Chegado

Today I finally arrived in Brazil, which was pretty exciting. I met two other Brazil-bound Rotary students in Dallas and that was fun but São Paulo was their last stop so my eight hour layover was me, myself, and I. Since I had my checked bag with me for the first four hours of this layover I basically sat and listened to lots of Portuguese that I did most definitely not understand. Then after that, I went through security and listened to different people speak Portuguese that I also didn't understand.

In my flight from São Paulo to São José do Rio Preto, they kept changing the gate, which was a bit annoying but in the end it was worth it because we got to ride this weird shuttle bus thing that had seats facing all sorts of directions at seemingly arbitrary heights. Then we got to walk up a bunch of stairs to get in the plane instead of walking through the tunnel thing so that was exciting-ish too.

Anyways, finally getting to São José do Rio Preto with all of my luggage and belongings for the most part intact was a pretty big accomplishment. I was met by my host family, some Rotarians, and an exchange student from Mexico who got here like two days ago.

Since arriving here, I have eaten pão de queijo, pizza, drunk guaraná, learned that stop signs don't mean stop, but rather don't stop but also make sure not to get hit by oncoming traffic, and been surrounded by a combination of English, Portuguese and Spanish. Between the three languages everyone ends up on roughly the same page.

But my family is great and very nice and they have a very nice home as well. Finally, it seems as though I will start school on Monday which will hopefully improve my Portuguese. My pronunciation is improving; now it's just understanding and talking at a normal brazilian speed...easier said than done, unfortunately.

Até mais!!