Day 9, 21 August: It was a wistful goodbye to Portugal. In the airport, I crossed paths with a Portuguese-Canadian, a woman in her 50s or 60s who said she couldn’t wait to get home to Canada. She was so glad she left, all those years ago, she said. Portugal was her roots, but all her children and now grandchildren were in North America.

Here I was, sad about leaving, and she happy to be getting away. But you know, I’ve never bitten the meager fruit of poverty. And it’s one thing to vacation somewhere, another to live there.

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