While you are out of your comfort zone and everything you know, you need to practice understanding, you need to be able to carry your roots with you while the new you is taking over. You need to understand who you are and where you're coming from. Otherwise "you" becomes <me> and "they" become <they> and in between is just hate and anger.
I remember that I have never thought of leaving Romania, but if by any circumstance this was to happen, I knew that the country I would go to would be without any doubt France. Till this day, I keep a deep connection to this land, its people and language. France has always felt familiar to me, a comfortable feeling of being at home every time I was there. And I believe that all of this is rooted in my first visit to a small village near Paris, called Escrennes, while on a school program. My first time ever in Europe, in Western Europe, 4 years after the fall of Communism in Romania. That was in 1993 and I was 12 years old.
