On Saturday, Aug 8, we put the finishing touches on the trip. Jay went to get his hair cut, the girls played a water gun fight with the neighbors and I went over the packing. The taxi was coming at 12:30 for a 2:30 flight. We did the usual stuff, get to the airport, get through security, grumble at security, find friends on the same flight, get food for the kids…like I said, the usual.

The flight to Miami was great. But then… the flight to Rio de Janeiro. Oy. We had a 2+ hour layover in Miami. We got some Pizza Hut, the kids played games with Jay’s post-doc and we got on the plane. And waited. and waited. First for passengers that were coming in to fly into Rio. Since this was a once a day flight, the people would have to wait 24 hours…. Then the cargo door wouldn’t seal when they added the new passengers’ luggage. Soleil watched almost the entire movie "The Tale of Desperado" before we took off. She finally got to sleep. I didn’t.

We arrived in Rio, bright and early. We breezed through customs and got a taxi to our Hotel. We had hit the "unfortunate" circumstance that 4 people are not allowed to share a hotel room in Brazil. So we ended up with a suite. The girls slept on the pull out couch and we got our own room (nice!). We went swimming in the ocean, ate lunch on the beach, and found a place for dinner before Luna lost it. We also picked up a few food stuffs and while the kids were starting to melt, I had a pick pocket stop by and try to take advantage of the confusion, but I felt him and steered the kids away. He was suitably non-plussed and moved on to his next victim.

The second day meant it was meeting time. We decided to take a taxi down to the meeting. The girls found a TV and sat in front of it. It was playing the same TV cartoon in an endless loop to promote scientific cartoons. They couldn’t care less. Jay and I found where our posters went, but our posters had not yet arrived. Jay was pretty upset about this.

We finally decided to go for a walk. Now, Jay had been telling me that the Convention Center was "just off" my map. After 35 minutes of walking, we FINALLY made it on my map. Grrr. After another 25 minutes, we found the park that was "just off the map" (my ass!) We saw some animals that looked like mini capyburas apparently they are called "agoutis". We made it back to the hotel via the metro and decided that the metro was not as scary as one of our guide books said it was.

We are working on getting our GAZILLION photos up, but here are two to start you off with…

This sucker is about 2 feet long. Seriously. And they came up to you like a stray dog. Soleil wanted to pet one.

My parents dragged me all over Rio de Janeiro and all I got was fricken exhausted.