day 1 - getting to brazil

kavitha and i have had a crazy time getting to brazil. let me recount the occurrencesÇ

andy came up from buffalo and dropped me off (AWWWW!), and kavitha~s parents dropped her off (AWWWWW!). so scary that we won~t be seeing our friends and families for the next two months. holy schmoly!

our flight was at 10Ç45 (excuse the Ç, i don~t know where the colon is on these portugese keyboards) on a new boeing 767 jet, which was kind of nice! customized movies, flippable screens, etc. except my screen started malfunctioning midway through the evening. on top of that, i had about 1.5 hours of sleep because of a man constantly coughing behind me. as soon as i drifted into sleep, COUGH!!! curse you, coughing man. the funny thing about this flight also was that i opted to order an ^oriental^ meal, which for dinner meant ^vegetable lo mein^ (there were tons of mushrooms in it) and for breakfast, it was a ^tofu scramble^, which had the consistency of a rubber glove. i have another oriental meal to look forward to on the flight home from peru! oy.

after we finally landed (an almost 10 hour flight) in sao paulo, we had about 4 hours to kill before heading on a gol flight to rio. so we wandered around the airport, exchanged some money, picked up some stamps, and ate lots of fruit leather, plantain chips, and clif bars (shoutouts to my sister, her bf, and my mom for picking these up!) well, as it turns out, our flight was delayed for 2 HOURS, so as you can imagine, we were fermenting in the airport. by the time we got to rio, it was about 6pm, and by the time we got to our hostel, 8PM. so you could say, with about 2 hours of sleep over the past 24 hours, we are a bit tired.

until tomorrow, mes ami(e)s!

ps. some ethnographic observations we noticed todayÇ

a) people are really into platform shoes and backless shirts in brazil.
b) people are super into the public displays of affection. me and kavitha were going to the departures section at the sao paulo airport, and this couple was full on making out. kavitha stared at the ceiling while i awkwardly gazed at the keypad.
c) the word for ^thank you^ is ^obrigado^ for males and ^obrigada^ for females.