She Made It!

My mom finally made it to Big City, Brazil. You would have never guessed by looking at her that she, and her three 70 pound bags, lived a 4 day nightmare (she even won a bottle of champagne on the plane for being the passenger with the best attitude). Here she is with her own personal-get-the-gringa-through-customs-without-any-hassles-guy.

She came in around 2:00 am on Saturday morning. As I said in my last post, Guapo and I traveled in style to the airport with our driver and our chase car. I had high hopes an awesome "chase car post."

But alas, as we headed down from our apartment at 1 in the morning, I realized just how lame I would look snapping away at our body guards and their car. Doesn't it seem just a tad "nouvo riche" for me to be taking pictures of them like an excited little teenager? It seemed to me, that if we needed a bodyguard and a chase car, then I should at least try to act in such a manner that would be deserving of such treatment. (never mind that I was wearing sweats that reeked of Pedro's spit up, flip flops and no make-up)

I tried for a few minutes and then decided maybe I could have it both ways: keep my dignity and get my shots for my online friends. This required me getting into some strange positions with my camera, or pretending to be taking picture of other things (at 1:30 in the morning).

Here's the best I could do.

1) the chase car (or me pretending to take a picture of Guapo. in the airport parking lot. at 1:30 am). I wasn't too impressed when I saw it, it was like a Ford Fiesta or something. But, here in Big City, they just don't do flashy cars here-they scream out "Car-Jack Me!!!"


2) The main body guard. One body guard came in with us while the other stayed behind in the car. Once in the airport, it was all very Bourne Identity-ish; there were people coming out of the woodwork all over the place that were apparently apart of the "team". I started to get worried that we were being set up and these people were going to rob us and then dispose of us.

It was super hard to get any kind of decent photo of him without him noticing (since it was his job to keep an eye on us). I had to just hold my camera like I was just relaxing, looking at all of the interesting things in the airport while I clicked away. Here are a few of the duds:





Here's my elbow, and the little guy with the arrow at him is the dude.

Here he is conversing with some of his "friends"


Finally, as we were walking out, I could take a better picture of him in his "Jack Bauer" like jacket, under which he hid his "heat".


3) And here's the production of fitting the bags into the car:


All and all it was uneventful (thank goodness) and we are so happy my mom is finally here (and hope she will visit us again in the future!).