My first venture into the blogosphere comes from Sao Paulo, Brazil. I am down here on business visiting and working with the company that handles our Latin American business. Not that anyone cares in particular, but I thought I'd give an abbreviated "play-by-play" (as Andrea likes to say).
Wednesday, April 23: A guy I work with, Mont, is going to Brazil with me and picks me up around 11:00 in the morning. I'm tired already and haven't gotten on a plane yet. In an attempt to ensure that I sleep on my overnight flight from Atlanta to Sao Paulo, I watched two different sporting events after packing my luggage and finally turned off the TV around 2:30 am. (A parenthetical side note - I was only planning on watching the Liverpool game but it ended up leaving such a bad taste in my mouth that I knew I wouldn't sleep and watched the 2nd game of the Spurs/Suns series. I'm certainly glad that game went in my favor or I may not have slept at all.) Anyway, I'm excited but not overly so as we need to pick up our passports before heading to the airport and our trip has already been delayed by a few days because of visa problems. I'd resolved not to wet my pants until actually setting foot in Brazil. Needless to say, Mont and I got our passports without any trouble, ate food designed not to give us gas at Crown Burger, and hopped on a plane to Atlanta. I'm not really a nervous traveler but I was happy to see that we were joined on our flights by 11 missionaries headed to the MTC in Brazil.
Thursday, April 24: Our flight headed for Brazil was originally scheduled to leave about an hour after arriving in Atlanta. For those of you that have never been to Atlanta's Hartsfield Airport, it is huge and if you have flights arriving and leaving from different terminals it can be quite a trial. Our flight was delayed and nobody informed us, so we ended up running across creating only to find out we could have caught a cab into town, had dinner, and still had time to spare for our flight. The lesson here, as always, nobody at the airport cares about you, unless you're traveling with families or friends.
When I finally got on the plane and found my seat I had to immediately email my travel agent and tell her thanks for getting me the most awesome seat possible in Coach. I had a bulkhead seat with enough space to stretch out my legs completely. It was as if I had lucked into a first-class space at coach prices. I popped some Tylenol PM and waited for sleep to envelop me. Unfortunately, at 3:30 am sleep still hadn't come and I resolved to put on my headlamp (with a nod to Margaret) and read my book for a few hours. Apparently that was all my body needed, a book and it had had enough, I was out before getting through the first chapter and could remember so little that I reread from the start later. Before I knew it we were being asked to raise our seatbacks and store our tray tables for our approach into Sao Paulo.
For those of you still reading, I didn't wet my pants when I landed or when we got off the plane. We got our luggage, went through customs, and met our driver. For the first time in my life one of the guys waiting in arrivals had my name on a sign, I can't deny it, it was very heady. The drive through Sao Paulo took about an hour and then the wait to check into our rooms (I forgot to request early check-in) took another hour and a half. We finally got to our rooms, showered and were ready for the day by about 12:30 local time. I managed to take a few pictures from my hotel room and have posted the best below. For those with Google Earth or even Google Maps here's the address of the hotel, Rua João Cachoeira 107, Itaim Bibi, São Paulo – SP, 04535.
One thing that I have to say before the speed of the posting picks up considerably, is that Sao Paulo is incredibly huge. They don't know for sure, but it is estimated that the number of residents in the city proper are around 12 million and the greater Sao Paulo areas contains about 21 million people. We are fortunate enough to be in a really nice neighborhood close to the office and safe to walk around in.
On Thursday, after having slept for perhaps 8 hours in the previous 48, we worked until 8:30 pm at the office and then went out to dinner until almost 11:00 pm. I was spent, Mont was having trouble getting his eyes to focus, and we finally rolled into the hotel around 11:30 pm.
Friday, April 25: For the sake of speed, we had meetings all day long from 9:00 am until almost 8:00 pm. I couldn't believe that anyone wanted to work that late on a Friday night, nor could I believe that they wanted to go out to dinner afterwards. We ate like kings (we have been eating like kings since we've got here but I'll save that for another post).
Saturday, April 26: One of the nice things about working at MarketStar is that most of the people that I work with share my beliefs. Mont and I got up early on Saturday morning and took a cab to the temple in Sao Paulo. My dad and I went 9 years ago to a session in the Sao Paulo temple and I was glad to get to go again.
A quick funny story from the temple, Mont doesn't speak Portuguese and requested a translator. He got a little headset thing to wear that simulcast the session in English. At one point he could no longer wear the headset over his head so switched to wearing it DJ style. I thought I was going to lose it a few times as I glanced over at him and saw him spinning it like he was in the club. Perhaps you had to be there but you can imagine it.
We raced back to the hotel to change our clothes so we could go out to lunch. We went to a "feijõada" with a couple of the guys and their wives at a place called Figueiro (the Fig Tree). I'll have to do a separate post for food as that restaurant deserves at least two paragraphs and pictures all by itself.
Saturday night Mont and I took a walk to scope out the church building where we were planning on going on Sunday. It was a nice change of pace.
Sunday, April 27: Sunday morning we got up and took a walk in our suits to church only to find out that the church was being remodeled. Unfortunately, I didn't bring the address or directions to any other church buildings so we walked all the way back to our hotel in our suits and the sun.
The day involved a lot of laying around the hotel room with only an interruption for lunch at a local bar and a walk in the evening. I forgot how much they love soccer here, yesterday afternoon the streets and bars were full of people excited about the local championship. It was very nice to experience that again.
Monday, April 28: Nothing to say so far, we're working and meeting all day but for those of you that are curious here are my GPS coordinates for the post (S 23° 35.2972’ W 46° 40.5084’
Today, tomorrow, and Wednesday should be pretty much the same. I am super duper excited about Wednesday night as I fly to Rio and get to spend a few days there seeing old friends.
More to come...
Monday, April 28, 2008
Oi do Brasil!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Wow! Sounds fun!! I'm sure Steve is envious. Pretty sure he would go back to Brazil in a heartbeat. I'm glad there were missionaries on the plane, because that is a pretty safe bet of getting there in one piece. Enjoy the rest of your trip!
Okay, a couple of things. First of all, you and Dave have to get together and discuss soccer. He's a HUGE Liverpool fan and I'm sure you're talking about the game that they scored an own-goal in the last seconds of extra time that caused them to lose to icky Chelsea. Am I right? I saw it.
Second, I am almost positive that you had Dave's brother on your flight as one of those 12 missionaries. He left that day through Atlanta for Sao Paulo. Crazy.
I read the whole thing and found it quite entertaining, so keep up the day-by-day.
I definitely want to hear about the food. Some people eat to live but I am think I live to eat and so want lots of details. Have a great time! It sounds like a dream come true...a trip where you want to go on someone else's nickle!
Awesome Alec! Although we do miss you around here. Annie was very lonesome at the family party! But I'm going to try to keep her with plenty of phone company while you are gone. (And you know this is true while you are here, but feels less guilty while you are gone) And also the headlamp is very nice! I can picture you now on a plane with a headlamp. I watched that sight for lo, many an hour on the way to and from Hawaii. It's always nice to know someone else is up with you, because of the headlamp it let's you know you aren't alone. :-) Your trip sounds amazing. I'm so glad that you got to go. Next time you can take Annie and have another adventure.
Post a Comment