my trip 1

Disclaimer: sorry, but the keyboards here are different, so it's taking some getting used to--sorry for the horrible punctuation, etc. but i dont have time to fix it right now.

We are now in santa maria, we got here at like 5:30 this morning, and have been sitting in the bus station waiting for the city to come to life...we will probably get to our first stop pretty late tonight, we will stay with some of mike's friends...hopefully take a shower...hopefully the shower won't be too cold... :-) then we'll head down to one of my areas.

It~s been really fun for me to be here again. When I had to switch airports in /sao Paulo, I got to drive through the city on a bus for like an hour, and it was fun seeing all the things i'd forgotten about sao paulo: There is graffiti is EVERYWHERE!!! there is a "river" running down the side of the highway...if i~m remembering correctly, they told us it was drinking water...but it looks more like waste water....
I knew i was in the south when, as i was waiting for mike's flight to arrive in walked a man carrying a cuia, and thermus--drinking mate! and then a few minutes later a few gauchos walked in with their big pants and boots on. it made me smile.

The other thing \i "enjoyed" was how different reactions are to my portuguese...one man who spoke fairly english fairly well, was helping me find my bus in sao paulo and any time i tried to speak portuguese he got this horribly confused look on his face, so we mostly just spoke in english. Then after we got to the airport, i was talking to the lady infront of me in portuguese and she asked if i was a Sao Paulo native, and when i told her i am american she was amazed. same thing with the man at the tourist station in porto alegre--"really?! but your portugues is so good!" that gave me a bit of a boost... but it~s still not as good as i'd have hoped. sad how quickly you can loose something that was so important to your daily life...

I~ve taken a few pictures, but nothing really all that exciting--mostly just views out the plane window...so i~m not going to take the time now to find my cable to attach my camera and attatch them now. maybe next time.