My Arrival

My flight from Miami to Belo Horizonte actually went by pretty fast. I took gravol to make to fall asleep and it totally worked! On that flight, there was no one booked to sit next to me so I had the 2 seats to myself which was awesome for sleeping. When I woke up, it was 3:30am and I could see that the sun was about to start coming up. I kind of fell back to sleep again only to wake up to the sun rising over Brazil. It was so beautiful, I couldn’t keep my face away from the window.

When I got off the plane I had to go into customs. A man came up to me to explain where to put my bags but he started rambling off to me in Portuguese then walked away. I stood there with probably the most confused look on my face and just copied what others were doing. Once my bags were put through the detector, I put one of them back on my cart but then a different man came up and took my other bag away thinking it belonged to the guy in front of me. I walked quickly behind him trying to get his attention but he brought the bag to that man and finally I said “e meu, e meu!” He thankfully returned it back to me and started speaking fast Portuguese. He then searched both of my huge suitcases top to bottom. (messed up my organization I must add). Finally I got to go out and meet my family. There were so many people lined up waiting for others that I couldn’t process who was who. All of a sudden Sofia jumped out and hugged me and I started crying! Behind her was my host mom, dad, sister’s friend (Nina), and Sofia’s dad. I was so overwhelmed because they all started talking in Portuguese to me. They knew I was confused because they all started laughing.

Mae, Pai, Nina and I took the car home. It was about a half hour drive from the airport to their house and I loved it! BH is beautiful! I loved looking at all the PALM TREES! And other really neat things that were different.

I’m honestly just going to write a separate blog post about the driving and food because oh man, that’s different.