Oi gente! (Hi everyone!) It’s been a little over a month since I first arrived here in São Paulo and it feels absolutely surreal! The 30th –the day I left- I was on an emotional rollercoaster, vacillating between feelings of excitement (to be embarking on this new journey), nervousness (over what awaited me), and sadness (about leaving behind my family and DC). The moments between when I entered the TSA Security Checkpoint to when I arrived to Gate C12 to board my plane are all blur. All I remember is arriving at the Gate and suddenly hearing virtually EVERYONE speaking Portuguese. I remember thinking, “Where did all these Brazilians come from??? Aside from those working for the Brazilian embassy there are few of them living in DC.”
I barely slept three hours during the nine and a half hour plane ride. The awful combination of my nerves and the small, cramped seats kept me wide awake. When we finally arrived at 9 am, I quickly made it through Customs and grabbed my bags. I was anticipating that my exit would be quick: instead it was long and mazelike. What seemed like the exit from the baggage claim was really an entrance to a bazaar-like shopping area of luxury, Duty-Free, international goods from Lindt chocolates to Victoria’s Secret lingerie to Givenchy perfumes.
After what seemed like an eternity, I finally found my way out of that Duty Free tourist trap. I breathed a sigh of relief before realizing that I had yet to accomplish the daunting task of finding the shuttle to my hotel. I soon found an airport employee and in the best Portuguese I could muster I asked her where the stop for the Ibis Hotel shuttle was. To be honest, my question was more in Spanish than it was in Portuguese but somehow she managed to understand me and proceeded to direct me to the old airport terminal, which is where all the national flights land. “Obrigada (Thank you),” I told her in my heavily accented Portuguese before proceeding to cart around my luggage cases.
When I got to the old terminal, I asked the man at the information desk to direct me to the Ibis shuttle stop. With an expression of total and utter boredom, he waived his hand and pointed at a set of automatic doors that led to a street full of bus stops. To my dismay, there was no shuttle stop for the Ibis hotel shuttle anywhere in site, so I proceeded to ask another airport employee who happened to be walking by. This time, this employee directed me to the floor above where the Departures where.
For the next hour, I struggled to find the shuttle stop: everytime I asked someone, they would point me in a different direction. I was so frustrated that I finally settled on waiting on the top floor where the Departures were. Just when I was about to give up hope, a mini bus with the hotel’s logo plastered on it arrived. I quickly hopped on and buckled up for the ride.
During the bus ride to the hotel I noticed that Guarulhos, the city where the airport is located and which is part of the São Paulo metropolitan area, was poorer and underdeveloped. On some sides of the highway it was possible to see decaying factories and even what seemed like favelas in the surrounding mountains.
Thirty minutes later I finally arrived at my hotel. As I stared out the window of my room on the 14th floor so many tall, sprawling buildings. In that moment I was finally able to visualize and comprehend São Paulo’s magnitude: 12 million people lived inside the city itself and another 8 million people lived in the metropolitan area, thus making São Paulo the most populous city in Brazil, in the Americas, in the Western Hemisphere, and the twelfth largest city by population.
Throughout my struggle to find hotel’s shuttle bus, I noticed that many people had a thick accent where they pronounced the ‘r’ strongly like we do in English rather than softly as it usually is in Portuguese. I later found out that it was because most of these people were from the interior of Sao Paulo State and from the nearby state of Minas Gerais. No doubt many of them migrated here in search of better work opportunities.
When I arrived at the hotel nearly at noon, I was already starving. On the airplane they had served a light breakfast of bread, butter, and coffee –which could only do so much. Since they did not serve lunch at the hotel and the only thing they had was ham sandwiches (I do not eat pork so I could not eat the sandwich) I basically had to survive on water and Ritz crackers until dinnertime. However, it was so worth it. The feast of typical Brazilian foods in the buffet was absolutely mouth-watering. And of course the main star of these foods was pão de quiejo, a small baked, cheese-flavored roll which Brazilians love to eat ALL THE TIME. If you ever get a chance to eat it, you will see why it is a national favorite.
Well, that is it for now. Até a próxima! (Until next time!)