Once upon a time, in a kingdom not so far away, there was this little kid with dark eyes and pink cheeks called lil’P. Lil’P lived with his parents in a small village where everybody was grown up, so most of his time was spent playing alone with his lego sets and making complex plans to build huts from old sheets, blankets and wood sticks. By then, his dream was to have a swing in his backyard.
Lil’P was told that the world was a big big place with lots of other countries with different people. When he asked how one goes to those countries, he got told that they were too far away. Dazzled with such answer, lil’P made extensive mental calculations about how long would he had to travel to reach too far away. Traveling, in lil’P case, was measured in riding time in the fastest transportation device he owned, his green bicycle. Soon he came to the understanding that those other countries ought to be really too far away ‘coz he got pretty convinced that if he tried to cycle there, there wasn’t even the smallest chance of being back on time for supper.
His parents weren’t much of travelers, not even on their own country. So lil’P grew up under the shadow of the too far away countries curse. He got older, got into school and got to understand better a few things by then. He learned that, for instance, where the too far away countries were, what the grown ups meant with different people, and that Santa Claus didn’t exist.
He soon realized that computers were his life. Anything that he came across related to those mysterious boxes received extra attention from him, it was vital information that he absorbed instantly. Having a computer was his new dream – he never got the swing.
He did get the computer, though. And some years later he got something that would change his life: an internet connection. Lil’P – who wasn’t that little by then – was wired to the world. Above all, he got connected to all those countries that suddenly weren’t too far away anymore. His bedroom now had two windows – one looking into a vineyard and another upon the world. Sure, it wasn’t the same thing as actually going there but it was enough to make him spend most of his time enraptured in tons of information available on his fingertips. And besides, he had realized long time ago that his green bicycle wasn’t going to do the job.
The first love lil’P had was for a song lyric – perhaps due to such uncommon fondness, and unlike anyone on his family, he wanted to go to the university. There was just too much to learn out there and he needed a bigger bootstrap than his parents had planned for him.
And so he did. The subject of study was obvious to him by then and it wasn’t hard to pick a university either. Living outside his parents home did scare him a bit at the beginning but it was just too exciting to be a real problem.
Not long after he joined the university he heard about this european program that allowed students to do exchange periods at universities in too far away countries. It even offered mobility grants. It was too good to be true. Or so he thought for a while.

(to be continued)