... and it looks like we're here in the U.S. to stay, after all!
We landed on the old Terminal 4 in JFK -- one that has been completely torn down and rebuilt.* The airline we flew on, VASP (São Paulo Airlines) no longer exists... wow. Those things make me feel old and dated!
We traveled with our choir, who was doing a tour here in the U.S. and, foolishly, wasted about 600 dollars to travel around with them in which was to be the most badly planned trip I ever took in my life. Utterly catastrophic!
It all started when we were picked up by an old bus, owned and operated by a man from Frederick, VA who dropped our group off in central Massachusetts and took off to drive another group to Illinois or something over the weekend. He made sure to collect his payment in full before departing and leaving us behind. He did come back, but that was just the beginning of our troubles! (the worst was spending all day stranded outside of a Ramada hotel in Mishawaka in hot June because the bus had broken).
That trip doesn't matter, though, unforgettable as it is for K and I, perhaps much more than for all our friends who went back to Brazil and their lives after that. We were fulfilling our dream to "move on" and perhaps away. For us, staying meant stagnation and we wanted adventure and a dynamic life.
After 14 pretty adventurous years and lots of ups and downs, we finally seemed to have settled down back in 2010, but I don't think our adventures are over yet... maybe there will be more changes and surprises in our future. I'm pretty sure none will be so radical as the one we started on June 20, 1996!
* I just wasted 20 minutes of my life looking for a photo of the old "International Arrivals Building," but was unsuccessful. :(
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