The first night I slept in California after moving here from Brazil, I closed my eyes, and to my surprise, I heard nothing. In São Paulo, the largest city in the Southern Hemisphere, the sounds at night were hectic. Every time I would close my eyes to sleep, I would hear hundreds of car horns, planes, helicopters, sirens and people yelling. Much like the rest of my life in Brazil, the sounds of the night were filled with chaos.
This summer, I visited my home city. This was the third year in a row that I had the opportunity to return to where I am from and connect with all my family, friends and culture since I moved away over five years ago.
Like all my other trips there, I had a fantastic time. Going to Brazil after living here in California is very shocking because of my different routine. Many of the things I can do here are extremely hard to do in Brazil because of safety problems — simple things like going out alone in the street or staying out late are difficult because you constantly need to worry about being the victim of a crime. Yet, despite these setbacks, going out with my friends, seeing all of my extended family, and hanging out in places like the malls and schools I grew up in still makes me feel like I never left. While there, I also had the opportunity to visit my friend’s farmhouse outside the city, which I haven’t visited since I moved away.
On the flight back, though, I realized that for the first time since I started visiting Brazil as a non-resident, I didn’t want to move back. Sure, I had an amazing time there, but for the first time, it felt like I had more to live for in the United States.

Initially, I was very excited to move to the U.S. Despite the seemingly endless downsides to the move, like losing all my friends, I was excited for new opportunities to enjoy things like safety and freedom that were so much worse where I lived in Brazil than they are here.
On top of that, my parents were also fed up with the stressful, fast-paced lifestyle that São Paulo demanded. They constantly felt that we were missing out on something and that they couldn’t have a good work-life balance. Every weekend, we would have to find a balance between traveling with friends, spending time with family, going out to dinners and still having downtime.
However, this excitement didn’t last long. Much of the past five years of my life, after the move, were spent reminiscing on all the conversations, laughs and moments I had with my friends back home. For some reason, unlike the rest of my family, I took a very long time to adapt to life in the U.S., especially socially. From the beginning of seventh grade when I moved here all the way to the beginning of junior year, the only thing I had on my mind was returning to Brazil.
The first two years of my life in the U.S. were only worsened because of the pandemic, which made it much harder for me to make new friends because everyone was stuck at home. I only had around one semester of real in-person school at Greene Middle School before “Zoom school” began.
Still, even after the pandemic ended and classes went back to normal, I struggled to find the same level of social satisfaction in the U.S. as I used to have back in Brazil. Throughout my freshman and sophomore years of high school, I was able to make new friends, but I still felt like everyone who was important and mattered to me in my life was in Brazil.
Every summer, when I would visit Brazil, I would have amazing experiences. Though I was only there for around a month each time, it really felt like I was getting back the time I had lost living in the U.S. At the end of every trip, I always left with an uneasy feeling, knowing that I was returning to a place where I would be much less happy.
Finally, towards the start of my junior year, I realized that if I were to truly enjoy all the benefits that the U.S. has to offer at a level where I would want to continue living here, then I would have to make a conscious effort to actually meet new people that I like.

So, for the first few weeks of my junior year, I made that effort. I was constantly making conversation with people who were in my new classes. During lunch, I began sitting and talking to a new group of people.
Overall, this was a very scary period in my life because I knew that this would probably dictate how much I would enjoy my junior and senior years of high school. On top of that, I was scared because I didn’t know whether new people would like me or not. Still, I knew how important it was that I made this effort, and thankfully, it paid off.
Today, despite all the fantastic times I have had in Brazil with my friends and family, I am glad that I am living in the U.S. I will never forget all the experiences I had when I lived there, and I will always be glad to visit Brazil every summer, but I now understand that nothing in life is permanent, and sometimes, it’s best to let go and move on.