Apart- Hotel

My apartment is great!!! I'm currently in what's known as an "apart-hotel" or a "flat" (they use the English word in portuguese to describe my particular setup.) It's like a hotel -- there's a concierge, full breakfast ('cafe da amanha') in the morning, a mini-gym, and a pool. But the apartment itself has two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a washing machine! You would feel more than comfortable staying here for a while, and so I understand why the minimum stay is only a month. There's a lot of business people in the building, lots of Spanish speakers, and some other Brazilians, who I'm told might be from somewhere else in the country but need to stay in SP for a while due to business or medical reasons. (More photos of the apt here!)

Did I mention the balcony?


The neighborhood I'm in is called Moema. It's really safe. There's no metro station and not a lot of bus lines. (Some people say this is why it's so safe!) But an interesting thing about the neighborhood is that it's near the domestic airport. And when I mean near, it's underneath the flight path that leads to the landing strip, so about every two minutes (oh - there goes one now!) I can hear planes overhead. What's more, I can almost touch them! Check it out!



The photo even adds more distance (like if you've ever tried taking a photo of a rising harvest move -- close to impossible!), but it truly feels like the plane might just touch the building. Insane.

Getting into town

So I went to Brazil with a healthy sense of apprehension. Everyone says it's a pretty dangerous place. One Brazilian advised my co-worker when she same to São Paulo to always leave her laptop in the office, and if she walked around only go with a group of 15 people.

So when I got off the plane, I was completely disoriented. I had to stand in line for like an hour and a half at customs, baggage claim, and finally at the exit. While in line, I stood out like a sore thumb. But not because I was a foreigner, but because of my age and because I was a woman. I guess I'm not the typical business traveler to Brazil. My Sunday night red eye was filled with middle aged bussiness men (I saw one savily dressed woman) and there were definitely no young backpackers or hippies. I guess this bodes well for Brazil's economoy? And yeah, there werew certainly no other young online-advertising-coordinators arriving in SP on this Monday morning. It really makes me stop and say, wow, what a crazy opportunity this is!

Anyway, I was completely relieved that someone was waiting for me at the airport. I don't think after that flight and with my Portugues I would've been able to find my way into the city very well, without maybe getting ripped off. My driver was a nice guy, 30 years old, who spoke great English -- having only learned it here in Brazil (which I'm always really impressed with.) I told him I was learning a bit of Portuguese and we spoke a little bit.

It took about 45 minutes with the traffic to get into the city. From the outskirts you can see the skyline of SP. It's very impressive. I've never seen an stretch of skyscrapers that wrap around almost like a panorama. São Paulo is a city with 12 million people in the city, and 20 million in the metro area. This is bigger than the American metropolises in NY or LA. And it's fascinating! SP feels like a combo of those two -- it's got the verticality of New York and the horizontal breadth of LA. So far, I love it.

Red Earth

As the plane started its descent and the land of Brazil came into view, it was true to all those photos in the guidebooks and on websites -- Green. A beautiful, fertile, true green that's almost juicy. A green that could only come from a humid climate like this one. As the plane landed there was lots of dirt on the side of the runway and I was surprised to see Red Earth. The color of the soil here is so different from home and I remember the first time I saw it was when I landed in Africa on a different trip. I guess it's just typical of countries close to the equator than I usually am.

All stories start at DFW

So my trip to Brazil started with a layover in Dallas Fortworth on Sunday October 26, 2008. DFW is typically Texan for me -- it's a huge airport with 4 gi-normous terminals. The walkways and people movers and extremely wide and there's a food court every 20 feet (or so it seems) with 15 different restaurants and they all seem to be fairly full.

Anyway, I snapped this picture on the way to the AirTrain to switch terminals. The light was perfect and the reflection was so bright. Now when I look at it, it's almost abstract, my eyes have a hard time reading it to see what it really was. Anywho, after the pic I headed over to Terminal D which faces West and I got to see the sun set one last time before the over night flight to São Paulo.