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6 Life Lessons From 6 Months Abroad

• by Srinivas Rao
• on October 4th, 2010
• 6 Comments

While I was in grad school, I was blessed with an amazing opportunity to spend one semester abroad. I didn’t get to do it as an undergraduate student and it was one of my biggest regrets from college. Fortunately, I got to make up for lost time and spend the fall semester of second year living in Sao Paulo, Brazil.  The experience really taught me quite a bit about myself, traveling, and life in general.

Living Abroad is not The Same As Visiting

When I visited Brazil for the first time in 2004, I spent 10 days on the sun drenched beaches of Rio De Janeiro, drinking caipirinhas and absorbed in the magic of Ipanema, known to many as the sexiest beach in the world. It was truly heaven,  so when the time came for me to pick a study abroad location,  Brazil was at the top of my list.  One of the things I learned very quickly was that living in a country and vacationing there are very different.

My First Day in Brazil

After nearly 8 months of anticipation and fantasies of my life in Brazil, the day of my departure to Sao Paulo had arrived. As I arrived at the checkout counter at Los Angeles International Airport my heart raced with anticipation, uncertainty, and curiosity. As I stood in line, it was as if I had already left the country. The sounds of the English language started to fade in the background, as the sounds of Latin America took over. I remember standing in line wondering who was Brazilian and if they were headed to Sao Paulo. I wondered if I would find my Brazilian dream girl in the first few hours of my journey. Finally at 1am, I boarded a plane headed for Sao Paulo via El Salvador and Lima. I was eager to arrive in Brazil and my excitement kept me wide awake as I listened to a Portuguese Language course on my ipod. Although I knew my life would never be the same after my flight took off , I didn’t know just how much the journey would change my life.

After 12 hours of flight time and 7 hours of layovers I arrived in Sao Paulo on the morning of July 29th at 4:30am. Sleep deprived, and no idea just how big Sao Paulo was, I collected my luggage, proceeded through customs and exited the airport to the nearest taxi stand. With nothing more than an address of a youth hostel in hand, I paid 100 Reals for my taxi and rode off into the night. As I sat staring out the window, I was shocked to see a Wal-Mart, AM-PM, Mcdonald’s and a bunch other American institutions. It was true; we really were trying to take over the world. I conversed briefly with my taxi driver and told him the name of a street that I will never forget and nobody in Sao Paulo will probably ever remember: Rua Pageu. After nearly an hour and a half in the taxi, driving through what seemed like some of the worst parts of Sao Paulo, I began to get somewhat nervous. I started wondering “where the hell is this guy going? Is he going to drop me off in a ditch somewhere?” Finally, he stopped at a gas station, and asked the attendant where Rua Pageu was. I thought to myself, great, now we can get there. Little did I realize at the time that this was the beginning of the Sao Paulo Taxista nightmares that lay ahead for 6 months to come. Finally, at around 6:30 am we arrived in front of a building on Rua Pageu which the cab driver told me was a school. As luck would have it, it was actually the place I was supposed to stay and after ringing the bell, I was let in. After dumping my bags in a locker, I dozed off and awaited the morning so I could began my exploration of SAMPA.

After waking up in the morning, I asked the attendant at the hostel how to get to the metro station and she gave me a map and told me to just walk two blocks that way. Those were famous last words that every Paulista should have tattooed on their forehead. After getting a coffee and many failed attempts to find the place I was trying to get to, something that would occur many times  over the next 6 months, I finally got in a taxi and told the driver to take me to Fundacao Getulia Vargas. The school had arranged a real-estate company for us that specialized in overcharging Gringos for apartments the size of prison cells. Of course at the time I didn’t know this. After about and hour of wandering up and down 9 De Juhlo I finally found the apartment building I was looking for only to learn that the real-estate agent had already been there and left. He had left me a note asking me to wait half an hour. So, I went next door and drank a café con leche. About 30 minutes later I was escorted up the 7th floor to view an apartment which a friend moved into shortly after.

With nothing else to do and no apartment in hand, I decided to explore the city a bit. So, I got into the metro with no idea where I was going and went to Villa Madelena. I got on the metro and exited the Villa Madelena station to find myself in the middle of nowhere. All I saw were pharmacies, apartment buildings, and a few lanchonettes. Lanchonettes were essentially cheap restaurants where you could find just about anybody eating, but they seemed to cater to the lower class. At this point I was starving so I decided to go the nearest one and have a bite to eat. After eating lunch I decided to navigate my way through Villa Madelena without a map. That was a mistake of gargantuan proportion and soon I was lost again. Finally I decided to break down and buy a map for myself. When I opened the map, I nearly had a heart attack. It was large enough that you could probably give it to a homeless person to use as a blanket. I looked intently for street names I recognized and then I realized I was only looking at one side of the map, and there was an entire other side with different streets and different neighborhoods. It would take a PHD in geography to figure out how  to read this map.

I always wonder what Paulistanos must think of the tourists who visit their city? Are they secretly laughing on the inside when they see you have no idea where you are going? Or are they thinking “what an idiot, he thinks a map is going to help. I have lived here forever and I still don’t know where  anything is at.” Or are they thinking “I have no idea where I am, maybe I should ask him for directions since he has a map.”

That was just the beginning of a series of many incidents that reminded just how different it was to live abroad than it was to visit. When you live abroad you are forced to deal with the problems of everyday life: finding housing, paying rent, living on a budget.  To add to that, you have a completely unfamiliar environment to deal with.  I’ve interviewed several digital nomads, including our very own Colin Wright.  Most will tell you that we tend to glamorize living abroad a bit. While it is truly an amazing experience, it’s easy to forget how easy we really have it at home, especially here in the US.

We’re Drawn to the Familiar

I can’t honestly tell you how many times I actually ate at McDonald’s while I was living in Brazil. It’s more than I count on two hands. I know what you’re thinking. “You were living in Brazil and you ate at McDonald’s?”. You’ll be happy to know that I was joined by a French and Uruguayan friend on almost every one of these visits. They had the same draw to McDonald’s.  Strangely, there is some comfort in eating at McDonald’s when you’re abroad. I’m not quite sure what it is, but it makes you feel a little less lost.  They also sell the fried apple pies that McDonald’s in the US doesn’t carry anymore.

Expect the Unexpected

To say that you should expect a series of unexpected events during your time abroad is putting it lightly. I found myself in some pretty messy situations, which are not that easy to solve from a foreign country. In my first few weeks I found myself in the Brazilian beach city of Buzios with a credit card that had completely stopped working, no money in my bank account (thanks the financial aid office at my school), and absolutely no idea how I was going to get back to Sao Paulo.  I sat frantically at an internet cafe on skype calling my parents for some immediate cash, and calling the financial aid office only to find out that they had not received all my paperwork.  Luckily my parents sent me a bit of cash and a friend and I bought a loaf of bread and some deli meats at a grocery store and survived until the evening.

The Journey Becomes the Destination

It sounds like hokey new age nonsense, but I would venture to say for many travelers, the journey becomes the destination. Some of my most interesting stories from my travels in Brazil actually involved the journey itself.  Once I took a plane, a boat  and a bus in less than 24 hours just so I could get to a nightclub in time for a party that our school was throwing.   Along the way we had a series of additional adventures that included chasing down boats because we left luggage on, freezing to death in buses, and much much more.

It Can Get Lonely

Despite many new friends, a city with 21 million people and what seemed like an endless stream of parties that went until the break of dawn, there were moments in which I truly felt lonely. I actually wanted to come home.  Spending time abroad made me realize how much I actually value my family, my friends and my life at home.  Somewhere along the way the excitement had worn off and I was eager to return home.   What I experienced was apparently a part of a natural cycle that people who study abroad got through: the thrill of a new adventure, the dip, and the excitement of the return.

It’s About The nights You’ll Never remember and The Friends You’ll Never Forget

Together we have shared one life’s greatest experiences. We have formed friendships that have the bridged the gap between continents, countries, languages, and oceans and realized that perhaps we are not so far apart. In the past 6 months we experienced more than many will experience in a lifetime. From 6 hour bus trips to retrieve passports, to chasing down boats to retrieve backpacks, to taking a plane, a boat, and a bus in 24 hours in order to enter a nightclub, to abandoning cars, to consuming excessive amounts of alcohol while dressed like complete idiots we have really done more than most will do in a lifetime. In experiencing all of this we decided to rename the cost of our own stupidity, something with rare exception, as the “Brazilian cost”.  Although our time together has come to an end, I’d rather think of this as the beginning of a lifelong friendship that spans many continents, countries, ethnicities, oceans, and languages.

-Written at the Sao Paulo Airport before boarding my flight home

Srinivas Rao

Srinivas is an avid surfer and personal development blogger at The Skool of Life. He's also the host and co-founder of BlogcastFM, a podcast for bloggers.