My personal Philosophy of the world

When over a year ago I received a call from AFS, an organization for exchange students, I was sweeping and stutterer all of a sudden. I expected them to tell me where I would be placed for my exchange year, and I remember that in those days I kept the telephone in my hand all day long, putting it away, but still next to me, just to sleep. When that day the voice on the other side said the word California, I almost passed out and asked her to please repeat it. California seemed the most unlikely place for spending an exchange year, and I started to wonder if that was not one of the many dreams I already had about the call. In my mind, the name California evoked image of beaches, sun and surfers. It took months living there for my mind to replace those images with different, and far better for me, memories about the place where I was going to spend a whole year.

I arrived in the US in Los Angeles, a name that for me had the same effect of California. Films, movie stars and skyscrapers were in my mind, but after a night of sleep we went away without seeing any of that. We took the train to Fresno and Modesto, where we started driving to my final destination, Sonora. We were driving up the hill, and as the elevation increased hill and trees and cold weather soon replaced what the word California evoke in the minds of many. That was not what I expected at all: maybe that was what somebody going to Montana or Washington might have expected, but not someone going to California. Before I realized it, we were in my final destination, Sonora. It came through the hills unexpected, as if my mind was waiting for the hills to pass, and for something to call again California to appear after them, and not to find that my final destination was just there, into those hills.

The house where I was going to spend my year was up one of those hills, far away from downtown Sonora. Surrounded by trees and, as I would soon discover, located under one of the most clear sky I’ve ever seen, it was the perfect location for a film like little red riding hood or Show white and the seven dwarfs. Deer and squirrels looked at you to say hi and welcome you to that place, as if you were actually part of that forest, and they were your friends. Day after day my school bus drove me, and the green filled my eyes, and clear water passed under the street now and then. Everywhere there was water there. A little bit there, refreshing the ground it passed near to, and softly caressing the roots of some trees, making their tops watching all over the others, and a little bit here, passing on your hand changing the gentle flow. All that water arrived at the end to a lake that was near there, and you would wonder what it would all look nice if you could just go up in the air and look down. I can see in my head the blue spot of the lake surrounded by green hands holding it, as if to not drop the water in it, and then the little city near, as if living together with the rest.

This Garden of Eden surprised my mind, and California all of a sudden didn’t seem like the right word, and every time some of my friends asked me how was California, I felt the need to tell them how reality was different and to describe as if I was guilty of living someplace that was not California. I felt somebody would have told me I was a cheater if I would have told them we had snow. Actually, we had snow five times, and quite a bit. One evening, after clouds made the sunset came earlier, a white hand shake and then impolitely completely covered the green hand, making the panorama than finally was usual for me, became again unusual. The thin grass now was white, and new colors were added to the normal ones, until they finally substituted them with a pale and monotone shining white. Amusement was in my mind as the branches outside my window started to have a thin layer on their top part. That same scenario represented it again other times, and every time I felt the same amusement, the same delight and surprise in looking at the white hand coming to say hello once more.

What a wonderful place I’ve come to! Sun, beaches and surfers are too normal and boring; this forest can always surprise you with tricks and details you’ve never notice before. Even the place with the better stereotype in the world has a bad stereotype. It took months to understand how reality surpass them and dreams as well, and how at the end the tremble you have in front of Sonora’s green forest is better than the tremble you have in front of the Hollywood sign. It took me months to learn how to spell California correctly, but finally my memories can spell it vividly and correctly.