Day 1

Hello from Rio de Janeiro. It is currently 6:15 pm local time here. I arrived at the airport around noon local time, and the heat and humidity were immediately overwhelming. It was a great feeling, however. I'm now situated at my host home; I haven't unpacked yet, but I've been here for about 4 hours now. I'm staying in a neighborhood of Rio called Laranjeiras. Just driving through it seemed like a pretty nice area, but I haven't been out yet. I hope to maybe explore a little later. My host is Maria; she has a nice little apartment that I will post pictures of soon. She is very nice and friendly. She was actually born in Venezuela; her mother is Venezuelan and her father is Brazilian. She speaks Spanish too, which is helpful to me because I still know some Spanish and not any Portuguese yet. Communication is a bit awkward so far, but because of the Spanish we are at least able to communicate without a tremendous amount of difficulty. She speaks some English too, which is nice, and she's not bad at that either. I couldn't understand entirely, but I think Maria works in the film industry. She is a writer and a manager and I think she writes scripts, although I may not have understood. I think she said she works with actors and actresses. She also said she travels a lot. Maybe she'll invite me? She's great so far.

The trip to Rio was underwhelming. I made sure not to sit next to any Nigerians on either of the flights. My itinerary changed a bit, so I ended up with a 9 hour layover in Houston. I took a short excursion into downtown Houston to check it out and gave myself a self-walking tour, and by walking tour I mean walking aimlessly around Houston for about 2 hours. I visited the former location of Enron, which was exciting. It's now home to Chevron, and it's a pretty magnificent center downtown. That's about all that was exciting, though.

I don't know what I'm going to do for the rest of the night. I'd like to walk around the area a little, but it's almost dark and I'm not sure how good of an idea that is. Maybe I'll ask Maria to show me around, but I don't want to intrude. There haven't been any instructions or anything at all from the University, nor any advice.

As I write this I just got a roommate. I was kind of hoping I might, so it's a good thing. His name is Wesley. I guess it's good that I picked the room with the big bed. He speaks Portuguese, though. I hope Maria doesn't start playing favorites. It's good that I'll know someone who knows Portuguese that I can walk around with, but he'll probably make me feel stupid. I should probably go hang out with him.

Tomorrow there's an orientation for us at the University. I have no idea how I'll get there, however; Maria said it's 20 minutes away. That should be fun.

Well I'll go hang out with Wesley now. I hope you all are well.