And so here I sit in the Chicago O’Hare Airport again, waiting for my connecting flight to São Paulo in a couple of hours. This is my fifth trip to Brazil in the last year and I have certainly enjoyed my time there, albeit it 99% being work-related.

I did book a trip from São Paulo to Navegantes for this coming weekend, so that I could visit Blumenau once again. It seems like I was just there, but in reality, it’s been almost a year and a half. I’m sure not much has changed since my two visits in 2010, which is just as well, considering how freaked out I was after seeing it for the first time since 1985.

I spent the first eight months of my mission in Brazil in this city and it has lots of special memories for me. I was assustado to see how much had changed — to the point where I felt disoriented the whole weekend I was there.

When people ask me if I see anyone there, I say, “They’re all dead”. And they gasp, but it’s probably close to the truth. Sometimes I feel like I’m the only soul alive in the city when I’m wandering the streets, even though there are thousands of other people living, shopping, sleeping and walking about. It’s like a ‘memory ghost town’ for me. Really strange — but I keep going back.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 8th, 2012 at 18:49 and is filed under Brasil, General Musings, Mission, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.