Arrival

This morning, after some 18 hours of flights and connections that carried us from Philadelphia to Miami to Manaus, Brazil to Belem, Brazil to Fortaleza, we finally arrived at our destination. We were minus two bags that we had initially carried on, but were then forced to gate check in Miami. I then lost another bag of lab supplies temporarily to Customs, with that bag hopefully being liberated from the Fortaleza airport customs office by next week. My lost abg has been found, and Ben's should be en route tomorrow, hopefully resolving our baggage issues.

The bigger issue that I face currently is the language barrier, as I realize how big a task learning Portuguese will be. There's also a little bit of the initial culture shock that is inevitable. Fortaleza in many ways resembles to me a larger more modern version of Guinea-Bissau with similar Portuguese style architecture and sharp juxtopositions of poverty and wealth. The city though is 10 times larger than Bissau, so it will prove quite a chore to learn to navigate, while also learning Portuguese.

Today, we stopped in at the lab, settled into our temporary housing, and may do some further exploring of the city later. Tomorrow we'll meet with Dr. Lima, our site mentor, and then should continue settling into Fortaleza. I'll hopefully be able to post some photos soon, as soon as the remainder of my luggage arrives with the cable to transfer photos from my camera. I can leave with you a taste of the cliamte though, as it is currently feels like the temperature is in the mid to upper 80s, with some humidity. The weather is refreshing relative to the heat wave that we left in the Eastern US.

Boa tarde from Fortaleza!