My journey to and arrival in Brazil

I completely forgot to credit Bananas for the name of this blog in my first post. Bananas chose the name of this blog as she insisted that I blog while in Brazil and I replied that I would be willing to blog if she came up with a name for it.Well in typical Bananas fashion she realized that she hadn't actually come up with one till twelve in the morning on the day I was scheduled to fly out. So while attempting to instruct me in water coloring, she randomly uttered names until she found one she liked the sound of. I left for the airport at noon on friday with my mom and dad and upon arrival we were informed that you are only allowed 70 lbs of luggage if your  ticket was bought in Brazil.Well thanks to a terrible website design we had interpreted it as 70 lbs from the USA, I was initially horrified  as I had packed both my bags to 65 lbs and could see no possible way that I could simply get rid of 30 lbs. at the airport.Thankfully dad had left work early to come see me off at the airport and was quite happy to negotiate with/terrorize the airport personal into letting me take all my luggage with  me to Brazil at no extra cost ^_^.I was really happy to see another exchange student from my district in the airport as I thought that I was going to have to fly down on my own.At 4:30 I hugged mom and dad goodbye and left for my connection to Atlanta.The flight to Atlanta was very short and I ended up sitting next to two women who didn't speak to me until our flight landed in Atlanta.Upon landing though the women next to me suddenly started asking me all sorts of questions and telling me about how she wished she could go back to visit Columbia.I was quite amused that she randomly started talking to me just before disembarking, but I rather think I managed to convince her to host an exchange student in about 10 minutes .Tiffany and I then spent two hours pacing through the Atlanta airport trying to find food, but as we didn't find anything we fancied. I ended up only purchasing a liter of water, a purchase which turned out to be my last for nearly two weeks, honestly that has got to be some sort of a record for me as I love shopping ^_^.International flights turned out to be not nearly as bad as I had feared,even though I had the worst seat position on the plane.I was seated in the last row between a very nice Japanese woman and an overweight Brazilian man who didn't say a single word to me the entire and slept on me during the times that he wasn't playing with his new itouch.I only got up once during the nine hour flight however as both the people next to me were sleeping and I was too shy to wake them up.I also regretted not purchasing any food as I was ravenous the entire night and to my undying shame actually consumed every piece of food that the flight attendants gave me ^_^.I was so happy when my plane reached Brazil as I couldn't wait to  meet my host family and see what  Brazil was like.Customs was a complete joke to go through but at least the lines weren't terrible.After passing through customs I met my host mother and father standing waiting for me with a sign, not that I needed one as my host mother is very distinctive looking ^_^.I was quite unsurprised to find that my portuguese was woefully inadequate for good communication but I at least managed to tell them that I would love a cup of tea.My host mother tania then proceeded to try to get me something to eat, but instead of just ordering something for me, she got a menu in english for me to peruse. Now at this point I was exhausted, befuddled,hot and wanting nothing more than a shower and bed and I most certainly did not want to try and select my breakfast.However as she kept insisting I finally pointed to a random item on the menu and ended up with a disgustingly over salted tomato and cheese sandwich which I felt obliged to attempt to eat.At least I had my tea and it was quite the comfort to just sit and hold that cup of tea,breathing in the scent and trying to smile while Tania talked far too quickly and excitedly to me in a language I could barely understand.We had to wait in the airport nearly four hours after my arrival for my host brother Iuri who was returning from his own exchange in Canada.My host mother was very excited about this and kept telling me about how much she was going to cry upon seeing him and asking me all sorts of questions about myself, in between all of this I finally attempted to ask her and Paulo if I could call my parents to let them know that I had arrived in Brazil.My portuguese was essentially epic fail at this point due to my exhaustion but I at least managed to get my intentions across to them , it took us absolutely forever to figure out the public phones system but at least that occupied us till Iuri's arrival.I had never before felt that I could fall asleep anywhere ,but when my host family left me to wait alone with my bags while they went to greet Iuri, I was constantly falling asleep and then awaking every few minutes.During the first day my dreams were so odd as I kept falling asleep while listening to portuguese and as there are many words that sound similiar but are of course in a different context it really did give me the most peculiar dreams.I was quite happy to see Iuri as he could actually speak english fairly decently and after some rather involved messing about with our respective baggage we  left on the six hour car drive for Lins.I'm still quite disappointed that all of Sao Paulo that I really got to see was the airport but my host family seemed very anxious to return home.The drive was fairly excruciating to endure after eleven hours of flying and nine hours of sitting in airports,  but at least I was able to sleep for a little while during it and I spent the rest of the time trying to mentally translate my host family's conversation and as a result becoming even more exhausted.At last we arrived in Lins and were greeted by Tania's mother, who came down to see Iuri and is quite the most hyper and playful eighty-four year old  that I have encountered.I dumped my things in my room and then sat on my bed feeling lost and disconsolate while Tania bustled around me and starting trying move Iuri's old things out of the room so I could put my stuff away.I did not actually end up going to bed until past midnight as my host family was being so active and noisy and I didn't want to just be rude and ignore them.I wasn't actually homesick my first night but I was quite dazed and wondering what I had gotten myself into and why I was here, I was also very much in need of a good hug.