Traveling and Orientation

Today was spent traveling the rest of the way to Florianopolis, Brazil. We were pretty concerned when our very first flight from Pittsburgh was delayed by 2 hours because of a flat tire. If we would have missed our connecting flight in Chicago then we would have had some serious problems.

Our longest flight was 10 hours long. We ended up sitting next to a very nice Brazilian guy that talked with us in English. Once we arrived in Sao Paulo, Brazil, we realized how difficult it was going to be in a country where we don't speak the language. Our first hurdle was trying to get something for lunch. We ended up going to Pizza Hut and had to point to pictures of what we wanted off the menu, they got our order correct for the most part. 

Then we boarded our last flight to Florianopolis, Brazil where we were met by Dina, an employee of ISA, the travel organization we are using. She was able to help us out at the airport and our drive to our hotel was pretty easy going.

 We spent the evening doing some orientation stuff and then had a welcome dinner at an Italian place nearby. We tried something called polenta and it was pretty good. I must say that Brazilians definitely do not skimp on the cheese on their pizzas or pastas!!

A weird cultural thing that all of us will have to get used to, is that you can't flush toilet paper down the toilet. Your suppose to throw your used toilet tissues into the garbage can next to the toilet!