Oraganized Chaos

The first plane, going from Denver to Atlanta was scheduled to depart at approximately 1:13. As we were all getting snacks and shopping for entertainment for the plane ride, our watches spun past 1:13 with great speed. Finally at around two, the plane arrived and quickly loaded and departed again. You would think that was enough time to load all of the plane's luggage, right? As that Airbus A320 sped across America at 500 miles an hour, some of us chose to listen to music, some do homework, and some play games on the high-tech plane gadgets we were provided, and probably not supposed to be trusted with. Each person had their individual touch screen that had the hottest music, movies, TV shows, HBO, games, and a moving flight map with information about temperature, speed, headwind, and the like. Unfortunatly, on this flight, the movies and games were NOT complimentary, so most of us just settled getting their nose to the grindstone and doing some homework. If anybody else in this delegation thinks like me (I'm assuming that is not true, or if it is, very few others), then they would plan to do the more tedius homework, such as Economics reading (even though I'm a complete nerd and LOVE that stuff) on the short flights, and save the fun for the longer ones. While enjoying our CranApple juice, we worked hard for what we thought would be a two hour plane ride. As we were watching our watches, the time between planes was decreasing rapidly. Finally, after making three 15 minute loops somewhere in the air over Kansas, we continued our flight and finally landed. Oh, and I don't suppose I mentioned that my bag wouldn't fit in the overhead bin so I had to have them stuff it in a coat closet?!?!
That must have been quite a sight, nine people running down the Breezeway, down the escalator, down 3000 feet of straight hallway, up an escalator, and squeezing through the crack in the door as they were closing up the airplane for takeoff. Luckily, this flight was very empty, and I had been fortunate enough to be seated right next to an elderly gentleman who could have used some hair and a weight loss pill, sleeping. I puttered down the aisle looking for an empty seat, and I found an empty row, yes, an entire empty row. It was almost as good as Christmas! Sadly, it was one of the small two-seater rows on the sides of our Boeing 777, but still, entire row. I still envy those lucky people who managed to scrounge up an entire three-seater row for themselves. After enjoying two movies and an episode of 30 Rock, I attempted at sleep, but it was not in my grasp. I watched an episode of The Office and listened to the entire Viva la Vida album by Coldplay twice, I tried at sleep again. You have no idea how many strange positions there are to contort into with two empty seats, but none of them seemed suitable. Finally after rummaging around with earplugs and one of those night mask things old people wear, I grabbed my backpack and put it on one of the seats, put a pillow on there, and layed down. You might be wondering how I layed down with only two seats, one of them taken up by a backpack. Well, at this point I wanted to try to get some sleep but didn't really care what other people thought, so what I did was this-imagine this image: head on pillow on backpack on seat, butt on other seat, feet going up wall to ceiling, if that isn't a strange position to sleep in, tell me what is! About twenty minutes after I had fallen asleep, the cabin lights turned on and we were woken to a plane full of dreary eyes and strange sleeping positions. After we all discussed how we had slept, we were bombarded with flight attendants handing us steaming coissants, jelly, orange juice, and bananas. We snarfed down our food and found something to occupy us with for the remainder of the flight. Nothing else of great excitement happened until we were through that thing that I forget what's called other than customs.
It was kindof DejaVu because I was seeing some of the same things I had seen during my previous visit to Brazil in February. We walked happiily to baggage claim and waited. We watched hundreds of other passengers pick up their bags but we had no luck. Just as we were about to push Gen into the baggage chute when she wasn't looking, I had an idea. I walked over to Bruce and asked him if he could go over to the Baggage Customer Service people with my baggage slip I had saved from check-in and had them scan it. They scanned it and handed us all forms. We found out after we filled out all the forms that the bags would be delivered to each of our individual houses sometime in the next couple days. Some dope loading all of the bags into the plane managed to leave our bags in Denver. Hopefully, they will be on the next flight to Atlanta and then to Brazil. Something similar happened in February, I am just wondering if our bags will beet the same fate. Somebody's bag then was delivered two days late, wrapped in about two miles of saran wrap, I guess we'll just have to see about ours.
After that it was smooth sailin'. We walked through customs without our bags and met the patient Brazillians on the other side. They had been waiting there for three hours! Bruce didn't find the time to call and tell them about our little snafoo. We were greeted with hundreds of hugs and handshakes. We all met for some delicous food, breakfast, lunch, brunch, something like that. We snacked on Guarana and Cheese bread for about 20 minutes, and then split up and went to all our seperate houses to get settled in. Ze's house is about 30 minutes from the airport, so we drove that and then I got the complete tour. He lives in an apartment building, but it is a pretty nice apartment. I have my own bedroom and bathroom, and I got to meet his little brother and cousin. I had some alone time to take a shower and change clothes, and then we headed out for some real lunch. We drove about 30 minutes to Tiriquim, a small village near Sao Jose. I enjoyed a four cheese ravioli bake and Guarana while others had other various Italian dishes, this small restaurant is owned by their cousins and is famous in the area. After lunch, we headed to look around town, and we were driven to Ze's family's weekend house. It is very nice, and they have internet there! I tried to log on with my laptop, but it didn't work so now I am talking to you all on their laptop. To my relief, they told me that they have internet in their apartment, I just hadn't gotten to that yet. So, until then, I'll be working on figuring out the internet on my laptop and the stupid calling card!