It felt unreal as I flew over the city this morning: after a battery of flights and delays, I was finally here! And all the roofs were red as I landed, and I could spot the railroad near my airBnB as well as million parks and green spaces I want to explore. The taxi driver from the airport was also super kind; we spoke in a sort of broken english and portuguese as he explained where I could get to work from my house via walking. Our route from the airport to my rented room even included both embassy entrances, which helped greatly with my sense of orientation. And then I was whisked away into the world of my 16-renter airBnB, complete with its own whatsapp group chat.
This is a photo of my room: it’s on the top floor of 3 and it’s fairly small, which is good, because I feel like I adequately fill the space here, unlike my room in Golm, which was hopelessly large (seriously: I could have fit two queen sized air mattresses in there if I wanted to, and the ceilings were tall, too). But this room is petite and furnished with what I need, and I brought some poster gum from college to affix the photos over my desk. I do, however, need to buy more hangers, so me and the other intern who arrived today are going to an everything sort of store to pick up those and some other essential items. Anyway, that’s mostly it for today, except to note that, yes, indeed, airplanes fly over the house every 7 minutes or so, and trains pass by every 10 or so, and between those two, it’s not the most quiet of places. However, convenience rules and this place was not only the closest, but also had the nicest set-up with loads of beautiful common spaces. Also, I have a delightfully diverse group of housemates–of the people I’ve met so far, it seems like everyone speaks Portuguese fluently, but they are from Portugal, Brazil, Italy, Angola, the Netherlands, and these are just the section of people that I met in the half-day I’ve been here. I look forward to practicing more with them on the terrace!
I have prepared all that I can–I made some overnight oatmeal for tomorrow morning after eating the very balanced meal of avocado toast and a peach for dinner (I’m on a different eating schedule I think, but that’s okay, I have fruit and soy yogurt to realign my mealtimes) and I am excited for work tomorrow!
My last blog turned out to be such a food blog, so I hope this one can become one as well. So far my only exciting purchase of food was 3 peaches for 55 cents. Oh, and the flour. I went up and down the aisle of the nearest supermarket looking for flour so that I can make my own pasta as an experiment of humility, and could not find normal white flour. I knew the french word farine, and the spanish word harina, so I was looking for something in that family. I eventually found Farina Integral–but whole wheat is not so good for making pasta–and Farina de Trigo. I looked on the side of the Farine de Trigo package to try and figure out what trigo meant, and I was dismayed to see the ingredients included sugar and milk and other things I couldn’t read. So I kept searching and searching, but I was so confused: why was the Faina de Trigo so inexpensive when it was like a pancake mix or something? I looked at the package again and realized: no, those weren’t the ingredients to the content of the package, those were the ingredients to the scones that the package had a recipe for, using that flour. Oh well.
Much love, and I’ll keep y’all updated! good night!