And so the journey begins...

At last, the day I have been waiting for since last november is finally here! Obviously, I could not sleep at all the night before, and there i was, at the airport, 3h before takeoff! At 10:00 am, I was sitting in the plane, waiting! 3h later, we were still sitting in the plane, stuck on the runway! It was terrible! The funny part was that nobody was complaining.  See, 95% of the passengers were from South america, and maybe 90% of them did not speak a word of English.  South Americans are so flow.  People just waited, patiently.. for THREE HOURS! I don't think it would have been the same if the plane was filled with New Yorkers.  Finally, the pilot took off, just like that, no warning, no "please take your seats and fasten your
seatbelts", nothing! But we were finally in the air. What was supposed to be a 5h30 flight turned into an 8h30 flight, which means that almost everyone on that plane missed their connection.  Luckily, the 8h were not that bad.  The person sitting next to me was one of the few people who spoke English! He is from Rio so he gave me a list of places to go to, the nice samba bars, the good meat restaurants, the brand of alcohol to look out for when ordering caipirinhas :) When I asked him if Rio was as dangerous as people say he said: "Just walk like you got this, and you'll be fine"! It was actually a lot of fun, so Tomaz, I owe you!

When we finally landed, the copa airlines help desk was a mess, with everybody trying to reschedule their flights.  Unfortunately for me, and 55 other people (mostly Brazilians), there were no more flights that night and we had to stay in Panama till the next day. The airlines were going to pay for transportation, hotels and diner. A bus took us all to the hotel and I was able to witness, first hand, how nice and friendly brazilians are.  It was great.  Everyone starts a conversation with everyone.  Even if they don't speak English, and know
you don't speak portugese, they will still try to start a conversation, about ANYTHING.  There was a lot of
pointing, and looking throught my "Portugese to English" dictionary.  Some girl on the bus spoke some English so she kept getting dragged into our "conversations" to translate :)  I coulnd't find a way to explain what my name meant though... So we left it at "the aqua, on the rosa, in la manana".  I'm not sure how many people got it, but I tried!

The next day, I woke up pretty early and decided to go for a walk in Panama City before the bus picked us up.  It was ... interesting! Panama city looks a lot like Burj Hammoud (A city in Lebanon).  They use US Dollars  which made things easier.  I bought something to eat and went back to the hotel

On the drive to the airport, I noticed that the living conditions are pretty harsh.  People live in small houses, really close to each other, with barely 4 walls (and a lot of the walls were missing some stones).  The interesting part was that even though they barely had some metal sheet as a roof, all houses had a satellite dish on top! I guess having cable is (like I used to tell my dad when I was a kid) a "besoin de la vie" :)

The panama airport supposidly has one of the biggest duty free shops in south America.  But, it does not have a souvenir shop, which means I could not buy my "panama" shot glass.  Also, all the restaurants in the food court are american chains.  There was a quiznos, cinabon, dominos...
While I was ordering food, the guy next to me was Brazilian and could not understand what the cashier
was telling him in spanish, and neither one of them spoke english.  I stepped in and translated her Spanish to Portuguese and his answer back to spanish! I was so proud.  I so got this!

I also got some more tips on what to do in Belo Horizonte from someone else I met! The flight to Brazil
was pretty bad, but we made it there.  I got to the airport at midnight and Jefferson was waiting
for me, with a sign that said "Corporate Service Corps"! We didn't get to the hotel till 1:30am.

Overall, even though it took me almost 3 days to get there, it wasn't all bad: I met some great people, got some tips about Belo Horizonte and Rio, learned some portugese, can add Panama to the list of countries I've been to (which means I only have about 70 left to go), and most importantly I made it! :)
Now, I'm looking forward to meeting everybody else and officially starting this adventure!

Until Next time
Nada #ibmcsc Brazil