Sun, 8 Jan 2006 18:57:40 -0800 (PST)
Greetings from Florianopolis (Brazil)

A friend of mine sent me a photo of flight attendents wearing skin-tight sirts, and I am pretty sure that it is from the airline that I flew in Brazil.

Before coming to brazil, I signed up for a language school through the internet, and also signed up for a homestay (living with a family) for one week. The family that I am staying with has 3 boys, 25, 25, and 6 years old. So, I am staying in the bedroom of the 6-year old kid. It has toys and kid-stuff all around the room. Anyway, yesterday I decided to walk around a beach-town called Lago Conceחדo which is a right on the lake where they do a lot of kite surfing. My main goal was to get acuqinted, and to try to find a place to live. I went into a few hotels, and apartments for rent, and saw a few of them, and they were all about $40 canadian for one-smelly-bedroom-places. I kept on walking around, and eventually saw a guy standing on the side of the street holding a sign that said "house for rent" (in portuguese of course). I started talking to the guy (me to him in spanish, and him to me in portuguese), and he showed me the apartment. It is right in the center of the beach-town, has three bedrooms, kitchen, bathroom, and costs $1000 canadian per month. So, I left him $100 deposit, he gave me a key to the place. I am going to move in on Tuesday, and probably pay the family that I am currently with for the whole week since I kind of comitted to them to stay.

Today, I went out kite boarding, and managed to scam my way into a boat that was going out to give lessons to two other guys. Somehow, the kite-surfing club that I just joined (very cheap), let me go out for free. It was a disaster ... three guys, all of use crashing the kites into the water with a regular frequency, and one guy getting pulled half-way across the lake, only to lose both his kite and board (which we later retreived). The wind was about 40km per hour here, which is actually good conditions. At one point, I did get going pretty good, and deicded to try to change direction, I just lost it ... turned my kite inside out, and had to call it a day.

The guys who took lessons with me turned out to be pretty interesting characters. Both from LA, and into real-estate developing. Anwyay, one of the guys (mike) is renting an $8000 a month house here until end of march (same length stay as me), and the other guy is visiging him. I went over to help him fix his computer after the day of kite-surfing ... ended up going out for sushi with the two guys, and another couple from LA ... well, they were totally stereotypical. The couple was constantly calling the waiter over, and speaking to him slowly in english, and ordering things, and then getting upset when it didn't come ... the guys didn't understand what they were saying! Also, the girl was out of a hollywood movie ... very over-the-top enthusiastic, almost as if she were on some kind of strong drugs. Waving at the waither from across the restaurant to get his attention, calling the manager over to get him to translate the menu for the waiter, talking with a really big smile and bringing up topics that had no relation to anything we were talking about ... Made for an interesting dinner.

Well, I am getting kicked out of the internet cafe now, so will write more once I have some adventures.
Alex