I’m on my flight back to Europe and I feel saudade already. In the last ten days I’ve been in a place very different than the one I live, a place where angels jog on the beach and guys surf all the time, while the Christ Redeemer looks after them from the top of Corcovado, a place where people get hit by a bala perdidas while they drive on the highway crossing favelas, a place where extremely poor and extremely rich live side by side and 2.5M people can amass on the same beach for new year’s party without incidents, a place where lots of people can’t read but have no problem voting with an electronic ballot system, a place where prices are written in installments (e.g. 4x19R$) but people get crazy for shopping, a place where window cleaners work hanged on a rope but drink anti-oxidant matte.

A quick stat among guys that were in my classroom before university shows 2 married (one with kids), 3 living with their partner (one with kids), 2 with a stable relationship, 2 singles. Maybe it looks not so bad, but actually it is very very different than what you could see for same age and social level among people that were born ten years earlier. The same statistic among people working in my staff shows 2 married (one with kids), one living with his partner, one with a stable relationship and 8 singles. Oh my…