Sunday, June 21st, 2009

I arrived in Fortaleza, Brazil on Friday morning. The plane ride essentially was an epic dance party. First, I flew to L.A. from Phoenix. I checked my large duffel bag and planned to carry on everything else. I had my purse, my messenger bag, and a grocery bag that held about 1.5 lbs of pesto pasta. Whole wheat pasta, no less. We’re talking hundreds of grams of fiber. It was a dream bag—endless pesto on pasta, water, and a fuzzy sweatshirt for a long plane ride that seemed more Alaska than Atlanta.

Unfortunately, the massive container of pasta rendered my grocery bag unable to fit into any other bag, so technically I had 3. I had hauled all of that ridiculously heavy luggage at least a mile to ensure that I would have at least some supplies, should the airline lose my checked bag. On the flight from Phoenix to L.A., I put only my duffel bag in an overhead bin and everything else at my feet, so I had, for all intents and purposes, 2 bags. Angry Lady at LAX yelled at me when I was in the security line and told me I had to check another one. It made me feel naked.

Many aching muscles later, I was on the action-packed and completely comfortable flight to Atlanta. I learned there that “action-packed and completely comfortable” is Airlinese for “remarkably boring and your-nipples-are-going-to-fall-off-even-with-a-sweatshirt cold.” Then I got to Atlanta, took a train ride, and met up with almost everyone in the group. Lots of new people, and all seemed lovely! Yay! I wasn’t seated near any of them. I did, however, sit next to two Brazilian guys living in the US. One turned out to be a month younger than me, and the other (ridiculously attractive), a few months older. We entertained one another for just about the entire 9-hour flight, ‘cause sleep is for suckas! Sexy Guy fell asleep on me for maybe a few minutes. Their destination was Recife (the third connection point) so I got new seatmates for the last leg of the trip.

I'm still not positive if my rowmates were a couple or father and daughter; in any case, the dude talked to me the whole time. It made me feel badass to hold a conversation in Portuguese for an hour. I didn't have my dictionary on me, so, in order to ask if whether the beaches are unfortunately shiny and/or bouncy, I had to attempt to describe what a jellyfish is, which didn't go down very well. No matter--there are no jellyfish on the beaches here!