Exchanging Feelings (Phan)

Exchanging Feelings

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I woke up as I heard a baby crying. Shit, my sleeping pill wasn’t that good after all.

I checked the time, I had slept for 9 hours, I still had 2 hours to go. The flight was pretty calm though, most people were sleeping, so I put my headphones on and started listening to music. I would be in London soon.

I tried to relax but I just couldn’t. It wasn’t my first time travelling alone, my parents always sent me to Europe or America in the summer, but still, I was pretty nervous. This time I would /live/ with an English family for 6 months.  I would have to speak English on a daily basis, I didn’t have any friends there whatsoever, I had no idea how this family was. They could want to be my friend or not.

The name and the address was all I knew about this family. I tried looking for them on Facebook so I could at least see their faces, but a lot of people had ‘Howell’ in their names, so, it didn’t work. My parents kept saying ‘They’ll be nice to you, they’re probably used to having exchange students in their house, and also, we’re paying.’

They didn’t comfort me at all though. In Brazil, my school was a private one, my family paid a lot of money and still, I was bullied. So why would this make any difference?

I got lost in my own mind. I didn’t know how I would manage to survive in a different country. It meant different food, different clothes, different culture, different language, different people – EVERYTHING different.

All I really wanted was to make some friends. I didn’t want to be popular, I just wanted /some/ friends. One, or two. Just friends. I secretly wished my host family liked me though, since my own family didn’t give a f*** about me. I knew that a lot of exchange students got attached to their host family, calling their host parents  ‘dad’ and ‘mum’, and they really treated them like someone in the family – but I also knew that some other people didn’t care about the exchange students in their house.

You could say I felt like my whole life was changing – and I liked it.

My life in Brazil sucked,  in every way. I didn’t have that many friends. My father was a judge and I saw him once a week because he was always busy working. My mother was a famous plastic surgeon in Rio, that meant she was always busy and I barely saw her – In fact I only talked to her at night when she came to my room exhausted, and asked about my day. I’d always say ‘Everything was fine’ because I knew she didn’t care if it wasn’t – she normally said ‘Goodnight then’ and left.

We lived in a fancy Penthouse apartment in Leblon – one of the most expensive neighborhoods of Rio. I had a driver to take me wherever I wanted, whenever I wanted. We had a maid, called Sofia. I really liked Sofia, considering I used to spend most of my time with her. We weren’t /friends/ but she was a nice person. Since my parents were never there, I was always alone in that huge apartment. If I were a popular guy I’d probably have a lot of fun in there.

Even though I had all these things, I was far from being happy. I was surrounded by close-minded people, rich kids with nothing but fake friends and fake feelings. I hated them all. My school was one of the most expensive too, which meant everyone had everything I had and more – money wasn’t something that would help you make friends there. The popular kids bullied me since we were 9 years old. The girls never looked at me, I wasn’t the kind of guy they found hot. I was very pale – something that Brazilian people dislike /a lot/. I used to wear tight jeans – which they thought said a lot about my sexuality. I had a different haircut – that was also considered the definition of my sexuality. I didn’t listen to Brazilian music, in fact, I hated it. I hated to go to the beach, I hated the sun, I hated the warm weather. I hated the social and fancy parties.

Luckily I wasn’t the only one in my school like that. I had a friend, she had the same problems I had. But on our first year of High school (year 10) she decided to be a rebel and ran away – she was now with her boyfriend in Paraguay rejecting her parents. I was about to start my second year (year 11) already, I spent 6 months totally alone in school after Lua /left me/.

When my parents said I could choose the country this time, I didn’t hesitate –

“The uk”- I said. “Please mum, you know how beautiful England is. I don’t want to go to Australia. London, please” – I begged. I had gone to Scotland once, so she knew how much I loved the UK.

“Okay, then be it. You’ll study there for 6 months and then you’ll come back, you understand?” – She said.

“Yes, thank you so much. You know this is all I ever wanted.”

It really was. All I ever wanted was to leave Brazil. Luckily my parents saw this as a way of getting rid of me. I knew this was the reason they were sending me to the UK, even though they said ‘This is an opportunity for you to see how other people live and get to know another culture’. The real reason was that they’d be alone and also, sending a kid to another country made you look like a rich person. My parents were really rich but they liked to brag, if you know what I mean – show how rich they were to their ‘friends’.

I fell asleep again, only waking up when the plane was about to land.

A/N: Before you continue reading this please understand that English isn't my first language, which means that you'll probably find a lot of grammar mistakes, weird use of words and stuff like that. This wasn't edited because when I wrote this I didn't have an editor and right now I can't be bothered to find someone to do it for me. (( also how could I ask someone to edit 88k words for me that's mean)) yeah that's it! x nicki