Rio de Janeiro Day 1

Today i woke up at 5:00 AM to watch the sun rise as the MV Explorer pulled into Salvador. The immigration process went quickly but the diplomatic briefing practically put me to sleep. Everything that we heard, we had learned in global studies all week.

After the briefing Meg and I ran up to the gangway to start what became a very difficult departure to Rio. First off our cab ride to the airport cost $50 combined. Then when we got to the airport we stood in line for a while and they would´t take our Visa cards. So.... we had to hunt down the bank machines and that was a fiasco in itself because our Visa cards, we found out, have a daily withdrawal limit of $200 (or R400,00). We had just enough to pay for our departure flight. After that whole ordeal we got back inline to purchase a ticket and it was gift sent from Heaven that two people from Florida were standing right in front of us, and the lady happened to speak a little of portuguese. I am having a hard time with the language barrier because for once I am the minority.

It occuried to me that Brazilians are not one to hurry because it took over an hour to check in and our just about every flight was delayed. The flight wasn´t bad though. We experienced a tad bit of turbelance and the flight attendants spoke English! What a relief, I finally had a sense of what was going on around me. The water on the plane was in a cup sealed with a foil top so i thought that was unique. We were also served a sub for our flight.

We met a boy from San Fransico traveling by himself to Rio de Janeiro so we teamed up with him and caught a cab into Copacabana together. Altogether the ride cost R75,00.

Meg and I were relieved when we got to the hostel because our Visa cards worked. They don´t accept Mastercards so we were a little concerned how we were going to pay for it at first; we didnt want to spend the night out on the streets! The staff is very friendly, helpful, and bilengual. As we were checking in Megan noticed that one of the staff members was only wearing one earring so she pointed out that she was missing one. The lady told us it was actually a trend to wear only one earring here.

After check in, we headed up to our rooms, dropped our stuff off and walked around for a bit. I have been worried that my passport, camera, and money are going to get stolen so i have been uncomfortably wearing a travel purse around my belly tucked into my pants. Just in case though, someone tries to pickpocket my purse, I have made a dummy purse. I put my old digital camera, 5 US dollars, some hand sanitizer, and some gum so if they got they might think they were getting away with the real deal. The currency is refered to as reals (its not pronouced like it looks) and it goes down to R2,00 in paper. Anything under R2,00 are coins.

For dinner we went to a market right across the street. It consisted of some ruffles, sabor cebola & salsa flavor (sour cream and onion) a bottle of water called Minalba (im guessing it stands for natural mineral water??) and some sandwich type looking thing that I couldn´t finish.

Tomorrow Meg and I plan to head over to the market across from Copacabana beach and look around/souviner shop until all the other SAS students arrive at the hostel in the afternoon.