After 560 days away I return to Brazil with a lot more gray hair, some extra muscles and a new degree. I still weight the same, same height, and same name. But my hair... much shorter! In fact, I am a totally different person now. After all I read, researched, and studied, there was no way I could remain indifferent and not change many of my concepts. I guess that is life. After so many days of living various situations, if one doesn't change, what was it worth?
I arrive in Belo Horizonte on July 3rd. Hannah and I are working on packing since the day the decision was made. After all this time living here, there is a lot that was gathered. But in fact, we do not need it all. It is amazing how we keep paper. In my case, I kept them all saying I would deal with them later. Later is now. Bad for me, because I had to spend Friday afternoon sitting on the floor selecting those which are important documents - probably only 10% - and throwing away the trash. How about toys? There are those which Hannah can easily throw away - they are broken - or give away to charity - she is too old for them - but others she is really attached to. Dolls and stuffed animals bring her good memories. Why is it that we are so attached to our material possessions?
If memory is in each of our things, we now have to chose which memories to bring back home. The point is we have limited weight for our luggage and limited money. We cannot bring extra luggage, neither mail things. We must choose which memories we want to keep. In my case, my books are my good ones. In Hannah's, besides animals and dolls, her DVDs and books are special. This reminds me of my first screenwriting class.
Fall quarter, 2007. I was excited about that class. I had never taken a course in film school and didn't know a person from there. The thought of being around all those writers and film makers scared me at first. Then I realized that was one of my places. The professor comes in and fills the room with positive energy. Her smile was beautiful and encouraging. She was not that boring type of professor that describes the course while you think about what you gotta do when you leave that dull place. Also not boring was how she had us talk about ourselves. Yes, we did take turns to introduce who we were, but there was something different added to that: We had to be able to describe our selves by telling what we brought with us when we first came to Athens. I said I brought my daughter, a couple of pictures, and my favorite books. And now, I leave Athens with my daughter, pictures, and books. What do our objects tell about us? A lot, don't they?
While Hannah brings back her "High School Musical" and "Hannah Montana" books, I pack books about feminism, gender issues, women writers, Michel Foucault, Mikhail Bakhtin, Argentina and the "dirty war", screenwriting, and some women writer's novels. They are all related to my degree: Latin American studies and Women Studies. This field is interdisciplinary. My focus is literature and more specifically, female writing as a mode of resistance and empowerment. In my thesis, "The Autonomous Sex: Female Body and Voice in Alicia Kozameh's Writing of Resistance," I analyze two of Kozameh's texts as representative of the female body and its empowerment under the oppression of a patriarchal regime, the Argentine "dirty war". I argue that in her texts body is the same as language, and that the incarcerated women use their bodies as means of resistance to the regime. They find freedom through their bodies. Moreover, it is in their bodies that they find a safe space to be who they are and to express their womanly being. Women become autonomous through their body which is their language.
I come back home with this thesis written and with many projects in mind. Writing is the main one. That is why I took screenwriting classes amid history, politics, sociology, literature, feminism, and critical theory. I come back looking for opportunities to start a new life. But I also come back looking for the old but yet good things I left behind: My dear family and friends. After all this time away, I want to spend time with them. For good? I don't know. All is permanent until we feel the urge to change it. But anyway, aren't good friends for good?! All these people I am coming back to added to the ones I leave here... wow! they weight much more than 70 pounds. I am glad that in that case we do not have a weight limit and that we can carry as much as we want, because besides gray hair, muscles, and a degree, I want to say I added good friends to my life.

(and if you are thinking about all those muscles, i might say i can be compared to madonna!! or not...)