Foreigner

Foreigner. 

By definition: a person from outside one's community.

By experience: Something really more than that.

This kind of feeling you can start to have when you're one.

Like leaving from your comfort zone in the country that we were born and face different cultures, people, languages, traditions and way of thinking.

There are so many things that I've learned as being a foreigner. Leaving from my culture, people, language, traditions and way of thinking and face a different reality. Different ones in fact.

Passing by the United States, Luxembourg, Spain and now in Germany I could learn so many things from these different countries and meeting people from other ones being travelers or foreigners made me understand other aspects as well.

The feeling of being in other countries was different from one to another, not necessarily just because the culture was different, but also about how was my process of integration in those. How I felt part of the local society or not. It worked mainly in Spain and Germany, where locals and foreigners are part cycle of connections. Something completely different in what happened in the USA and Luxembourg, where most of my contacts were foreigners like me. There I could really feel that I wasn't from there, not being integrated in the local society, where you were people living there, but we were belong from there.  This kind of feeling of exclusion just reduce my feeling of enjoying that place as much as I could, but create a strong feeling to always explore around, not being fixed in the same place for too long. My time in the USA in Luxembourg were the time that I most traveled in my life. I can remember that in the USA, my Brazilian community was the main part of my journey, we were a family hunting for discover what was around. In Luxembourg I was spending almost every weekend somewhere else, like France and Belgium or having crazy trips to see as much as I could, once I wasn't feeling like to spend that much time in the place that I was living. It's kind of sad, but my experience in Luxembourg was really good, my first year living in Europe and exploring and experiencing all the "new" that was connecting me with people that I met and places that I visited, even not being in Luxembourg. This "Home" was the place that I always could come back after intense experiences.

Being a foreigner in Spain, made me feel like Granadino somehow, incorporating an Andalusian accent to my Spanish, loving the sun, food, life style and night life. I could feel for while that was belong from there, even being from a different culture. Here in Germany is different than in Spain. The language and the weather are the hardest aspects, but since I'm here, I'm really happy for the cycles of connections that I've made, that sometimes even having some aspects that made me feel excluded in the society, there are so many good people around me that make me feel belong from them, belong from here. In these moments the definition of foreigner disappear. In these instants I'm not a person from outside one's community any longer.

The integration for me is the best way how to destroy this feeling of someone in being a foreign. I'm not talking about integration in a way that you teach to someone else how to live in your society, but how to connect with these person and exchange experiences in a point that culture identity is gonna be gone. We are all being humans having different cultures, point of views, languages, traditions and ways of thinking, but from the same specie. 

We are one, can sound cliche for you, but this is the biggest idea of humanity that come to my mind now. It doesn't matter where you, he or she was born, we are all connected if you allow it. 

Foreigner? That's just a word that divide people, that destroy our connection with each other.