August 2, 2009

Olá do Brasil! (Hello from Brazil!)

Wow what an adventure it was getting here!  Everything imaginable that could go wrong happened.  

It started out great in Minneapolis, where the five exchange students going to Brazil (Courtney, Anne, Hattie, Cristian, and me) were all super excited to get there!  We were about ready to land in Atlanta to take the connecting flight to São Paulo, but because of the bad storms, we had to fly around in circles above Atlanta until the storm went away.  The next thing we knew, we were in the middle of no where at an airport in Alabama.  We had to stop and refuel because we almost ran out of gas.  The pilot was walking around talking to people when we were stopped, and he told someone behind us, "If we flew into Atlanta, we wouldn't have come out."  And that made us feel so much better....  

About an hour later we finally landed in Atlanta.  We thought we would have to run to our flight to São Paulo, but that flight was delayed about four hours so we had a long wait.  Our plane to São Paulo was downgraded they said, so we had almost no room to sleep on it, and there were no tvs!  

Finally we got to São Paulo, but by that time, everyone missed their flights to their connecting cities, so Marcia (the Brazil country officer) was super helpful and scheduled new flights for us.  Everyone's flights left fairly early, but mine didn't leave until 9:15, so I had about 6 hours sitting in the airport by myself.

After all these problems, everything started getting better!  I got on my flight to João Pessoa, which made a quick stop in Recife to drop people off and get more on.  When I arrived in João Pessoa, it was about 2:00 in the morning, and Marisa and her family greeted me with a huge sign.  It was a relief to finally be done traveling!

This morning I woke up at about 11:30.  Lucas took his girlfriend, Pedro, and me to a small science museum type thing for a little bit and then from there we went to Ponta do Seixas which is the lighthouse where the sun rises first in all of the Americas.  The view of the ocean was soooo pretty there!  After that we went out for empanhadas (a muffin with cheese and meat in the middle) and we got guaraná juice with açaí in it, which was amazing! 

We're just kind of hanging out now until dinner time.  It feels like it should be so much later here because the sun sets at 5!

I have to go get ready now because Marisa and her sons and I are going to take a walk on the beach!

Até logo! Beijos! (Until later! Kisses!)