Brazil recap

The Sao Paulo experience was pretty much miserable. As I told one of my coworkers via email, sometimes it's just work no matter what continent you're on. The picture is the view out my hotel window, obviously, that's my hotel reflected in the building across the street. Lovely day... no, not really.

The dead laptop caused me several problems through the week, files I should have had with me were all back on my backup in Houston. Accessible via the network but slow. And setup of the student machines that should have been done before I arrived had not been done.

With one exception the students in my class were all locals. So when the class day was done, they hit the trains and cars and headed for their normal lives. And, as usual, the office wasn't in a district that was very interesting after hours and the hotel where I stayed was picked to be convenient to the office. And the weather was unseasonably miserable, 50s and raining in the evening. And Sao Paulo isn't the safest place to walk around by yourself in the evening.

That combination pretty well left me feeling like doing nothing in the evenings. So I stayed at the hotel, did email on a laptop borrowed from the office IT guy, and ate in the hotel restaurant. Which was about like most hotel restaurants. Tolerable but not exactly a fine dining experience.

The trip home was uneventful. Got to the airport about 7pm too tired to do anything on the way. Platinum status got me access to one of the lounges while waiting for the flight. Flight out of Sao Paulo at 11pm Friday, nonstop to Houston, arrived 5am Saturday. No empty seat next to me this trip. Got enough sleep on the flight to have a pretty normal Saturday.