8/11/14

Starting off my journey abroad, I arrived at PHL International airport at 6am Sunday morning. After checking into my flight, and sneaking my suit case past the luggage attendant who said it would be too big to carry-on, I was off to Sao Paulo via Miami. I would’ve slept through the whole first leg of the trip if it weren’t for the couple in front of me who decided to start off their vacation by setting a new world record for the number of alcoholic beverages consumed in a two-hour flight. Part of me wanted to join in on the party, but I knew I had more important tasks at hand. When I boarded the next flight to Sao Paulo, I was pleasantly surprised to be seated next to a fellow english-speaking American. His name was Jeff, an aircraft designer who also flies a small plane of his own, and our conversations about aviation, international travel, and engineering made the 8 hour flight go by faster than expected. 

When I arrived in Sao Paulo, I was swiftly introduced to the concept of culture shock. Although I’ve dealt with language barriers before, this time I had to be the one asking, “Voce fala Inglais?” On top of it all, I had to figure out a place to stay for the night, because my flight to Florianopolis wasn’t leaving until 3:30 the next day. Fortunately, a helpful english-speaking employee at the Info desk directed me to FastSleep, a hotel located in the airport, that had a room available for R$200 (I paid a little extra for two extra hours of beauty rest). After about 6 hours of sleep and a hot shower, I was back in flying mode, and I met up with Nick on the shuttle to board our final flight. Less than an hour after taking off, we touched down in Floripa, found Daniel from ISA, and were shuttled to FLOPH. We went out for a welcome dinner as a group, and most of us went out for drinks after at Cervejaria Original, where I tried a Capirinha and a Brazilian beer called Eisenbach 5. Salut!