Five years ago my life turned upside down.

It all started when I met my partner in October 2014 through mutual friends. Daniel was doing his OE (Overseas Experience). Brazil was the last country he was visiting before returning to New Zealand. We met in the last week of his trip.

For nine months we spoke to each other by message. At the time I spoke almost no English and everything I wrote was translated by Google translate. In January 2015 I decided that I wanted to go to NZ to see Daniel again, but I wasn't going to NZ just for that (girls, fall in love, but please don't lose your common sense). So I planned to do an English course for 24 weeks. That way, if our relationship didn't go ahead, I would at least have the experience of the English course.

With the help of an exchange agency, I went through the whole process, from the visa and ticket to exams, forms, questionnaires, research into the exchange, everything! The process started in February 2015 and on July 14, 2015 I left for New Zealand.

It was crazy, because not only did I pack for this trip, but I also cleaned out and donated a lot of things that belonged to me. I left my room empty. I put a lot of things in boxes, I was literally cleaning myself out. changing to another country.

I had to buy a return ticket because I was going on a student visa. But something inside me told me that I was going there to stay! At that moment, even if my relationship with Dan didn't work out, I felt that I was going to really change life. I didn't know what I was going to do after the English course finished, I just knew that I would find a way. It was a real leap in the dark.

And after that, I made my story. My life has changed completely in the last five years. The path appeared as I walked. I've done things I never imagined I'd be able to do and experience.

I keep imagining that if Charlotte from the future told me six years ago that she was going to New Zealand to work as a lawyer and build a house with someone there, I'd say: "How are you going to do that?! You don't even speak English, you don't know anyone there, how is that possible?". And I honestly don't think it would be the same if I knew, because the fear of knowing what would happen would hold me back and raise so many doubts that I would lose the strong intuition that guided me on this journey.

The first two years weren't easy because of the English and the adaptation, but they were lived intensely in my intuition! And in the end, everything worked out. I say "in the end" because today I feel at home. The discomfort of adapting has been overcome.

Everything I always wanted and missed in my life in São Paulo I found here. I really missed being in contact with nature, hiking, exercising, things like that. My life in São Paulo didn't fit in with what I had to do with myself. I spent 3 hours of my day in traffic, slept super late, woke up already tired, lived on automatic. I don't miss it at all.

My life here is completely the opposite. Here I've started exercising every day. It takes me 3 minutes (literally!) to get to work, I go to bed early (really early!) and I wake up early (really early!), and Dan introduced me to hiking. My routine here is the routine I always imagined I'd have. Of course, I know it will change over the years, but just the fact that I don't kill time in traffic helps my quality of life too much!

Another thing that changed my life was realizing my dream of owning my own home. Two years before moving to New Zealand I was looking for an apartment to rent, I wanted to live on my own and have my own space. It was actually a long-held dream. To have a house with my energy, with my face, where I could express who I am in that particular space.

I sincerely admire nomadic people who manage to travel for years, but it's definitely not for me. I like to have roots somewhere. When I travel, the journey home is just as exciting and happy as the first day of the trip. It's so good to return home, a wave of gratitude invades my heart when I get home.

Well, this is where that dream came true. And it was much bigger than I ever imagined! But that's a story in itself, maybe I'll write another post about how it all happened.

A lot has happened in five years. I can say that it's been the most intense five years of my life. The five years in which I've changed the most about myself, my environment, my habits, my values, people, life, everything.

I've been reading a lot about Buddhist philosophy and there's a saying that experience is always the ultimate truth. Always treat everything you read and hear with a certain degree of suspicion, because it's only when you experience what you've read or heard that you have true judgment and knowledge about what you've experienced and, therefore, lived.

I am eternally grateful to everything that has happened to me, to all the people who have been and are part of my journey and those who are yet to come. Everything happened in a way for me to be where I am and to become who I am today. I have many plans for the next five years and I hope that this power of intuition will continue to guide me as it has over the last few years.

That's it for now.

With love,

Cha Xx