Day 2

I’ve now been in Brazil for just under 48 hours yet it feels like I’m getting more and more settled. Today I took care of some very basic necessities like getting my cell phone to work here. I bought my phone partly because it was advertised as a GSM phone, which can be used most anywhere in the world. Of course theory always works better than practice, so when I went to the cell phone carrier I thought it would be just as easy as buying a new chip for my phone, unfortunately my cell phone was blocked from using other carriers’ chips. Fortunately since I started my language course I was able to take advantage of the experience of my fellow classmates who are all going through the same processes of settling in. MaFe (Maria Fernandez) told me where I could go to get my phone unblocked for just a mere R$50, which is about $22. It worked and I was well on my way to getting connected to my temporary new home. Now on tomorrow’s task list is to leave the hotel I am in, the Formule 1. It sounded like a good deal at first but given my budget I can’t exactly afford to stay here for too long, plus as much as Marcel and I get along, this is a very small room, and the idea of switching the bunk beds we are in every night is not looking very appealing. So for the same price we are each paying for this double, we will be moving to another hotel and each get our own room. Or course this is also just a temporary situation since we are hoping to find out in the next couple of days whether we will be able to stay in Sao Paulo or if we will have to move to Campinas. As if the trouble we had just to get here wasn’t enough, now we are stuck in a bit of limbo not knowing if where we will be. So we are just taking it all in stride and since its all new to me I don’t mind going off to Campinas if that’s the case. But a bit of good news did come when we found out that we will be here long enough to take a class though again its uncertain if we will do that in Sao Paulo or Campinas.
Aside from that we were given a tour of the campus at FGV and its pretty cool.
Now the Portuguese class has been going well. I met a bunch of other international students so it’s like making an instant group of friends. Of course since we are all here for a cultural exchange I will need to mix it up and start meeting more Brazilians.