Do you like American airports? (Brazil day 2)

I like American airports...

I am in Brazil! We arrived safely yesterday after a long flight, but i was able to sleep through most of it. They showed King Kong but edited out the part where he plays with the dead dinosaurs mouth. Thats my favorite part! Also, the woman next to me laughed hysterically when he knocks over the woman multiple times as a game. Which validates my laughing hysterically in the movie theater.

Today we got up to take the charter flight from Sao Paolo to Campo Grande. It is by far the craziest experience i´ve seen. The floor packed in maybe a thousand people going to 20 desks... none of which had ropes or any kind of true line. Periodically, they would announce a flight in portuguese over the loudspeaker and a bunch of people would throw their hands up and get served. Of course, we had no idea when our flight would be announced. To give it a comparison, it was a lot like those seens from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange- complete bedlam, everyone out for themselves. Well, except for a nice woman and her daughter who helped me get a cart and find the right desk. She talked to me in Portuguese the whole time and offered me gum. Then when another woman started complained something incoherent in Portuguese at me, she yelled back at her! Somehow we made it on our flight (quote of the trip so far: ´´here is your ticket, your boarding time is now´´). Who thought I would miss the huge organized lines and up tight security personnel of American airports?

Oh, and Gene inadvertently requested to be randomly searched at Logan airport. That was funny.

Some other random thoughts:

Sao Paolo is huge! Looking out on the city is amazing.

The food is great so far- the best thing? fried cheese on a stick!

I am not feeling the keyboards here- upside down enter button, small shift and backspace´, punctuation characters all over the place...

If I had not gotten a portuguese lesson from my superstar former student Alice (one of the best students anywhere ever) I would be completely lost. Now at least i can picture words people are saying to me and pronounce things i read. Next up, a little better at speaking it.

But I do feel like a jerk for not knowing enough portuguese. Not many people speak english (the younger they are the more English they know it seems). I haven´t decided which is better, things written in english and people helping me by translating (thus enabling me not to learn as much, but helping me immensely), or everything in portuguese and me having to sink or swim. Which means I now don´t know my own opinion of whether it is better for non-English speakers in America to learn through immersion or not.

Well, I know throwing them into the fire isnt the best method in schools. But thats a whole other blog...

Interesting so far: most of the powerful, important or helpful people I have met so far have been women and the men seem to be assigned to much more nominal tasks. I am interested to see if this trend continues.



Looks like I´ll be on this again before making it to the field station monday. Who knows the access there, but keep checking back!