Friday 22 February 2013

Tchau Estados Unidos!

Whoa 70 page views yesterday!  Hopefully I didn't bore you and you'll keep reading.  I'm sure it'll get more exciting when I'm actually somewhere!

Greetings from the Raleigh-Durham airport.  Ever the multi-taker, I'm hiding in a corner with my earbuds practicing my Portuguese as I update.  Currently, I'm on the lesson that boggled my mind when I was refreshing my Chinese as well- I'm learning the words for "ladder", "umbrella" and "sunglasses"when I don't know any food words yet which are kind of necessary for survival.  Well, maybe umbrellas are too if arachnids are going to rain down from the sky.  Wonder if there's a word for spider-umbrellas.

Anyway, even though I'm not quite out of the country, I've made sure to immerse myself in internationalism.  I went to the couchsurfers potluck last night in Raleigh which was a blast.  There weren't any Brazilians but I did meet two girls who spent a semester in a different part of Brazil and raved about it.  Apparently I need to try the feijoada in Rio (I don't know what that's supposed to be either- I miss the two dorky, male graduate students who shadowed me in Taiwan, never speaking but instantly google-imaging any hard to explain Chinese words with an image on their ipads).  Another guy I met traveled around Brazil and had several contacts he suggested I get in contact with, including a hostel owner in Sao Paulo who I found is currently in Nashville but his hostel has a bar and it looks like a fun place to hang out.  And there seemed to be a decent number of people who were relatively new to couchsurfing but I definitely met some seasoned vets who have been members for six years and had good advice about best practices in general.

Potlucks are always a blast but this one made me realize how NC State has really gotten me used to being surrounded by incredible diversity.  Last night, I met people from China, India, Denmark, France and Columbia... besides the Europeans, it wasn't too much different than the ethnic composition of the physics department.  I was also surprised at the disproportionately high percentage of people who work in Information Technology and engineering.  Perhaps those jobs have flexibility and a decent salary to promote traveling?  Also the average age of most of these couchsurfers is mid-30s, which is a little older than I expected but maybe, along similar lines of reasoning, that population has more job stability and income to afford to travel?  I did meet a decent number of State graduate students- the host was getting a masters in math education and planned to teach in China this summer.  Meet a bunch of engineers.  Drank some delicious wildberry sangria, ate a delicious Moroccan Tagine, warm brie on french bread, sweet potato chili, yum yum in my tum.
Some of the food at the potluck


Anyway, I should get back to Rosetta Stone, currently working on "Meu brinquedo esta  quebrado" ("My toy is broken")

But before I go, as promised, a picture of me and my cactus head.  I just woke up and look awful but Elfie looks supercute as always.  Reason #37 why it's good to be a hedgehog: you look adorable even after partying all night.  I miss my snugglemuffin already but I'm sure Lindsay and Sprocket are taking good care of her!


So excited to be in Brasilia- I should arrive there 9:10 AM and I have no idea what my host researcher has planned for me but I got invited to a soccer scrimmage by a video-gamer-guy who I was chatting with for awhile last night.  So that'll be a good opportunity to meet people in Brasilia and he offered to take me around afterward.

1 comment:

  1. I love hearing about your travels, KFO! And you look amazing in that pic and so does Elfie! Good luck and try to see if you can use "my toy is broken" in a sentence your first day there :p

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