sunlight seeping through my windowshades, and falling asleep to the sound of the river, and simply walking up the steps to my room or roaming around the empty house. This is the longest I’ve been away from home–both my parents and the place itself–and I am needing it now more than ever.
