Oregon State motto: Alis Volat Propriis, Latin for “She Flies With Her Own Wings”

(since 1987; This was the original motto of Oregon, but had been changed to “The Union” in 1957.)

I am going home for three weeks with Diogo. We are going to New York for a couple days, then arriving in Portland on the 16th of August and then spending a big amount of time with my family in Klamath Falls and finally ending and returning from San Francisco. I am looking forward to it with great anticipation. I never thought I would be missing my homeland, but I do a bit. Living away from my native country makes me miss it, for all it's blessings and curses.

Also, falling in love, thinking about getting married and wanting to have children makes me long to be around my parents for a bit and touch upon their wisdom and love. I'm missing my mother and father more than I expected to. Despite all our loving disagreements, they know me more than anyone else in the world. Their love for me is part of the foundations of who I am. I really want to come back to my foundations for a time. I hope to have this connection with my own children. Boy, my parents did a good job. This respectful, loving bond I have with them is the epitome of parenthood.

The woman that left Portland a year ago is very different. I feel I've grown up so much in only one year. My feet feel rooted deeply within myself, but I don't feel grounded at all...yet. I knew when I decided this path for my life I was going to be different afterwards, I just didn't think I would be so aware of it. I remember just before I left Portland I had freak out about whether this was the "right path" for my life and I asked many friends whom I respected for advice. The best advice I received was from my friend Dani, who said, ultimately, that there was no such thing as a right path. Which ever path I chose, going to London or not, was the path I would live my life by. Labeling it right or wrong was just a way of worrying and avoidance.

The greatest lessons that I own now is the understanding that everything moves forward, whether it be viewed good or bad, it all moves forward into something else. And ultimately, nothing is good or bad because it all leads on. My worst times in the past are an integral part to my current happiness, had I not had them I would not be where I am right now. And I love where I am right now, even completely lost, emotional, and ungrounded, I wouldn't change anything.