Eddy in Brazil

I have safely arrived in Vila Velha, after a rather lengthy and at some times frustrating flight. Can't say I can recommend Aerolineas Argentinas, they pride themselves on Comfort and Reliability, except their boeing was about 30 years old, the seats came off and the entertainment system didn't work at all.

Gee the day started with a buzz, my flight scheduled to leave lil' ol'Adelaide at 6:00am, and all the alarms failing to wake us, so we ended up leaving the house at 5:15am. What a start to an otherwise sublimely prepared trip... I ended up missing out on my flight as boarding had closed, but I could catch the next one to Sydney 40 mins later. This didn't end up affecting my flight to follow, Aerolineas Argentinas made sure they delayed by 50 mins... how nice of them. I met up with the other 5 Southern Cross people going to Brasil in Sydney. I was surprised to find out that 4 out of the 6 were going to Vitoria, or Vila Velha. The remaining two are now in Salvador, or so we hope. Very nice group, got to know them quite well over the 30 orso hours we spent in each others company.

Uziel and Daiana were waiting for me at the airport and they showed me Vitoria and then Vila Velha. The approach to Vitoria at night was incredible, you could see all the streets and praias lit up; sensaaaational. Vila Velha is the original settlement of Vitoria, it has the main business area and beaches. From my tiny first impressions, the rumours are confirmed, Brazilians are party animals. It was no coincidence that when we went for a quick walk and sorvete (ice-cream) along Praia de Costa that they were in the middle of packing up the day's dance festival. Rhubbish was sprawled on just about every inch of pavement, evidence that they really did party hard. When I mentioned it, Uziel just said; That's Brasil. The beach is otherwise lined with Quisqoues (kiosks) and little eateries, many with live music.

In just a 20 min drive and the small 12 hours I've been here, I have taken in so many impressions that my brain is having trouble processing it all, let alone summarise it in writing. I can tell life here will need some adjusting, but this was not unexpected. I will have to become much more independent as much of the time Uziel and Daiane will be teaching or occupied with the Church. I only have a small room (big enough for a double bed and wardrobe) and a little bathroom with a shower and toilet and sink, so I will live with less than I'm used to. I can see how it will be a challenge, especially the initial language barrier, but in overcoming it the rewards will be great.

There is too much to experience to be wasting my time on this computer, so até logo!
I will get some pictures up once I have some more of the area.
Tonight I get to taste traditional Brazilian barbeque meat. Yum


I'm sipping a tiny café, very sweet strong cofee shot, the way they like to drink it here, even a normal cappucino I ordered in Rio was the size of an espresso.

Departure day is not far away, it's just a few minutes past eight in the evening and I am doing some final things before going to bed. It will be a reasonable early wake-up call tomorrow, my flight from Adelaide takes-off at 6:00am.

I did the majority of packing today, and to my relief I am well within the weight and size restrictions. Heck there's even some room for souvenirs. I am typing from Juliette's room at the moment. There was a mutual decision made by all that it was time to upgrade Juliette's previous 6.5 year old Compaq, so she has now got my Dell (on temporary loan?) And.. (if you're reading this Oom Henk).. I think you have almost persuaded Mum to look into a new iMac as well...

I took plenty of 'happy-snaps' from my last night out with friends. We went to the Ed as planned and then to the Torrens Arms Hotel (known as 'The TA') until about 2/3 o'clock. I assembled the most civilised looking shots and put them into a little slideshow, it's quite nice... you'll like it. Just click the thumbnail below.



Thanks for coming out everyone, I had a great night. If I have time to sit down at a public computer terminal, I will do a quick travel update, if not, the next time I post will be from Brasil!

Oh and Happy Australia day everyone :P

Just like The Beatles, I now have my ticket to ride. It was a bit of a last-minute ordeal, waiting on documents from Brazil and what not, but they're finally letting me in.



I'm all set! I started packing things together today, and I came to the conclusion that man has too many shoes. Shoes for sport, shoes for going-out, shoes for the beach, shoes for formal occasions, shoes for another sport... So I decided to take a separate bag and make it 'the shoe-bag'. A shoe, for interest's sake is called a sapato in Portuguese. There you go, now we can all say we have learned something today.

Tonight I am meeting at The Edinburgh Hotel (a local pub/restaurant) with my friends for an unofficial going-away gathering. For Adelaide-outsiders, the Ed is close to Mercedes College and so many ex-student young and old come there and Tuesday's are especially popular. I may just post some pictures if I can get some.

Tchau!

In order to take some decent pictures when I go to Brazil, I decided to buy a new digital camera. With specialist advice from my uncle (a very knowledgeable photographer) and plenty of research on the web, and visiting various shops, I finally decided to trade my cash for a Fujfilm Finepix F10. It's got very nice specs, including 6.3 MP, 3x zoom, 80-1600 ISO range, 500 shot battery life and very short start-up and shutter lag. So far it's pretty easy to use, and I'm just getting to know some of the settings.


Fujifilm Finepix F10

Here's a test shot I took:



Meanwhile I have been trying to get the Embassy in Canberra to sort out my visa; turned out they needed some original copies of various documents. I sent those off with express post and hopefully this will secure my visa in time before I leave.

I've bought various Aussie gifts for my host parents and the other day mum came home with a large Samsonite suitcase (on wheels). The only trick now is not to over-fill it, because I have to leave room for anything I want to bring back. My plan is to pack light on clothes, as it is very cheap to buy there, and I'll blend in with the local fashion.

In unrelated news, I got my first preference University offer! Here's what I'll be studying after I get back, in 2007:

Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical and Electronic) Double Degree at University of Adelaide.
[Link]

I'm doing Finance as my double degree. Should be exciting...

To all the other people leaving soon to go travelling or on exchange: Have fun, safe travels, don't catch any crazy diseases and see you at some undecided point in the future!

Welcome officially to 'Eddy in Brazil', a blog I intend to maintain while I go on a cultural exchange to Brazil for most of this year. Some quick facts about the exchange:

• Duration: Year programme (10 months). I leave on January the 27th, and am scheduled to return on December the 4th.
• Destination: a medium-sized city (pop ≈ 300,000) called Vila Velha. It's located South-East of Vitória, which is the capital of Espirito Santo. To let you see exactly where it is I uploaded this placemark for Google Earth. My host family live 'downtown', for lack of a better word, and I'm promised it's only 1.5 km from the beach!
• Flight: It's a big one: I fly from Adelaide to Sydney, early on Friday the 27th. Here I'll meet up with all the other Southern Cross exchange students from Australia wide, who are going to Brazil. I'm guessing around 10-20 others. From Sydney we fly to Buenos Aires via Auckland. Then to Rio de Janeiro, and from there each student makes their way to their individual destinations, and many (like me) will have to make another domestic flight because Brazil is so big. I'm flying Qantas to Sydney, then Aerolineas Argentinas for the major flight and then TamAir to Vitoria.
  Adelaide --> Sydney --> Auckland --> Buenos Aires --> Rio de Janeiro --> Vitória
• School: As part of the exchange I will do another year of high school whilst I'm there. Whilst academically it doesn't count towards anything, going to school will give me the opportunity to make friends and socialise more than anything else. Oh, and to learn portuguese, because that could come in handy. Anyway, Centro Educacional Michelangelo is the name.
• Host family: I was first notified of my host family when I was driving into Canberra, on the 20th of December. I was to stay with a couple who have two young girls. When we got back from holidays however, there was a phonecall indicating a family had dropped out and some people were being shifted around. No biggie, although I would have preferred siblings, my new family is a young couple with no kids: Uziel and Daiane de Jesus (24 and 28). She is an English teacher and he is a Pastor. Upon hearing this I began to think my student exchange was somewhat turning into a Holy Crusade to the 'Promised Land'. I'm going to live in the state Espirito Santo (Holy Spirit) with the de Jesus family and my father is a pastor. I only have one picture of my host parents, but its a dodgy print-out and it wouldn't do them justice to scan it and thereby further reducing its quality.
  

Here are some pictures of Vitoria, Vila Velha is going south over that crazy bridge, 'Terceira Ponte'.







More news soon...