Saturday, Oct 29 and Sunday, Oct 30: The first two days of the trip

Saturday started out as a pretty lousy day. But the entire week before it was just leading up to me having a lousy day. On Wed (Oct 26), my sister told me that I was no longer going to Phantom of the Opera with her in São Paulo, because she gave my ticket to her friend instead. I was so angry I couldn't even speak. For those of you who don't know, my sister has been treating me like crap since week 1 and absolutely nobody likes her-no seriously, she has less Brasilian friends than I do!! Then on Thursday, I talked with my counselor at the Rotary meeting and found out that my current host family was trying to screw me over with my second host family. Who knows why….but I was extremely frustrated and ready to just start screaming!! Anyways, after having several problems with my sister all week, on Saturday morning, my mom literally screamed at me for leaving the fan on in the computer room for an extra 5 minutes. Then my sister came in and yelled at me about something that I didn't even do, and told me that my mom was really angry about it. After all this screaming, my sister pounded on my door about 30 minutes later. I came out of my room, and in the most snobby voice possible she said "lunch"… I said that I wasn't hungry and went back to my room and laid down and cried because I was just so confused about why everyone was acting so crazy.

A few hours later, we went to the tailor because my sister and I are having dresses made for Vaca Lôca (which is nov 12). After that, we picked up 3 of my sister's friends and Salla (my friend from Finland) and headed over to this churrasco for college kids. Churrasco is português for "cook-out"… except sometimes, (like I found out this time), it really just means music and alcohol outside-no food. We got there at like 4:30 in the afternoon and I hadn't eaten anything all day. I was starved! I expected there to be food there!! But no… anyways, we got home around 9pm. I called my parents in America because I was so stressed about my host family. As soon as I hung-up with my parents, my host-mom came in the room and told me we were leaving for the train station a half hour early because she wanted to go out to eat with my aunt and uncle. I didn't have any clothes packed yet… so I a buncha clothes in my suitcase, zipped it shut, and hopped in the car. When we arrive at the bus station, my mom asks, do you have everything you need? And then I remember… I FORGOT MY BUS TICKET!! That's right, I forgot my bus ticket… so we had to speed home and back and my host-parents were pretty mad because they really wanted to go out to eat… not because they were worried about me missing my bus. But don't worry everyone, I didn't miss my bus.

The bus ride to meet up with the other Rotary students took about 8 hours and we left at about 11pm. I didn't sleep a wink. I don't know why, I was exhausted… but I just couldn't. The cool thing is, the Thai guy rode the bus with me and I got to speak in Thai for like 2 hours straight! It was difficult at first to get the words to come out of my mouth, but once I started going, I just couldn't stop!

The bus from Araçatuba went to Campo Grande, but that wasn't our final destination. Our final destination was another 3 or 4 hours away… We got there around 11:30am… When we got to the hotel, we unpacked and started getting to know the other exchange students. There were about 45 exchangers and I knew about 10 at best. We went swimming and somebody brought out a guitar and we all kinda sang along… yeah, it was pretty fun. Then I decided to go for a run. Leigh (a girl from NC, USA who's not actually an exchanger-she's 22) went with me. The city looked pretty lame at first glance, but as we continued to run and continued to see more and more, it became more and more surprisingly beautiful…so that was pretty cool. After our run, we ate dinner and listened to the rules of the trip… then we hung out for a couple more hours and headed to bed. That's it, that's the first two days of the trip.

Until tomorrow, Kati


ps- did you all receive the website of the trip's pictures??