In português it's spelled with an "S"

Hello all welcome to my travel Blog!

In about 60 days I will embark on a 130 day voyage to Brasil! I'm very excited and it's almost hard to believe (almost) that after 15 months of preparation, my departure is drawing near! The sooner the better, this economy is really adding to the sense of urgency and I hope that I'm able to hold on to my job for just a couple more months. Another huge step in my preparation is attaining my Tourist Visa for Brasil. Without it, I won't be allowed on the plane! This is because Brasilians have to acquire similar permission to travel in the U.S. Pretty lame but at least the consulate is in S.F.I'll be taking advantage of my remaining PTO @ my job to go down to the bay and take care of business. It's also advantageous that I'll be San Fran for Halloween weekend & election night, awesome!!

In spring of '07 I made my first Int'l trip abroad in Europe. I toured through: Greece, Croatia, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. It was an amazing opportunity that I'll always remember and has obviously had a big influence on me ever since. While I was there, I met a lot of other travelers/students who were involved in International studies etc.. and this made me consider trying out study abroad. My interest was a culture/language immersion course and by searching online, I found that there are many academies all around the world for pretty much any language. My solo travel in Europe all and all went well and I proved to myself that I was ready for something more substantial. I've been interested in Brasil since a drum group came to my kindergarten class and ripped shit up so....It all comes together. 16 months of studying português, scrimping and saving and dealing with other obstacles and I'm almost there!!

Here's a brief look at my itin:
Dec26th: Leave for Brasil
27th-Jan.12th2009: Party it up in Rio for my B-day/New Years for 2 weeks
Jan12-26th: Fly Rio-Buenos Aires and spend 2 weeks there (save for 3 nights in Uruguay)
Jan26-Feb2nd: Make my way back to Brasil via Foz de Iguaçu, one of the most spectacular waterfall settings in the world!
Feb2nd-March8th: Study Português for 6 weeks in Florianopolis. By the end of this I intend to be fluent in Português and a capable surfer, among other things!
March8th-May5th: Leave school, travel to the northeast region, make my way back south before having the immigration police drag me back to the plane out of Rio on cinco de mayo.


I must admit that even though I've made some sacrifices and this year's been more of a slog than I would've hoped, I know I am very lucky to entertain the travel bug and I'll be ready to take advantage of this opportunity to the fullest when the time comes. Feel free to bear witness to it all!