Day 1 and 2

Today is the day! We started our long. and tiresome traveling to Porto Alegre, Brazil. First, we met up at the Omaha airport at 1 pm. Then we checked in and made it through security. It was amazing how quickly everyone got to know each other. Common questions were like, "what's your major?" Or "have you been out of the country?" And "what's your favorite Netflix series?" After socializing, we boarded our plane and flew to Houston, TX. After the first fairly short plane ride, we had a 2-3 hour layover in Houston. Most of us grabbed some dinner and continued to socialize before boarding our long 10 hour flight. This plane was huge! It had 3 sets of 3 seats across and first class and economy seating. Also, since it was a international flight, each seat had a small screen with new movies, TV shows, games, music, and a flight map to track our flight. They also served us barbecue chicken, salad, and a brownie for dinner. However, this flight was overnight, so many of us passed out very quickly. We arrived in Rio de Janeiro around 9 o'clock in the morning (7am Omaha time). Many of us were quite tired at this time, however, we still had one more flight to go before we reached our final destination. We had 5 hours or so at the Rio airport, so we went through customs and grabbed our luggage and waited to check into oour next flight. Then we socialized, checked out the Rio airport, and ate some weird sandwiches. Once we boarded our plane, I swear it wasn't long before most of our group fell asleep again. Then we arrived in Porto Alegre around 5pm (3pm in Omaha time). We grabbed our luggage once again and met up with Ana, Cody, and Rodrigo to take us to the market. We handed our bags off to Rodrigo and took a train to the market. We did not bring anything with us, so we could truly experience the sights, sounds and smells of the Brazilian market. It was quite interesting. They had meats hanging around every corner along with fresh fruits and vegetables or basically anything you could possibly want to purchase. The Brazilians were also very eager to help you shop at the market. It was the perfect place to people-watch. After touring, we stopped at one of the places for some ice cream! It was very similar to American ice cream, however, it was a little more icy and had strong flavors such as chocolate and coffee. Then we boarded up on the bus to find sandwiches, fruit, cookies, juice boxes, and guarana for dinner. We chowed down while we took another two hour drive to Hotel Kaster in Gramado. Once arriving at the hotel, everyone was beyond excited to go to bed (in a real bed).