Our First Day in the Southern Hemisphere

The flights were sooooooo long. I never imagined it would take 2 1/2 hours to fly to Houston from Louisville but when you are in a SMALL plane, it does. We were crammed in like sardines and with not a seat to spare. When we landed in Houston, we had just an hour between flights. To top that, we landed at terminal B and were leaving from terminal E. Thank goodness for the shuttle train. After that we found yet another long walk to our gate. The three of us, David, me, and his boss Rena were moving along at a pretty fast clip when one of those big airport golf carts came along and took us to our gate. We had just enough time to each go to the restroom before they started loading the plane.

Then came the extremely long flight of 10 hours from Houston to Sao Paulo. Even though we didn't leave Houston until nearly 10:00 p.m., we were still served dinner; lasagna for the three of us. After that, the lights were lowered and most of the plane tried to sleep as best we could. Not long after the lights were dimmed than David decided he couldn't sleep in the aisle seat because every time someone walked down the aisle, they bumped him. So we traded seats; no small feat in a plane. About an hour before we landed in Sao Paulo, we were served breakfast.

One really neat thing about our flight was the overhead monitors would constantly update our position, air speed, outside temperature, altitude, and estimated time of arrival. During breaks in sleep, it was fun to watch.

Customs in Sao Paulo went well. None of us had any problems and we were sent on our way, but only after spending well over an hour in line. We retrieved our bags from the carousel and met our driver Marcos.

Marcos was very helpful including insisting on pushing my baggage cart out to the front of the terminal; David and Rena had to push their own carts. David I could understand but as far as making Rena push her cart, I'm thinking that after that airplane ride, I was really showing my age and Marcos was just helping out the "poor old woman."

Marcos crammed our suitcases into his smallish Chevrolet and we headed to Jundiai. Marcos didn't speak much English and Rena was having trouble getting her cell phone to work. Marcos couldn't help so he called someone he knew who could and handed his cell phone to Rena. Rena was able to touch base with her family back in Kentucky.

Marcos drove us to our hotel in Jundiai where we checked in and rested a bit. My idea of rest was to make David lay down while I unpacked and put everything away. One of David and Rena's coworkers here in Jundiai met us later in the lobby and took us to lunch. It was a buffet so we got to experience a lot of different kinds of Brazilian food. David has discovered egg plant! He had two different dishes made with egg plant and enjoyed them both. Those of you who know David know that he would never order egg plant on purpose in the States.

Our hotel is nice. It is different that what we are used to. For one thing, it took us just a little while to realize we had to activate our room lights by putting our door card in a slot by the door. We were still unpacking our carry-ons, though, when the lights went out. About that time, the bellhop brought up the rest of our bags. I asked him, about the lights going out but he didn't speak hardly any English so through some pantomime and a few words of Portuguese, I finally conveyed the problem by telling him the lights went black. The light bulb came on both literally and figuratively. He said "card" and I handed him mine and then he made me understand that the card had to stay in the slot for the lights to stay on. I then asked how the air conditioning worked by telling him I wanted it cold since I know "frio". He was able to show me how to work the remote controlled thermostat. He also figured out I wanted to be able to open the door to the balcony. When I tell you he doesn't speak much English, for most of you that would be saying you don't speak much Portuguese. Finally, when we couldn't get hooked up the Internet, I carried my laptop down to the lobby and asked if they knew if I was doing anything wrong. The front desk crew, who speak pretty good English, couldn't help me and said they would send someone up. Guess who - our very friendly and helpful bellhop. Unfortunately, this was too much of a communications gap. David evidently figured it out and we are now in touch with the world.

David has called it a night. It is just 8:30 at home but 10:30 here. I guess his body clock has made the switch and I should also. More later.