Vina del Mar

I feel very relieved that I have finally arrived in Vina. My host family is pretty awesome. I have a Mom, that I call Meg, a sister Francesca, a brother Guillerme and a dog named Milli. Fran is 25 and Gui is 23, I'm the baby! I live in an apartment building that literally right next to my school. I can see it from my window, its right outside the door. I have my own room and bathroom which is very cute. I have a little bed and a desk and a big window that overlooks a mountain of houses. From the balcony in the living room you can see the ocean :) I like my new home very much.

After I arrived I had lunch with my new family and Fran's boyfriend Juan. After I started to unpack and get settled in. I took a shower for the first time in a few days (very necessary) and took a nap. When I woke up my host mom made me dinner and after we went out for a walk. Meg is so nice, I already feel like I am one of  her kids. During our walk she told me about the city, showed me places that I will probably go, and then she had me tell her how to get home. It was a nice walk. Milli the dog does not like skateboards, she barked at all of them and scared the crap out of us. 

Vina is a very small but a very beautiful city. At night there are lots of lights and fountains and people. So far I like it very much. I have got to work on my Spanish though. Its bad, very bad. And it doesn't help that I spent the last week speaking Portuguese, it has me all confused. My head is a jumble of words of 3 different languages and the right words never come out! I will get used to it though, just another transition. Kind of a big one though.

I HATE Airports

I have had yet another terrible experience with flying. I must have extremely bad luck with planes or something.
On Friday I got an email saying that one of my flights was cancelled and that I was put on the next available flight out from Buenos Aires to Santiago, but the flight would get me there too late. There was a group airport pick-up at 10 am and I was going to miss it by 2.5 hours! So crazy, so crazy. Let me go on...
On Saturday my Brazilian host parents took me out to lunch with the family, I got to see my cousin Dani and her boyfriend Mo and also my brother Thiago but only for a few minutes. I was really sad that I could not spend more time with them. I wasn't even there for hardly 24 hours! It was a huge bummer. Anywho, after lunch I said good bye to everyone and my parents Thais and Maricio drove me to Campinas where I got on a bus to the airport.
When I got to the airport things got a little more fun when I went to talk to the airline about my cancelled flight and how I was going to be in a strange country with no one there to help me find my way to Vina del Mar, where I now live. But they said they couldn't do anything about it and that I would have to wait and talk to the people in Buenos Aires. Awesome. (Please realize the heavy layer of sarcasm, since this really was not so fun and had little to do with awesomeness) I had to use my credit card to call my parents and then started calling all of the emergency numbers that my program gave me for Chile, of course no one in Chile picked up there phone so I had to call the director in the U.S. He said he wasn't really going to let anyone know if I was going to be late yet because if I get my flight changed then it would have been all for nothing. OK, fine. Whatever.
So I got on the plane to Buenos Aires, it left Sao Paulo at 8:45 and I got there at around 10:30. When I got there though the entire airport had closed except for a little cafe, where I parked it for the next 10 hours. Yes, 10 hours. That is after I tried to change my flight, which couldn't be done, I was on the earliest one that the airline had. There was a flight leaving the next morning that would get me there on time but I would have to buy a whole other ticket since they did not have a contract with the other airline. I looked up how much it was ($695) and made the executive decision not to even ask my parents for the money. A taxi ride from the airport to my house would be cheeper.
At the cafe I become quite friendly with one of the waiters who helped me out with some stuff. He told me that to international calls I had to go to the Telecentro, a room full of little rooms full of phones and computers that you pay by the minute to use. But it did not open until 6am. The other public pay phones you needed Argentinian pesos to use and they only made local calls. Ugh. I hate airports. The waiter felt bad for me and gave me the password to their internet so that I didn't have to pay for it... and then gave me some free hot chocolate :) Mmmm. Probably the only good thing that happened in Buenos Aires.
At 6 am I went to the Telecentro and called back the director in the U.S. telling him that I could not get on an earlier flight, no one in Chile would pick up their phone (I tried to call them all again) and asked what to do when I got to Santiago. He assured me that he would get in touch with them and that I just needed to look for a sign with my name on it/UVM and I would be fine. OK so good, he would take care of it.
Or not I guess, since there was no one there at the airport. A taxi driver helped me call people in Chile and they said that they had not heard from me so they left early. They left early? Hmmm, why would they do that? Did they think, Oh we're still missing a kid, but lets just go anyway, she'll show up eventually, and then we'll make her take the sketchiest taxi ride of her life, for an outrageous price and arrive at her host family's house who had no idea that I was even coming?
Cool, what a great start.
P.S. No one spoke English or Portuguese and my Spanish sucks.

:) I feel better not that I have let out all of my anger

Take a good look, you'll never be the same again

I have now traveled to a different city in the state of Sao Paulo where I used to live, Americana. Don't even think about joking, an Americana in Americana, I have heard it all. I took the bus this morning from the bus station in Sao Paulo and was picked up by my Brazilian host parents Thais and Mauricio in Americana. It is so good to see them again!!! My family!!
I spent the afternoon hanging out with my host mom Thais, since she doesn't work on Fridays. We went to a new cafe/cake place called Formiguinha. It means little ant, because little ants LOVE sugar! I thought the name was very cute.
After eating the best passion fruit and chocolate mousse quickly followed by a mocha cappuccino we went to the grocery store and arrived home just in time to see my host sister Camilla. A little while later we went to my grandparents house to say hello. My grandfather Vo Zizo is taking Italian classes. My little brother Lucas has been in Italy on exchange since August and at the end of the year the whole family is going to go pick him up in Italy. They did the same for my sister Camilla who went to France and my older brother Thiago who went to Canada. So, my grandfather, Zizo, wants to practice his Italian with everyone he encounters and it is so funny!Ahh it feels so good to be back here!
We went out for pizza for dinner and then Camilla and I went to pick up some exchange students that were arriving at the bus station from Germany and Thailand. I saw my counselor Marcela for the first time since I had left. The kids were all so tired!
I feel so strange. Picking up the exchange students at the bus station brought me back to everything that I was feeling at the beginning of my exchange year in Brazil, and now on Sunday, I'm going to do it all over again. Its just so strange to be in that place, the place where it all began, the exact same place. The situation makes me think about how young I used to be, mentally. I have grown up so much since that day I stepped of the bus in Campinas, just like these kids did a few hours ago, its like I never was that other person. I am not as innocent or naive or reserved, introverted as I used to be, in fact I think I am almost the polar opposite of most of these qualities. I used to be afraid to talk to strangers, now I talk to everyone, everywhere, whether it be in line at the grocery store or the person that I have never met sitting next to me in class and I can't believe that I was ever that shy.
I know that experiences like spending a year abroad or going through something inconceivably difficult changes you but the changes that I see in myself now were never this clear to me until I saw these kids. If I, the person that I am now, were put into a room with the person that I was two and a half years ago I don't think that I would have recognized myself if I had not gone back to the exact same place and watched these kids step off the bus just like I did.
Seeing these kids is like a slap in the face. BAM this was you two and a half years ago. HOLY SHIT.
I was so shy and innocent back then I don't even think we would have been friends, I would have gotten bored. I had never skipped class, never broke the rules, never rebelled against my parents, never done something so bad I could have been put in jail... but I year later I would have done all of those things. I looked at the world through a hole the size of a pin.
This also makes me think about the changes I will go through this time around. This time it will only last for 6 months, which is not a year. But it is still a considerable amount of time, and I know I will change. I will be different. Will I still want the same things that I want now? How will it change my perspective of the world? I'm excited, but also terrified. What would you think if someone told you to take a good look in the mirror because you will never be the same person again. I happen to quite like who I am. I am proud of who I have become.
The funny thing is, it wasn't even in the plans for me to go to the bus station with Camilla to pick up these kids, but I am glad it is where I ended up tonight.

Avenida Paulista

Yesterday was my first day back and I decided to go to law school. I am staying in my friend Gabriela's apartment and she studies law at PUC SP (Pontifica Universidade Catolica de Sao Paulo) and I went to class with her yesterday morning. Class started at 7:30, we showed up at 8:15 :) Oh Brazil. The first class was about workers law, direito de trabalho. We talked about the history of workers rights in Brazil, minimum wage, minimum age, mandatory vacation time (I think I understood it was 3 months! I think I heard wrong, I was very confused) stuff like that. It was pretty cool actually, talking about the history of workers right in a different country. Cool stuff. The second class sucked, I couldn't understand a thing. I don't even know what it was about, but I do know that Gabi has an internship at a place that practices this kind of law. I should figure out what it is.

In the afternoon I hung out with some of Gabi's roommates; Mateus and Luiz. I was so tired from my stupid disaster of a voyage that I couldn't bring myself to go out and explore where I was. I couldn't believe it! But, I made up for it today.

Today was pretty awesome actually. I slept in while Gabi went to class then met up with her for lunch at school. Afterwords I went with her to Avenida Paulista, a very famous street in Brazil that she worked very close to.  I spent the whole day exploring, walking up and down the street, going into stores, buildings, shopping malls, parks. It was so much fun. I didn't think that it would be since I was going all alone but I found it very refreshing, I had a great time looking at the architecture, strolling in the park. It inspired me to sit down and start writing again. I went to a cafe and sat a wrote some poetry for an hour, and then did it again in the park. It was lovely.

A view from uder MASP, the Modern Art Museum on Avenida Paulista

A park where I sat on a bench in the shade to escape the heat.

After meeting Gabi after work we went to Starbucks and then walked from Avenida Paulista to her school (40 minutes) We walked in front of one of the best medical schools in the country USP (Universidade de Sao Paulo) and it was such a beautiful campus with white buildings and grass and palm trees everywhere. When we arrived at Gabi's school there was a protest going on because they raised the price to ride the public bus. There was a little stage set up in the courtyard with a microphone with student lined up to speak about the subject. It was pretty cool. They are really only able to do this sort of thing, organize a protest and have a public debate like this because the police are not allowed in the school. PUC is a Catholic school and the school is not allowed to have any affiliation with the state, including the police force and the firemen. So if there was a fire in the school the director would have to give them some sort of document giving them permission to enter the school before they can attend to the fire. This is why the students were allowed to organize like this, or else the police would have broken it up.

PUC-SP at night

I really like Gabi's school, it is very different than an American University. For one thing we would consider it tiny. It is only a couple of buildings that have a couple of floors each. There is a courtyard, little cafes and a little cafeteria. You don't see anyone there dressed in sweatpants or in shirts displaying the name of their school, it is much more formal, mostly because a lot of the students have internships in the city and work after they go to school. So, there are girls in dresses and heels, guys walking around in suits. The professors are also much more interesting than the professors in the U.S. They are much more passionate about what they teach and it shows during their lecture. If we had professors like them I think that I would get straight A's.

It is impossible to fall asleep in JFK

So much has happened in the past 48 hours I am not even sure how to even begin the first entry in this blog. I suppose I can start by letting everyone know that I finally made it to Brazil, though it almost didn't happen. Let me explain;
Friday night I was making copies of all things important when I discovered that my Brazilian visa had gone missing. After tearing apart my room and completely freaking out until the early hours of the morning, I came to the conclusion that it was not anywhere in my house in Maine, so I went to sleep and dreamed of ways to smuggle myself into the country without a legit visa. My dreams ended with me being stranded at customs in Sao Paulo, or in a Brazilian jail. Things looked grim.
After much more confusion and stress and help from some reinforcements (beloved Aunt Alison) we decided that it must be in my old passport... which I thought I had lost. So we threw everything in the car and drove to my apartment in New Hampshire. WE FOUND IT. After a quick stop at the Court House we were off to Logan International.
Logan was fine, ate the best tuna burger of my life, said good bye to the fam... and then my flight was delayed. And then it was delayed again. Apparently New York was a complete mess and having to deal with 50mph winds. Knowing this I asked the booking agent to rebook my flight for somewhere else, but she refused and told me to go sit down. The booking agent won the award for the absolute rudest person that I have ever met in my entire life, with an extra gold star for a negative attitude. Then all hell broke loose when they told anyone that had an international connection needed to rebook about 20 minutes later. Thanks Biotch.
I ended up getting on the flight to New York and then waiting around for a flight to Sao Paulo at 8:30 am. I found a stranded group of Brazilians and we all stuck together for the night. None of us really managed to sleep, but I guess it was good since I got to practice my Portuguese with them. I made a friend, a girl my age named Marcela from Florianopolis and traded seats with a guy from Argentina so that we could sit together on the plane.

Waiting in line for TAM airlines to open with all of me and Marcela's luggage. It was around 4am.

When we arrived in Sao Paulo it was raining. Very fitting. I ended up taking a crazy taxi ride to my friend Gabriela's apartment. The taxi driver was a little nuts, and we ended up taking a wrong turn which brought us to the wrong part of the city. Oops. When I finally got there Gabi and another friend from Rio Claro, Caina were there to greet me. It was so good to finally get there, and so good to see people that I recognized! We went out for sushi and then went to bed.
So I am finally here, I have survived. YAY!