WE MADE IT!!!!!

After almost 48 hours of traveling (with an overnight stop in Porte Alegre), we are officially here, meaning Horizontina, our new home. We'll be staying in a hotel for a few weeks until we get some necessities for our new home. We arrived a little greasy and smelly, but we were so excited to enter the country with ALL our luggage!

Little story: When we arrived in Rio de Janeiro, we were seated in the middle of the plane. Normally, we'd want to hurry to get off because we knew we needed to go through Customs and Immigration, pick up all our luggage, find our new flight and recheck all our luggage. The line is usually really long. Because we had Emma's carseat, backpacks, and a stroller, we decided to wait for everyone else to leave the plane first. We took our time walking to the immigration line and weren't surprised that we were at the end of a line of about 75 people. I decided to organize some of our things and had just unzipped a bag when an important looking lady walked by quickly, speaking English with a thick Portuguese accent. She said, "You don't stand in line. You come, follow me." I wasn't sure if she was talking to us or not, but since we had a child, I kind of figured she was. I quickly zipped the bag and we took off after her. She was speaking extremely fast to another Brasilian and pointing to us. As we approached her, she only said, "Here." and pointed to the front of the line. All I could think of was Muito Obrigado, Thank you very much!!! What a huge blessing! That probably saved us 20-30 minutes in line and a possible meltdown from Emma or myself:) What a huge blessing!! Thank you God! We rechecked all our bags, made it to our new gate and had a few hours to rest and walk around. Emma slept on the flight from Rio to Porte Alegre, another blessing!

We were met in Porte Alegre by Hamilton and Sonia. Hamilton (pronounced Amealton), will be working with Kevin and he and his wife are somewhat of a host family for us as we make our transition. They helped us with our luggage and took us to the Hotel DeVille. Their orders were to rest, but after looking out the window, we decided to take Emma to the pool! After all our traveling, it felt good to just sit on the ledge and put our feet in the pool. The water was really cold and the sun was setting, but that didn't deter Emma from splashing around! She stayed on the steps, though, and only sat down in the water once!