The Adventure Begins!!

After spending 2 nights in São Paulo (which I will blog about this separately), I flew out from Guarulhos International Airport heading to Curitiba, Santa Catarina. As always I bring drama with me all the time...

First the airport shuttle bus that supposed to reach at 11am had not arrived and the time was already 11:20am. I was really getting worried and suddenly a guy in his 50's approached me and offered his taxi service to the airport. I was lucky that he was really a legitimate taxi driver and kind person. Charged me 80réis and brought me safely to the airport.

After that my boarding pass printed the wrong gate number and almost missed the flight. There was hardly any signage at the gate on the destination it was for and I do not speak / understand Portuguese. Luckily this man in his 50's who sat beside me at the waiting area was able to converse in English and was really helpful!! We found that our Gate number printed on our boarding pass was the same, BUT we are heading to a different destination. So ended up he went around to check and found out my gate was another gate!! After thanking him couple of times and shock his hand, I literally ran to gate 21 from gate 15.
 Thankful that after that everything seems to be working out great.

On the plane ride the girl beside me was from Belo Horizonte and we had some good conversation. Even though she kept saying she have bad English, but we could communicate with each other and even learned few Portuguese words from her.

with Tatiane - plane ride new found friend =)

Once arrived at Curitiba Airport, driver - Walace was already there waiting for me. On the 2 hours car ride, the scenery reminded me home - the highway roads that I take back to Ipoh. As it was surrounded by mountains and lots of green sight!

Walace is quite friendly and we talked all the way the entire trip. He purposely slowed down for me to take the "welcome" point of Joinville. He loves his job as this way he hears stories from people everyday from different parts of the world and meets new people everyday. And his goal / dream is to enter & train for Iron man (Triathlon) as he is not really a strong swimmer. Apparently Florianópolis  have this international Iron man event every year!! (My dear friend Nico Mong would be thrilled about this...)

 Once arriving at the Mercure Platz Hotel for check in, I was warmly received by Vanessa who is one of the program partners that made all these happen!! Was given a local phone for this 4 weeks to be in touch with our clients and teammates.

So this is it checked in !! And cannot wait to meet face to face to my Brazil 15 team mates.

my "home" for 4 weeks and view of the town from my room

#ibmcsc, #brazil15