Nice gestures

Having being abroad and back home 2 times in the last 3 years have taught me that living in Mexico makes you take some things for granted:

  1. Family
  2. Excellent food
  3. Friends

Let's just say that personal interactions have been... different, but not in a bad way.

I was always a bit of an oddball, antisocial even (for Mexican standards), but after accepting a job offer in November that led to moving to Norway, knowing just a handful of people in the city (from my Masters program), living alone and COVID-19 lock down, even I started to feel anxious and a bit depressed.

Things here work a bit differently and, again, not a bad thing, but it has been hard to make new friends or keep in touch with old ones.

It's the little things like talking, getting together and the like that start to seem more meaningful. Since lock down rules were relaxed, three recent events in particular come to mind, which basically made my day over the last month, all nice simple things:

  1. One of my Norwegian friends texted me:”I remember that you used to post all the time about your runs, are you up for a run this weekend? I need a running buddy”. We went for a long 9K-ish run the next day.
  2. After a barbecue we had with some other friends, last weekend, the same guy texted again saying: “It breaks my heart that you haven't been to a proper Norwegian beach around here, the barbecue place was not the nicest, so come along with us to the beach tomorrow”. So I ended up going to the beach with him and his fiancée.
  3. Yesterday, after an outdoors activity day sponsored by our company, one of my team mates said: “By the way, we're flipping some burgers for dinner today, I live pretty close by, wanna come over to our place? Since we work together I figured we should get to know each other”. I ended up coming back home at 22:00.

All these interactions have meant a lot because they were not initiated by me and gave me the feeling of starting to fit in here. Funnily enough that's all it takes, nice gestures.