My little space in the world

This is to let you know that I am safely in Salvador and feel like I have had a BIG adventure already – and the conference hasn’t even started!
It all began at 9.30am on Monday 2nd November when, the Oamaru to Chch flight needed a ‘practice’ take off with alarms and bells before the real one happened. We stood in the Chch-Akland plane at Auckland for about 15 minutes while they had trouble with the air-bridge and I was also close ‘wanded’ and had my bags swabbed in Auckland!! In Sao Paulo (after being in Santiago) my flight was changed from LAN (with whom I had flown from Auckland to Santiago, and from Santiago to Sao Paulo) to TAM and me with very little Portuguese or Spanish (– in fact none – except for my phrasebooks!!) – and the locals with very little English, found my way (somehow) to a little LAN office in the back of the airport where a lovely young man (who spoke English) was able to direct me to the correct airline to fly to Salvador. In getting through to the domestic departure lounge I was down to just my trousers and tee shirt as my jewellery, watch and shoes were taken off me to go through the scanner!!! I was starting to get worried that if the bells went off again I would be creating an even bigger security risk by taking anything else off!! It was odd sitting in Sao Paulo Airport at 8pm Monday evening – only 11 hours later than I had supposedly left Oamaru, however it had taken a 26 hour trip to get there!! By the time I reached my hotel in Salvador – I had been travelling for 32 hours!

Brazil is football crazy – and I could tell that just from the airports!! There are all sorts of replica football things everywhere. The TVs in the lounges play soccer (even indoor soccer – which looks like there are thousands of spectators at the match!), and the young kids in the lounges (boys and girls) are watching intensely and passionately as if their lives depend on it!

I have felt pretty good, despite all the travel. The sleeping pill I took from Akld to Santiago allowed me to get 6 hours sleep (that’s more than I get at home sometimes!!) and then I caught another couple of hours in the next legs.

The hotel is FANTASTIC!!! Not one that our usual school budget would extend to – and my view over the beach looks fantastic in the dark – I am expecting big things of it in the morning!

It is now 1am Tuesay morning and I have been up for something like 39 hours. I’ll post this and head to bed, and try and keep this updated when I can!