First day out

After many hours on the plane, 26 to be exact, i finally made it to Florinopolis, Brasil on Saturday June 17th. Though famished from hardly edible plane food and ultimate jet lag, the excitement of being on "new found land" rejuvinated me enough to get me out on the town. After watching USA tie Italy (what a surprise that was) we (Matt, Meg, Grant and I) met up with our professor, Raul Reis (Ha-ul Hayes) who took us to a restaurant he recommended. I was definately ready to feast, which i did, on steak over pasta with cream sauce and mushrooms. The food was much better than what i was eating on the plane. ick. Many of the words written down on the menu are more understandable but verbal portuguese is a completely different story. They talk fast and i do not understand and when they talk slow, i really do not understand. No entiendo is what i commonly have said which means i do not understand. I also say no falla portuguese which means i do not speak portuguese. Not knowing the spoken language is tough and frustrating. I carry around my phrase book, which is helpful, but i am slow and not good at pronunciating. Some do know spanish, which is helpful because i know a little. I now wish i took more time communicating spanish with the cooks at my work. When i come back, i promise i will. Anyways moving on from the language barrier...........
On Sunday the four of us 1went to Barro de Lagoa and watched the Brazil vs. Austraila world cup game. Brazil won 2-0 which is good or else i do not no what would of gone down. The town seemed pretty dead but that may be becuase it was Sunday and poeple were watching the game at home and had church in the morning. We had Pizza for lunch and apparently italian food is really big down here. I was expecting more mexican food but have not quite seen that yet. Meg and grant were tired after the game, but Matt and I wanted to stay in town and watch the following game. We went to the same bar we were at the previous night which has a good area to watch the third game outside. It was a nice sunny afternnon and many loclas were outside socializing. I do not recommend eating there since the previous night i had a burgerwith cheese, corn , peas, onion, tomato, bun, and ewwww hot dog. It was the everything burger which is how i like my burgurs but that was a little too much. Matt and i ended up meeting this guy that was named Angulo. He did not speak a word of English but we had fun trying to talk via my phase book and through one of the workers there named Dan whom knew some spanish. As little of spanish as i know, it did help me when i knew none of portuguese. He said he was a paulista which i assumed meant he was a police man but it really menas that he was from San Paulo. We also got "Lost in Translation" on many other attempts at talking. Fortunatley we ventured off with Angulo and went to a cafe called Cafe Cultura which we met the owner, named Josh, who is from Santa Barbara, California. We chatted it up with him for awhile who helped translate our conversation with Angulo which put us on track. It then became about 10 or 11 at night so we took a taxi back to our hotel ($23 reals = $11-12 dollars) and met the rest of our group who got there that afternoon (Vince, Christine and Michelle). We talked for awhile and then went to bed because the first day of class began on Monday at 9.

****Picture is of the group minus Matt, Erica and I (from left, Grant, Meg(my roommate), Michelle, Vince, and Christine)****