Day 1
Florianopolis

We finally made it to Brazil! After three flights and about 18 hours of travel time, Lauren and I made it through customs and met our ISA tour guide at the airport in Florianopolis. Dina was very welcoming and helped us to exchange/withdraw enough Reais to last us for the first weeks of the trip. Once we arrived at the Florianopolis Palace Hotel in downtown, received our room assignments, we decided to explore the area while we waited for the rest of our group to arrive/before our welcome dinner. Three of us ventured off to find a store that sold adapters for our computer and phone chargers. We wandered along busy cobblestone streets in the town center, equipped with Google Maps, until we stumbled across our destination. Before returning to the hotel, we stopped at a very nice bakery that Dina recommended and bought some tiny gourmet pastries. It was our first real interaction with Brazilian culture, not knowing the language or how things worked in food shops. (Many places allow you to choose your own food and then they charge you based on the weight.) Although, a bit chaotic and confusing it was well worth it - the pastries were delicious! Later we met up with the rest of the group, had a small orientation to the program, and walked to our welcome dinner at a local Italian restaurant. The weather was warm and sunny during the day and cool at night - much better than I was expecting. At the orientation, I learned to say “No falo Portugues”  - a sentence I will probably have to use every day for the rest of the trip. Duolingo did not teach me that one.