arrived in Salvador, finally

I´ll be honest - the suspense was killing me more than anything, but now that I´m here I don´t feel so totally lost as I thought I would be. Don´t get me wrong; I´m clueless, and everyone here knows it, but my level of ignorance can only decrease so that´s a good thing. Even having slimmed my life down to 2 (one of them huge) bags and a box of books, I felt like I was lugging around far more than necessary. And of course now that I´m here it´s looking like I won´t need any of it. I´ll probably end up just shipping it all back home.

My room in the hostel is very nice-looking, much like Van Gogh´s room in Arles or (this one´s for you, Anne-Marie) our room in Hotel Castelfidardo in Rome. It does, however, have a bit of a ... smell, which of course is one of the reasons it´s temporary.

Well, the first big challenge here (after taking an hour nap - I got like 2 hours of sleep on a 20-hour-total plane ride) is to procure a phone card and start calling people. More to come later. Tchau ...