Já chegei!

Oi gente, if only my life were series of international flights.

Humble people dressed in uniform passing out little hot towels with miniature plastic tongs.

Ceilings taller than my own in various apartments.

Wood floors in the bathroom (!)

Free movies (I don´t recommend Jumper)

Instant meals delivered to my reclining seat.

Free miniature toothbrush, toothpaste, and comb delivered to me by aforementioned humble smiling people.

Free booze!

I left Austin at 11 am, actually a little later due to a delay of course. Touched down in JFK at 4:30. Grabbed my overstuffed backpack and trekked to one of many international terminals at the NYC airport. Pushed my way through the madness at check-in as people coming and going from all over the world struggled to get to their destinations on time. I got to people watch at JFK for a bit and then boarded the largest plane I´ve ever seen. Daunting. I still don´t know how they got that thing off the ground. But they did, and we suspended from the sky for 10 hours and we headed from New York to São Paulo, Brazil. When passing out the visa forms on the plane, the flight attendant actually asked me if I was a Brazilian citizen! And then I spoke and she knew the answer was no. At GRU airport in São Paulo, I caught a glance of the amazing Brazilian city, with its reputation of fashion, food, and a cosmopolitan lifestyle. Huge loops of smog clogged the pristine horizon, shading part of the city from my perspective. I feel more secure in my decision not to visit there. At the airport, I only had 2 hours to go through customs and immigration, grab my bag, run upstairs and recheck my bag, go through another round of security and race to my gate, where of course the flight was running late anyway. But I made it on the short connecting flight to Salvador without incident besides a grumbly tummy from the airplane food and travel fatigue.

I´ve since settled into the Hotel Tropical da Bahia on Avenida Sete de Setembro (Avenue 7th of September). Since most of us were starved from traveling we ventured out onto the street and found a little churrasco/pizzeria where we gorged on all sorts of grilled meats: a specialty of Brazilian cuisine. Good thing I´m not a vegetarian. The waiter was very patient and nice with our faulty Portuguese, but we got our order out and ate deliciously. On the walk back to the hotel the streets are filled with vendors selling various fruits and vegetables--papaya, maracuya, mango, tomate de arbol (in Spanish at least, not sure what they´re called in Portuguese)--as well as fresh fish caught from the ocean just blocks from the hotel. They were being filleted and de-scaled right there on the street. We haven´t had a chance to walk down naby if these parts yet, but most of us will be living in this area with our host families, who we´ll meet tomorrow afternoon. There is a beautiful plaza right across the street from the hotel, and if I can get up early enough tomorrow morning, after getting a much needed night of sleep, maybe I´ll head over there to read the newspaper.

Tonight, the host from ACEBEU, the language school where we are studying, will be meeting us at the hotel for dinner and probably just making sure we´re ok. Tomorrow we have an orientation and a tour of the city and whatnot. We´ll be meeting our families as well, and then staying with them after that.

More later. Até breve!

PS: These two pictures were not taken by me so don´t think I´m this amazing photographer. You can thank the internet, but I thought I´d give you an idea of what it all looks like.