First Days in Aracaju, SE

This morning Laís and her friends Maneco and Gafo came to my apartment to visit. Maneco was kind enough to ask one of the housekeeping women the password for my internet, so I am now able to connect wirelessly to the internet. Sounds like a difficult life, huh? Laís brought some food from home to share with me with turned out to be amazing.

Very early Monday morning I arrived in Aracaju around 12:30am to a handful of beautiful people awaiting my arrival. The flight was surprisingly amazing. I've never been treated so well on any US airline. My two hour flight provided of a hot cheese sandwich, Coca-Cola, coffee, and a toffee to satisfy my sweet tooth. When our plane landed, I noticed some faces pressed against the second story window as I walked ecstaticly across the tarmac. When I looked up, I saw the same faces jumping up and down, about as excited as me. I'm sure it wasn't difficult to spot the huge gringo among the crowd. 

Laís and her sister, Ligia, were the first people I spotted. It felt amazing to see all of the faces exactly as I had for so long through Skype. More friends, Divaldo (Divas) and Karlinha, were there waiting as well. Only Laís and Ligia speak enough English to talk casually, but Karlinha has surprisingly better English than I do Portuguese. And I have to be careful what I say around her because she understands it all.

We took a quick drive through the night on the main street parallel to the beach. Everything felt completely alien. The living conditions are by no means bad, but maintenance is something the US spends a great deal on and many other places don't make the main priority. Whether it's budget, standards, or satisfaction with the usual, I don't know. I've thought about the street cleaners we have drive down our streets to brush away sand and gravel and thought how silly most of my friends would find such machines.

About 10 blocks from the beach we arrived at the apartment Laís had helped me rent with a little help from Western Union and her amazing Portuguese. Initially, I was surprised at the small size but with more thought I knew I could survive just fine in a small space. I'll post some photos at the bottom of this entry. Also, click HERE to check out a satellite view of my apartment. My building is directly under the words "Av. Oceânica" in this image. Go ahead and zoom out to see a larger view of the city and my location.

They had also bought a few groceries and snacks for the cupboards, including a two liter bottle of Guaraná, a very popular Brazilian soda. I'd had it only once before when I lived in Florida a few years ago. Even better, they had stopped at a street vendor and bought macaxeira with carne de sol (cassava root and "meat of the sun", a type of heavily salted beef). I ate and drank while we chatted about my trip, but they all left relatively quickly when they saw my sleepy eyes.

(Photo credit: http://condcoroadomeio.com/fotos.html, accessed Sept. 9, 2010)

Kitchen

Bathroom