If you are from Rio, even during your busiest days you will have time for a weekly soccer game. The weekend isn't the weekend without an hour or so lying on the sand. You never have exact change for bus fare because there is a person onboard to handle the transaction. You rarely push elevator buttons, but always have someone to make conversation with as you are taken up or down.
It's not a perfect place, this city. It has more than it's share of poverty. On it's outskirts, there exist some of the largest slums in the world, created haphazardly and only vaguely under government control. There are crime, drugs, unemployment, all the usual societal plagues. There are, as I've unhappily experienced, cockroaches.
But I'm dreading leaving it. Since December 1, the thought of my departure has remained stubbornly in the back of my mind. Each night, I try to put off sleeping, wishing the day won't end.
It's not that I don't want to return home. I do; it will be nice to see everyone, and the thought of Christmas doesn't quite make sense in this climate. But there are other things to return to as well - jobs to apply to, stability to seek - regular adult-type things that I should have been doing two months ago but somehow managed to avoid for just a little longer.
And perhaps it's not the "adult" nature that frightens me so much as the American-ness of it all. As a nation, we're not known for living balanced lifestyles. We are fat; we are workaholics; we don't have free healthcare. Fast food is cheap; organic fruit the exception. I've gotten used to skirts and sandals every day, and freshly-squeezed juice at every corner. I'm going to miss the man who sells us our grapefruit and guavas.
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