On July 16, 2025, it was 10 years since I first landed in New Zealand.
It's a nostalgic date. Ten years is not a short time, but it's not much either. It's a significant time: I still remember in great detail the first five years of intense changes and I feel the deep roots I created in the following five.
In the first few years, I finally reached the stage where I felt that New Zealand was my home. I was still enchanted by everything that this country has to offer (I'll tell you more about this phase in this post here). The last five years have marked the beginning of another feeling: that of starting to miss the things I had always taken for granted. Things that I had never realized how much I liked and how much they made a difference to my life. I began to notice the absences.
The "bad" here isn't exactly what's wrong, but what's missing. What bothered me was not what I found, but what was missing. For me, this lack was spontaneity in relationships and "social coldness", often disguised as indifference or monotony. Of course, these aren't objective defects, they're the subjective shortcomings of someone who has come from a place where human contact is more expressive, present and open.
Missing family and food is a cliché, but the complexity of immigration goes far beyond that. I was surprised, for example, when I realized that I missed interactions with strangers – like walking down the street and someone cleaning the sidewalk stops, looks at you and says good morning. In São Paulo, this was normal, and I underestimated this type of interaction.
I miss the friendliness of strangers and the quality of service. Seeing people happy to serve, to do things well. The last few times I've been to Brazil, little things have made my soul smile – like having conversations that go beyond the weather with someone on the street, or simply saying "good morning" and getting a smile back. It may sound silly, but for someone who comes from a culture where affection is easily manifested in everyday life, it makes a big difference.
At that stage, I became more aware of the pros and cons of each country. And something curious happens when this awareness deepens: only those who live between worlds can perceive the nuances of the subtleties of language, the differences in values, the cultural silences, the way of living and thinking. It's like belonging to two places and, at the same time, to neither. It's a chronic displacement, you're never 100% here or 100% there.
That's why, over the last five years, I've been creating a hybrid identity, in a constant internal renegotiation of belonging. Living here is no longer perfect, just like in Brazil. And even with a permanently divided heart, I've gained a wider lens on life – and that, yes, is a great privilege.
The immigrant's privilege is to be a bridge that connects cultures and enriches diversity. We live between worlds, experiencing what is cultural, what is personal, what is structural and what is truly human. We learn to choose which values to keep, which to question and which to leave behind. It's a critical and creative lens that few people develop by always living in the same place.
To be an immigrant is to be a foreigner in the world, but more intimate with yourself. More aware of your own rich and mixed history. And this, despite the fatigue of adaptation, of not belonging and of ruptures, is a kind of empowerment. We are aliens on this planet with a privileged perspective on the contradictions, limits and possibilities of each place we call home.
Until the next sip,
