From Brazil - Has been living here for 10 years. Read the project intro below.
From Russia – Has been living here for nearly 2 years
“I never thought I would end up living so far away from home; and it’s surprising how you can’t just fit Russian and Australian reality in your head at the same time. But that’s the choice I’ve made, to move forward to something new.”
“I never thought I would end up living so far away from home; and it’s surprising how you can’t just fit Russian and Australian reality in your head at the same time. But that’s the choice I’ve made, to move forward to something new.”
From UK – Has been living here for nearly 2 years
“With every pro there comes a con, with every con there comes a pro. Radical acceptance and ambition will set you free.”
“With every pro there comes a con, with every con there comes a pro. Radical acceptance and ambition will set you free.”
From Brazil – Has been living here for 9 years
“You can leave a place but you can not leave who you are. You arrive at a new place and you can not remain who you are. You became that intricate mixture of past and present, here and there. You became one who will never again be described by a nationality.”
“You can leave a place but you can not leave who you are. You arrive at a new place and you can not remain who you are. You became that intricate mixture of past and present, here and there. You became one who will never again be described by a nationality.”
From Brazil – Has been living here for 2 years
“Living abroad gives me the chance to finally be incomplete. I was always pushed (by myself and others) to be complete, to be perfect, to live everybody else’s lives. I can now fulfill my desire for incompleteness, for imperfectness, and enjoy just being”
“Living abroad gives me the chance to finally be incomplete. I was always pushed (by myself and others) to be complete, to be perfect, to live everybody else’s lives. I can now fulfill my desire for incompleteness, for imperfectness, and enjoy just being”
From Brazil – Has been living here for 1 year
"Living abroad is such an amazing experience. Getting to know new places, cultures and people, increases our sense of community. On the other hand, it is a constant of opposite feelings: feeling happy for the opportunity, against this sense of incompleteness, as we leave part of our history in another country. It's the fullfilment experience of building a new life and the desire to be in your hometown, around all you've known since birth. You'll never feel complete again."
"Living abroad is such an amazing experience. Getting to know new places, cultures and people, increases our sense of community. On the other hand, it is a constant of opposite feelings: feeling happy for the opportunity, against this sense of incompleteness, as we leave part of our history in another country. It's the fullfilment experience of building a new life and the desire to be in your hometown, around all you've known since birth. You'll never feel complete again."
[2016] A few years back I came across an article from Chelsea Fagan, a writer from New York. As her words pretty much sum up my feelings in relation to living abroad I extracted parts of it so you can have an idea of what this typology is about and where my inspiration came from:
“There is a palpable fear to living in a new country, and though it is more acute in the first months, even year, of your stay, it never completely evaporates as time goes on. It simply changes. As you settle into your new life and country, as time passes and becomes less a question of how long you’ve been here and more one of how long you’ve been gone, you realize that life back home has gone on without you. It’s hard to deny that the act of living in another country, in another language, fundamentally changes you.
Different parts of your personality sort of float to the top, and you take on qualities, mannerisms, and opinions that define the new people around you. And there’s nothing wrong with that; it’s often part of the reason you left in the first place. You wanted to evolve, to change something, to put yourself in an uncomfortable new situation that would force you into a new phase of your life. But there are the fears. And yes, life has gone on without you. And the longer you stay in your new home, the more profound those changes will become. Holidays, birthdays, weddings — every event that you miss suddenly becomes a tick mark on an endless ream of paper.
One day, you simply look back and realise that so much has happened in your absence, that so much has changed. So you look at your life, and the two countries that hold it, and realise that you are now two distinct people. As much as your countries represent and fulfill different parts of you and what you enjoy about life, as much as you have formed unbreakable bonds with people you love in both places, as much as you feel truly at home in either one, so you are divided in two.
For the rest of your life, or at least it feels this way, you will spend your time in one naggingly longing for the other, and waiting until you can get back for at least a few weeks and dive back into the person you were back there. When you live abroad, you realise that, no matter where you are, there will always be a part of you that is far away from its home and is lying dormant until it can breathe and live in full colour back in the country where it belongs.
To live in a new place is a beautiful, thrilling thing, and it can show you that you can be whoever you want — on your own terms. It can give you the gift of freedom, of new beginnings, of curiosity and excitement. But to start over, to get on that plane, doesn’t come without a price. You cannot be in two places at once, and from now on, you will always lay awake on certain nights and think of all the things you’re missing out on back home.”
