Planes, airports, buses, taxis and a whole lotta waiting

So, I finally made it to Florianopolis, Brazil, my final destination for my trip and class down here. I´ve only been here for a day, but thus far, I´m really enjoying this cute little city. But let me tell you, getting here was an adventure in itself, and it makes for a very, very long story.
It all began at LAX on Saturday morning... the journey from Long Beach to the airport was in itself, very uneventful compared to the rest of the journey. So after saying goodbyes at the airport, I accidentally waited in the domestic flights line and I made it all the way to the counter for the attendant to inform me that I needed to be in the international flights line, which was waay longer than the first one. I tried to bypass the line altogether (since I had a paper ticket and didn´t need an e-ticket) so I attempted to check my baggage at the roadside check. After waiting in that line for a few minutes, I discovered that they don´t take paper tickets and that I should´ve just gotten in the international line in the first place. So much for that... so off to the international line I go. And I waited and waited and waited. Finally I make it to the counter, check my luggage, pass through security and proceeded to the gate. I then met up with a few other classmates who were all on the same flight as me, so that was pretty cool. We then proceeded to board the plane and fly to Atlanta. This flight was relatively uneventful and quick too. We arrived at Atlanta early even. After landing my classmates and I (there were 7 of us altogether) waited around a little bit to see if the other three people who were supposed to be on the same flight were going to come off of the plane (because there were supposed to be 10 of us). So we waited and waited. They never showed up, so we concluded that maybe they changed their flights or they missed the flight altogether. The latter was confirmed when we received a text message from one of our fellow classmates who was still stuck in LA with his girlfriend and the third classmate. Apparently the airline had screwed them out of the flight and they missed it altogether. So they said that they would meed up with us in Floripa on the same day as us, but at around 7 at night (the rest of us were to arrive in Floripa at around 9 in the morning). So after we made sure that the 7 of us were altogether and ready to go, we took the Atlanta airport subway to the correct terminal (yes, the airport is so gigantic, that they actually have a subway that takes you from terminal to terminal). So we get to Gate E27 and hung out for a little bit. Since our flight from LAX had gotten in early, we had a little bit of extra time to relax and grab some food before catching our connecting flight from Atlanta to Sao Paulo, Brazil. (And just for the record, the plan was to fly from LAX to Atlanta to Sao Paulo to Floripa and be there by 9...just in case you get confused). So we had about an hour and a half before our flight left Atlanta at 6:30 pm for our overnight flight so Sao Paulo. So 6:30 comes and goes... pretty soon, the announcer lady (her name was Anne- she was super cool) gets on the loudspeaker and proceeds to tell us that the flight has been slightly delayed (by 30 minutes). No big deal, we all think. So, pretty soon, 30 minutes comes and goes... Anne gets on the speaker again and tells us that the gate has been moved to E2 (luckily in the same terminal, since the airport is just too big to get from one terminal to another quickly, even with a subway). So me, my classmates, and all the other people on the full flight grab our things and proceed to gate E2. We get there, and we wait, and wait and wait. By this point, it´s about 8:30 at night (2 hours after our flight was to depart). Anne gets on the loudspeaker again. ´Ladies and gentleman, I am very sorry. I don´t remember how many times I´ve said that, I forgot. I´m sure you don´t want to hear my voice anymore. But I really don´t know where the plane is.´ Mind you, the plane wasn´t even at the gate, but as soon as Anne made this announcement, the plane was arriving. She stopped talking to us to confirm that it was our plane, and she got back on the speaker and happily proclaimed ´ladies and gentelmen! Look out the window, and you will see our plane!´ Everybody seemed very relieved about this good piece of news. So now all we had to do was to wait for them to clean it. That won´t take too long, right? Oh how wrong we were. Pretty soon, it´s 10:00, almost 4 hours after our flight was supposed leave. Anne gets on the speaker again. ´Ladies and gentlemen, they are cleaning the plane and it should be ready soon. I am so, so sorry about this delay. Please come up to the desk and get some peanuts and water if you want.´ Poor Anne, we all felt so bad for her, because she had to be the bearer of all this bad news. So by this point, we began to worry that we weren´t going to make it to Sao Paulo in time to make our connecting flight to Floripa. At first we were hopeful (we were to have a 2 hour stopover in Sao Paulo before the flight took off), but at this point, it was just hopeless. So we proceeded to the desk to ask Anne if she can get us on another flight from Sao Paulo to Floripa (maybe even the same one that our fellow three classmates who were still stuck in LAX were on- it was the same day and the same airline, so we thought we´d give it a try). At first she said no, because she works with Delta, and the airline we were to use in Brazil was TAM, and since the two do not work together, she could not book. So we all accepted this and went back to waiting (and thanks to my fellow classmate Christina, who brought her portable DVD play, we watched Legally Blonde 2 in its entirety- meaning that we waited about another hour and a half...) Then another classmate, Jena, decided that we should try to bug Anne again to see if she could get us on that flight, because we didn´t know what we were going to do, besides be stranded at the airport in Sao Paulo. This time around, Anne hooked us up (never believe airline people when they say they can´t do something, because you know they can, they´re just lazy, or in Anne´s case, horribly stressed out that she had to coax some 200 angry people over their 4 hour flight delay). So she got us on a 4:50 flight from Sao Paulo to Floripa (it was pending, but it was better than nothing. Way to go Anne!) So, FINALLY, after hours of waiting for the plane to show up, switching gates, waiting for the plane to be cleaned and some deliberation with a missing trash bin (apparently FAA regulations state that there has to be a certain number of trash bins on each aircraft, and for some reason, this Delta plane was missing one...) we boarded the plane. By this point, it was midnight. Our flight had been delayed over 5 hours! Almost even 6! And for no apparent reason either, as we never got a straight answer as to why it took so long for our plane to show up in the first place or why it took forever to clean it...
So, we´re on the plane, being taxied away from the gate, ready to get on the runway and in the air. We don´t quite make it to the runway before the plane stops. And once again, we wait. After about 10 minutes, the captain comes on and says ´Ladies and gentlemen, I apologize for the chaos that was your delay earlier, but I´m afraid that the airport has closed the runway. We have just put in a call for them to open it up again.´Luckily this didn´t take that long, and shortly after we were in the air at last (even though it was pretty ridiculous that they closed the runway). So we were served our dinner (a midnight snack mind you- we were supposed to be eating dinner at about 7) and we flew south.
So the next morning, we make it to Sao Paulo. It´s almost a good thing that we missed the flight we were to originally be on from Sao Paulo to Floripa, because we never would have made it, even with the 2 hour layover, because between customs, standing at TAM airline check-in (which took forever!) not to mention having to get our baggage at baggage claim because apparently, it didn´t go all the way through like they said it would and then having to wait in another ridiculous line just so we could hand in a piece of paper that claims we didn´t bring any seeds, animals or drugs into the country, we took about 2 hours to do just this. So it´s about 11 in the morning (Sunday) at this point, and it was confirmed that Anne had indeed gotten all 7 of us on the 4:50 flight from Sao Paulo to Floripa. So, needless to say, we had time to kill. We all exchanged currency and got some Brazilian real (pronounced Hey-ice) and got some food. We found a little buffet type place with lots of fruit, salad, rice, beans and meat (for the carnivores) and it´s funny, because you pay based on how much your plate of food weighs. So after eating, we ventured outside the airport to get some fresh air finally. So I can now say that I have officially visited Sao Paulo (and it will get a thumb tack on my map when I get home). It´s so nice! There was this thick forest outside the airport and the weather was beautiful and there was a great breeze. We just kicked it outside by the freeway for about an hour and a half. It hadn´t really set in that we were actually in Brazil, because we still had a long time to go before we reached our final destination and got to explore. So I kept thinking that I was in CA, but had to remind myself that I was far far away.
So we go back in the airport and proceed to gate A3 to wait for our plane, when the 7 of us were all not very pleasantly surprised to learn that the gate had been moved... again... to A8 (maybe it was 7- I don´t remember). But when we got there, who all should we discover, but the missing 3 people who got left behind at LAX! How crazy that we all got reunited in the end, at a random airport none-the-less. So we caught them up on our voyage, they caught us up on theirs, then we gossiped about the ´mystery people´who are basically, 2 people who were apparently coming to Brazil with us (because their names were on the email list our professor gave us), but nobody had ever seen, met or heard from them. So we were all curious to know if they would be in Brazil at all. We then began to call out their names to random people at the airport to see if they happened to be there too. It was pretty silly. So then, the gate got moved again... to A1. Which wasn´t even a gate at all, it was like a bus terminal. (By the way, our 4:50 flight was delayed about an hour with all the gate hopping and what not). So after waiting at gate A1 for a while, a bus came and took us to our plane, way across the airport (don´t ask me why, I don´t know). So we got to board the plane outside with those stairs on wheels (president style!) and we were finally, finally ready to go. It was only about 6 o clock at night, but since it´s winter here, it gets dark really early, and between flying, waiting, flying, waiting some more, hardly sleeping and the sun setting earlier than it does back home, we were so beat and it felt like midnight. Ugh! (Even though it should´ve only been 2 o clock in CA. Ugh again! Really bad jetlag!)
Luckily, this flight was only an hour (and they passed out candy before the flight even began!), and it was pretty much over as soon as it started. And finally, after over 24 hours of traveling and 12 hours later than we were supposed to, we arrive in Floripa. It was dark, so we couldn´t see anything either. Once we got to the airport to claim our baggage, we were pleasantly surprised to see our professor had indeed come to pick us up! (My classmate Treonna had sent him an email back in Atlanta warning him that we might not make the 9 in the morning flight, but at that time, we weren´t sure when we would be arriving, so we weren´t sure if he got that email or not...) but apparently, he did! And it turns out, that one of the mystery people does exist! Only one though. The other person shall remain a mystery person. Poor
Brenda.
So after loading up all of our luggage in the professor´s van and all 10 of our bodies in a big taxi van, we made it to the Hotel Quinta da Bica DÁgua. It was dark, but it seemed lovely. We then split the now 12 of us (my other classmate Celine met us at the hotel) up into threes and got to our rooms. At about 9 o clock... some 36 hours after our journey began. It was such a long journey, that once we touched down in Floripa, it seemed as if our adventure was over- even though it´s only just beginning. But at the same time, it´s kind of cool, since we all had such a horrible experience together, we all bonded very quickly and everybody is super cool and we took it all in stride. So, that was the journey getting here... more to come later on the actual trip itself.