Seed Stories-Welcome to the UK

It was one of the most special days of my life. Back then, I didn’t know exactly why I was there but today, 25 years later, I know. At the time I was just trying something exciting that, for my life circumstances, seemed pretty impossible, seemed like something reserved only for the real lucky, or as I understand now, for the brave ones.

I landed at Heathrow Airport with a giant suitcase, a huge backpack and a whole bunch of notes of where to go. I booked two nights at the Youth hostel right next to St Paul’s Cathedral and that was it, from then on I had no idea what would happen, where that adventure would take me. I took a taxi from Heathrow to the hostel and pressed the trust button.

It’s hard to put in words the level of excitement and adrenaline that was running in my body at the time. That hostel was recommended on travel books for being near everything one may want to see in London, the landmarks and all the fun. The difference between me and everyone arriving to explore London was that I was arriving to start a real journey, I was not the typical backpacker.

That flight was my very first international flight, and my fifth flight all together. I landed in a strange land, that spoke another language and had very different habits, I was somewhere I had no one I could run to and there was nothing that I lived before that could had fully prepared me for that experience.

I had to be present, fully present. I still remember what it felt like. I had a return ticket to my home town in Brazil but no real intentions of using it, at least not on the date that it was scheduled. I planted a seed, one that I was committed to water, I wanted it to grow, I wanted it to "see the world". Welcome to the UK, 2001.