You paint yourself - Finland (1 cold start)

 Diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
    That's the way Life had treated me up to sixteen
         (and continued doing also after - only differently )...

                                                    In the early 80´s we moved to Finland.

It is difficult when you are sixteen to understand that change is good... important for the soul to develop.. hell, its actually not easy to understand at any age at all! - especially when YOU are the one going through it.
   I believe the hardest for me was losing my friends. I know, I know... NOW...
                i did not lose them.
But at the time it sure felt like I had. One thing you learn when you become a traveller, is that whilst things are different and changing for you... everything remains mostly the same for the people you have left behind. They have the same routines, the same environment... they have their group. One is missing... but they can compensate that with the others. The traveller has no such thing. The traveller feels alone... and in need of the warmth he has left behind - at least in the first life turning trips.

Back in those days there were no computers, no skype... no whats up... we had the mail box...
     and mine was always empty    =O
Or almost always so... I wish I could describe the joy of getting a letter back in those days. I would run to my room, read and re-read them... feeling warmth and joy for weeks to come. I would answer the same night... pages and pages - IF, I recall correctly... and mail them early next day.
    And then... months of EMPTY.

It did not actually take long before I was offered a new group of friends... but it did feel like an eternity before they turned colourful.

The change from a Latin culture to a Nordic one is shocking. something like Olaf the Viking meeting Picasso (In fact, in Spain I had often carried nicknames like "the viking"... "ice man" and such... and in Finland... much to my surprise... i became Picasso!!!!
   Actually... it was Pablo... I liked to assume it referred to the grand master of ARTS!

   I felt alone.  

My first summer was Ok... in a way an extension of what I had been having all through my childhood. "Pelle-bo", our summer place a Karjaloja... sauna... warmth...the lake and my grandmother.

                                         But with the coming of autumn...

Came the beginning of school year... and with it, slowly
                                   light started fading into darkness.'

  

                                                   
 In a great song Paul Simon sings: Sony sits by his window
                                                          and thinks to himself
                                                          how its strange that some rooms
                                                          are like cages ...
                                                         Sony´s yearbook from high school
                                                         is down from his shelf
                                                         and he idly combs through the pages....
In my case my room was my sanctuary, the world was my cage.
   And it was not idly I combed through the pages of my yearbook... I sat for hours, looked at the pics, touched them with my fingers... trying desperately to get in... go back.
They say what does not kill
                                                     you makes you stronger...

      if that is so... I had probably just started my process of becoming CONAN the barbarian.