When I first heard that my parents and I were going to move to Brazil, in the beginning of February last year, I never would’ve thought it would turn out this way. I was full of hope and excitement for my upcoming adventure, and when I came to Rio to visit the school and look at apartments mid-March, I imagined huge parties, music festivals with world-known artists and a big school full of students. I had gotten a taste of what my life would be like living in a big city, and I liked it.
When I came home to Norway after my short week visiting Rio, the world had changed. The
coronavirus had just been declared a global pandemic and the world had entered lock-down. Cranky police officers working at the airport welcomed me home to a country I no longer recognized. I went straight from a week of vacation in Brazil to 4 months of online school in Norway.
(From the author's personal archives)
The plan had originally been for us to move to Brazil in June - we were going to travel to the Amazon during the winter vacation and explore a part of our new country, and still have a couple of weeks to settle in before school started - but we quickly realized that would be impossible. Like every other student at EARJ, I started the school year in the beginning of August 2020. The
(From the author's personal archives)
only difference was that I was still in Norway and, due to the time difference, my school days started at 2pm and ended at 7:30pm some days and 6pm other days (thank God Independent Studies is my last block.) This may not sound so bad, and it could’ve been way worse (imagine if my school days had started at 2am instead), but as my friends in Norway were still on their summer break, it felt a bit unfair sitting inside all day while everybody else was outside enjoying the last weeks of summer. What made it even worse was that the weather was fantastic - if you’ve ever been to Norway you know that this is a rare occurrence - but all I could do was enjoy it from the window.
Luckily I had a friend, who had already been a student at EARJ for a year, that could help me adjust to the new school that I had only experienced through my computer screen. The only problem was that he and his family made the decision to stay in Norway only a week and a half later, which left me completely alone in a new school where thus far I knew exactly 0 people. In addition to this, due to the Covid-related rules of my mother’s company, I didn’t know when and if I would ever be able to move. I was in a state of limbo: I no longer belonged to any school in Norway, and I was unable to go to the country where I actually had a school to go to.
At the end of September 2020, my parents and I were finally allowed to move to our new home, which I had been dreaming about for 8 months. Because of the uncertainty surrounding our move, we couldn’t rent the apartment we had found earlier that year, and we arrived in Rio with no permanent place to live. We ended up in Ipanema, in a small apartment with an awful internet connection (but an amazing view), and had to live there for almost 3 months before we found our current apartment and could finally settle down.
So far I haven’t experienced a lot of the things I looked forward to - carnaval, big music festivals and a normal school day at EARJ. I haven’t even physically met all the people in my grade yet, let alone people from other grades. At social gatherings I’ve often had to be “the girl who can’t hug anyone”, which I would think is quite the opposite of Brazilian culture, out of fear of getting the coronavirus (though I unfortunately managed to get it anyway.) Still, even though moving to a new country - and continent, I might add - during a global pandemic has been challenging and mentally tiring, I consider myself lucky. I now live in a city that up until now has had very few restrictions (which of course has its downsides), where I’ve had the opportunity to do many things I’ve wanted to, despite the virus. Then again, I, as everyone else, am looking forward to this pandemic ending so that I can finally experience what living in Rio really is like.
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