Wednesday, June 11, 2008

All is well that ends well



I finally made it in 30 minutes! I wrote and revised practically my whole text...at the end, though, I thought of adding one more sentence (it was not really necessary, though) and I didn't check how much time I had! Pretty dumb thing to do, because the window shut down while I was writing and I couldn't finish the sentence. I sort of messed up at the very end. I'll have to remember not to do this on the day of the test...

Everything else went pretty well, I think...here goes my text, so that you can see y yourself (574 words, btw)


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Sometimes there are unexpected things that happen in our life and that toss us in the most dreadful desperation. We get very upset, angry or sad when an event changes the course of our plans. However, not all bad things bring about bad outcomes. It can happen, in fact, that unpleasant events turn out to bring us pleasant surprises and results. This is what happened to me almost eight years ago, when I was forced, against my will, to leave my home country.

I lived for most of my life in Italy with part of my family. My mother, though, lived in Brazil with my brother and all of her part of the family. At the age of 16, for several reasons, my parents decided it was better for me to move to Brazil and live with my mother. I do not need to say it was a big shock for me, and I really did not want to leave my school, my studies, my friends, my city and that part of my family with whom I grew up. However, I did not really have a choice and I had to move.

Starting my new life in Brazil was not easy. First of all, I did not know anybody there. Also, because at that time schools were closed due to the holidays, I did not meet anybody for a long time. Another obstacle I found was the language. I did know some Portuguese, but not so much and I had not spoken it for almost 12 years. The first few months, then, were really sad for me.

Once I started going to school, I met new people and things were a little bit easier. Nevertheless, I still wanted to go back home, not only for the friends and for my family, but specially for my studies. In fact, it was hard for me to adapt to the way schools worked in Brazil.

I do not know when exactly, but at a certain point I started realizing I would not go back to Italy. By then, I was already preparing for my Brazilian SAT and I was applying to go to a Brazilian university. Little by little, I stopped feeling homesick and I did not feel that desire to go back to Italy any more.
After two years that I had been living in Brazil, I finally went back to Italy for a short visit. I found my friends there and my family and it was wonderful to meet them again. However, I also saw the sadness, the bad humour, the stress and the unhappiness that my friends and family were experiencing. This is when I realized I was actually lucky to have had a chance to live abroad. This experience, that started in the most unhappy way, turned out to be my salvation. If I had stayed in Italy, I would probably have experienced the same stress, negativism and unhappiness that my friends were going through.

As you can see from my experience, unpleasant events that start bringing about sadness or anger may actually surprise you with wonderful results. It may be hard at the beginning and the situation might require a lot of strength from us, as it happened when I first moved to Brazil, but sometimes it is really worthwhile, as I later found out in my experience. After all, as Shakespeare used to put it, "all is well that ends well".

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