{BRAZIL 2015} RIO DE JANEIRO: Farofa, Sangria, and Laughter

Once I met a Canadian girl in Italy. We were staying at the same hostel - I with my family and friend, she with her notebook and inner self confidence. I remember she was beautiful. Tiny and blonde with fantastic style. She told me she was finding herself among the windy Italian roads, completely alone. She met fantastic strangers (heck, I was one of those strangers) and wrote her thoughts and experiences down in this black notebook on the sides of roads or on stone walls at sunset and I found the whole thing to be so entirely romantic, poetic, and perfect. 

It wasn't as if I hadn't traveled around by myself, I'd spent a long weekend in Brussels alone - thanks to a cheap Ryan Air flight - and had the best of times. Except, I wasn't there to find myself. I was there to gawk at things like Olympic statues and beers in McDonalds. And the entire time, I couldn't wait to get back to Ireland and tell my friends everything I'd experienced. 

I thought about that Canadian girl as I drank Sangria in Rio with my friends. I still find her spirit bold and enviable. And maybe I will one day take a solo trip around some amazing country with a pen and notebook to "find myself". And yet, maybe who I am is the girl that laughs loudly, head thrown back in abandon, talking about her faux husband (the poor waiter who didn't speak English but was heavy handed with the drinks). The girl that cries when she talks about that one time they fought over a boy that never really mattered. Maybe I need the people around me, to squeeze their arms when I'm so awed and overwhelmed. To have someone to ask when it doesn't seem possible that the small town girl that dreamed of city lights and far away places was really drinking Sangria on a sidewalk in Rio, laughing at how life is sometimes so perfect and just the way it's meant to be.

I wish I could remember that Canadian girl's name. I wish I could ask to see all the thoughts she had jotted down in that black notebook. I wonder if those thoughts were as filled with as much happiness and sense of "togetherness" as was around that table. I rather think it was. Cause she was perfect in her wandering. And so am I.