I was supposed to be an au pair in the United States. It did not work out. At the time it felt like a door closing.

Last year I went to a Rede Brasil Suíça event and did not know what to expect.

It is in the marketing, the products, the content. Someone figured out that nostalgia converts and now the whole internet smells like 1994.

I was maybe ten when I had a vivid dream and told a friend about it at school.

I have written before about bad advice. I have received enough of it to fill a book that nobody would want to read. But there is one that keeps coming back.

I did not tell many people I was going to move abroad. My brother knew. Some family members. But my friends, the people I saw every week, most of them did not hear it from me.

At the Coffee with Expats meeting everyone had a story. From Egypt. Speaks ten languages. Parents were diplomats. I sat there thinking I had none of that.

There are two kinds of passionate people.

The inherited scorecard is the set of standards you absorbed without noticing. What a good parent looks like. What success looks like. What kind of life is considered worth wanting.

I have been on a search for a mentor. The vira-lata move of assuming nobody would bother to teach me. The ten steps ahead brain that forgot to ask for directions. I went into that meeting with my antennae fully extended. Someone in here might be my knight in shining armour.

A friend here in Switzerland asked me the other day if I have someone bigger than me in the industry who can be my mentor. I said no. I am usually the mentor. What I did not say, because I was still figuring it out, is why.

Research confirms that exhaustion is experienced and expressed differently depending on culture. Brazilian Portuguese has a phrase for it: tô morta de cansaço. Dead from tiredness. Not dead-ish. Dead.

I have been watching presentations. The ones that stayed with me were not the ones with the best slides. They were the ones where someone stood up, looked at the room, and just talked. So I made a decision.

My dad moved from Uruguay to Brazil when he was a teenager. New country, new language, new everything. His mom pulled him aside before they left the house: blend in, don't draw attention to yourself, just blend in. The plan was solid. There was one small problem.

At an event about African traditions, I learned the meaning of “teranga”.

We were at a hotel in Uruguay. None of us kids wanted to speak Spanish. My sister took the leap, ordered ham and cheese toast, and made it through.