What a Day(s)

Wow. The last days have slurred together in a mass of travel and confusion. Yes I am here, and alive no less, in none other than BRAZIL. To make it all the way to Salvador da Bahia was no easy task. I braced myself in LAX as I began my travels with a flight a good thousand miles out of the way to Toronto (I’m not sure why either). Seeing so many Canadians at once was very weird. They seem like Americans just with something off about them. I can’t really name it but it is obviously there. There restaurants seem the same way; the double cheeseburger I bought was good in principle but there was just something off about it, something Canadian. Their money exchange workers really suck too. My program guide told me to bring around $60 in Brazilian reals with me, but when I tried to exchange it at the teller, he scoffed (YES SCOFFED!) and informed me “it wasn’t worth his time to deal with such petty amounts of cash” and that there was a hundred dollar exchange limit. I told him he wasn’t worth a long list of expletives, but in my head because I needed money. He did take my ATM card and told me $60 couldn’t even get me a cab away from the airport. He would know because he is a jet-setting financier and not some guy who changes money out at the Canadian airport, oh wait…But I digress, I found the gate for my plane in time to find out it would be a half hour late. This would be a great foreshadow of what was to come. Instead we waited a full hour, boarded the plane and found out there would be another 45 minute wait. We eventually did take off though; I sat next to a very tired but nice woman from Recife dying to get home after spending 4 months in Canada (who can blame her). She helped me fill out my customs form in exchange for my agreement to be in charge of opening the emergency door in case of, you guessed it, an emergency. It was nice sitting in the emergency aisle because we had a little extra room to stretch out during the 10+ hour flight. I actually got a little sleep too, enough to wake up and find we were landing after my connecting flight from Sao Paulo to Salvador would take off. My flight landed at 12: 40 pm local time, and insanity followed.
Getting off the plane was a zoo. In Brazil (and maybe in other countries too, I’m not sure), you have to get your bag and place it through customs, leave the security area and re-check it if you have a connection. I tried to make into the pack swarming the baggage claim when I heard my name called over the intercom. The woman at the counter told me my luggage was not on this flight; somehow my 3 hour layover and the 2 extra hours they had at the gate was not enough time to get one duffle bag on the plane…Canadians. She was very apologetic and rushed me through customs with a paper for my new flight. I left her side at the customs gate and have never felt so lost in my life. There were people people people rushing everywhere and I had no clue where to go. I tried asking people but they just ignored me. At this point I was thinking: Why did I choose to watch the zany antics of Zac Efron and Matthew Perry (a comical force by the way) in 17 Again on the plane instead of studying Portuguese!? I found my airline desk after wandering through a few floors and the line was packed. No one was moving but then someone randomly called Salvador and a new line was formed. The lady at the desk didn’t speak English but managed to yell at me “GO! NOW!” because my new flight was about to leave. I made it through security unsettlingly quick and ran to my gate to find no plane waiting outside the window and a mass of people crowding the desk screaming. It was unreal, like when you see people at the stock market freaking out in movies multiplied by 10. I once again had no idea what was going on. My flight wasn’t on the departures screen and no one spoke English. At this point I was thinking: Why did I choose to watch The Goonies AND a Fidel Castro documentary instead of studying Portuguese? I know Chunk will do the Truffle Shuffle, I know Fidel is a bastard, I don’t know how to say What the Hell is going on!?? in Portuguese. After much waiting, I somehow made it to the front and was handed a new ticket and told to go to Gate 1. There was another mass of yelling and pushing but I saw someone else going to Salvador hop on a bus so I followed suit. Luckily, that brought us to our plane and a good six hours after I was supposed to be there, I arrived in Salvador. Without the inconvenience of waiting for my baggage, I strolled right up to a Taxi booth and grossly overpaid for a ride to my hotel (I am choosing to believe that stupid money teller was not right). The hotel was nice and I shared a room with some people from my program. I met a bunch of people in the program too, I feel pretty lame because everyone seems to know each other and I don’t know anyone, but no one really seems to mind I guess. Oh and best of all, I didn’t die! What a day(s).