Excited. Interested, worried and happy are the complicated emotions that I came up when I first signed a three months away of my country. When I took the first step I didn’t have any doubt of myself exploring another country and I was definitely sure that this will be one of my fascinating and sensational experiences.
The idea of living abroad was very fun but the truth of departing home was fearful and nauseous. It was a family gathering on the day I left and lots of heart beating were heard. Hugs, tears, and smiles were in the space where I had to say goodbye and leave them all alone to travel to Jordan.
At this stage I realized my real suffering with my CABURERA friends whom I met in Palestine since we had to wait for a long long time on the Israeli side where we had to explain every single thing we are going to do in Portugal. We waited for seven hours with lots of fears, disappointment and lack of hope to learn a new experience away of our country.
After passing this frustrating stage we threw all these bad feelings behind us and overcame it easily and continued looking forward to pass our journey. Then hope started to light our way when we landed on our beloved Portugal we were rewarded to see Faro’s beach without anyone asking us for our ID’s.
My favorite part besides meeting some new friends and learn some new traditions was seeing the beach every day without any suffering. I just say “Yallah let’s go to the beach” and everything will be prepared within 15 minutes we don’t have to wait for an age to take a permission to go swimming and breath a clear air.
Thanks God I had my chance to explore a new country, to learn some new words, to meet lovely people and above all to understand that my life is valuable.
Training abroad reveals great and amazing opportunities for a better future and it also gives us the strength to have the ability to change our life to a best one and make all our dreams come true.
Olivia Odeh
